Shedding weight is only half the challenge. The other half of your challenge is keeping the weight off. At times when we notice that we have lost weight then there is a little voice inside that says that there is now slightly more room to gobble down more! So we find ourselves back at the starting point. Here are some guidelines for how to lose pounds and keep it off.
We tend to hang on until our next dinner before we have anything substantial, which can also encourage snacking. If you eat many small meals instead of just 3 big ones then you will lose weight easier as your metabolism has to work to process the food and you are giving your body fuel that it can use up during the course of the day as it needs it.
This sounds like an easy one, but only eat when you are hungry! We tend to stick rigidly to our mealtimes and therefore we are really hungry when we sit down to eat and wolf everything on the plate down. Eat slower and pay attention to how you feel, the aim is not to empty the plate, it is to fill you up.
People have all sorts of excuses for why they eat everything on the plate, the oldest one in the book is that it is a sin to waste good food. Is clogging up your arteries and putting excessive wear and tear on your joints by being overweight not ‘sinful’ then? Don’t make excuses, take action, stop finishing the plate full!
Once you start to eat less you find that your crave less, but you are just as happy with the meal amount. You won’t starve by cutting down your meal sizes, it may take a while for your body and mind to adjust, but it will and then it will be much happier that you don’t overload it and so will you.
It is imperative that you ditch all the bad food that you can, store it somewhere else if you can. If your kids want bad food then store it in the garage, that way when you want a night time snack on a cold night and you go to the fridge you do not have any temptation, but if you want to go out to the cold, dark garage in your underwear to get the bad stuff
Now there will be times when you are challenged by events or people around you. Learn to be able to walk away from situations where you are going to be tempted. If you family bring fish and chips home, eat your healthy dinner in the living room away from them. If watching cooking shows leaves you hungry then make sure you are doing something else when they are on so you don’t start watching them.
Changing your lifestyle is harder than you think, but once you have lose the weight and kept it off for a few months, then these guidelines above become second nature and you will find it much easier to keep your weight stable. Put in the effort at the start and it will be well worth it when the new slim you looks in the mirror each morning.