Free Diet Makeovers This Month!

It's the new year; the time where everyone is making new year's resolutions. And I'll bet that "lose some weight" is top on many people's list!

I'd love to help you do it right this year, so I'm offering to help you makeover your diet starting now! It's easy to do--just think of three ways you can change your diet to make it better. How can you eat more foods that are good for you? Fewer foods that are high in calories? How can you be sure to exercise more regularly? Sit down with a pad of paper and jot down some ideas. When you come up with a few good ones, just send them here as comments. I'll add my expert comments to yours and help you refine them so they'll work best.

Here are some examples of what we might see:

1) Eat 3 fruits each day.
comment: have a plan to track them, such as keeping a log on the refrigerator door. After supper, check to see how close you are, and if you are lacking a fruit or two, have one for dessert and another as a bedtime snack.

2) Stop eating fast food.
comment: You don't want to set yourself up to fail. If you eat fast food often for convenience sake, you're going to have a back-up plan that works, like packing your lunch every day--and will you really do this? How about taking a few minutes to research your favorite fast food restaurant on their website for nutritional content of the foods you like best. You'll quickly find that some have hundreds more calories than others. Instead of "no more fast food" it may be wiser to refine your goal as "find the healthiest choices" for when you do turn into the drive through window!

3) Exercise every day.
comment: If you don't exercise every day now, what makes you think things will change so drastically? You need an easy plan! What exactly will you do for exercise, and where and when will you do it? Do you like to walk? Do you like aerobics classes? Can you follow a schedule more faithfully if you have an exercise buddy? Again, you want to set yourself up for success, so make your goal realistic. "I will walk monday and wednesday after dinner with my husband, and meet Barb at the gym on Tuesday and Saturday mornings for yoga classes" might work better for your new routine.

Share some goals with us and we can all get some good ideas to start out 2009 with healthy habits that can last this year!