So you have decided to lose weight. Almost all of us go through it at one point or another. But, with so many different diets, pills, advice and information, how do you go about it without going crazy? Here are some tips that worked for me and some others.
- Figure out your starting point. How much weight do you want to lose? What kind of shape are you in now? What are your eating habits? Once you realize where you are starting from, you will get a better idea of what program will work best for you. If you dont exercise at all, then starting out with a two hour extreme workout, might cause you to give up early when it turns out to be too hard. If you love carbs and eat them three times a day, an Atkins diet might be too frusterating. Pick a plan that makes sence for you.
- Take baby steps. Start out by making small changes to your daily life. Taking a walk after dinner, or in the morning. Light streching or yoga. Start replacing "bad" foods with good foods. Try something new. Instead of regular milk, try soy milk, hummus instead of mayo, low carb bread, veggie burgers,a different healther cereal, a new kind of fruit. There are many many food choices out there and you might be surprised at what you end up liking. Try different brands and combinations. When you start eating and treating your body better, you will be more motivated to make other changes.
- Water, Water, Water. We all know how important water is to our body. It helps flush your system and makes you feel full. If "plain" water is too boring for you, try putting some lemon slices or other fruit in it, or mixing a small amount of healthy juice in it to add some flavor. Try to avoid sodas and other hidden calorie drinks.
- Check calories and fat content. But dont go insane counting them. Sometimes all it takes to make a different choice is to check the label. When you see how much fat and calories are in some of your favorite food and drinks, that might just be enough it to make you look for a different option. There are some great healthier snack choices that dont always have to fruit or celery. Look around your store and, again, give something new a shot.
- Don't be so hard on yourself. What happens when you do eat a piece of chocolate cake? Or really needed to give into a big mac craving? It's ok. It happens. Dont punish yourself with exercise, or by starving yourself the next day. Its ok to indulge once in a while, as long you dont find yourself induging too often.
- Dont expect immediate results. You arent going to wake up in the perfect body. But you are going to feel better and be proud of yourself for taking better care of your body. Everything will fall into place and you will start to look better as long as you keep with it.
- Avoid the trap of diet pills. Dont think that you can take a magic pill and your weight will melt away. You still need to eat better and exercise. Even those people that you see in all those great before and after shots in diet pill ads all did the same thing, the ate better and exercised. The pill did not and will not do all the work. It is better to avoid taking them with the hopes that they will.
- Ditch the scale. Many scales are inaccurate. Weighting yourself daily or even weekly will just make you feel upset and frustered. Also, if you are working out, you might be gaining muscle and replacing fat, so you wont see to much of a change on the scale. Your best judge of how you are doing is yourself. Are your clothes fitting better or different? Are you noticing changes in your body? Use that as your guide.
- Take a multivitamin. The more good things you put into your body, the more small steps you take to filling yourself with nutrients the better you will feel and look.
- Take all advice with a grain of salt. Everyone is going to have some tidbit of information for you. What worked for them might not work for you. Take it all in stride and work with what is getting results for you. Trying to do everything everyone says will only cause overload.
