Are you ready for weight loss? Simply put, if you are not ready to change something in your life, you are not going
to lose the weight (and keep it off).
People give a lot of thought, researching how to follow a specific diet:
Whether it’s South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers, or The Cookie Diet. They read about it and talk to their friends
about it; they search for information on the internet, and save up enough money
to buy the special bars, and sometimes a membership fee.
But they don’t give any thought to what it means to change
behaviors that have become longstanding, lifestyle habits. Any habit is difficult to break. You know that’s true if you’ve ever tried to
stop smoking or biting your nails. It is
almost an instinct when you carry out a habit, and it’s very difficult to just
stop in your tracks when the urge hits.
It’s the same with eating.
We have established habits like:
- - reaching
into the cookie jar while we read the mail
-
- grabbing
a candy out of a dish when we walk by a coworker’s desk
- - settling
into a cozy chair after dinner instead of going for a walk
The good news is, there are many, many habits that
contribute to eating too much and not exercising enough. And you
only have to change a few! The fact is, you do not have to perform a
complete diet overhaul and stop eating everything you’re used to and replace it
with all the “healthy” foods you’ve never liked before. And, you don’t have to start going to the gym
for 2 hours every day or start jogging two miles every morning.
You didn’t
get to this weight overnight, ingesting huge quantities of food daily. Small habits you’ve picked up over the years:
- treating yourself to a donut in the morning
- cleaning your kids’ plates after supper
- having ice cream while watching TV in the evening
- running through the fast food drive
thru window for a quick lunch
- driving down the block to a friend’s
house instead of walking
- eating everything on your plate
at a restaurant
These all add up to what might be just 50 or 100
calories a day. But over years it can result in five pounds a
year weight gain, and after 5 years that’s 25 pounds! That’s what many are looking to lose—10 or 20
pounds of slowly accumulated weight gain that won’t come off now because of bad
habits. They aren’t very
noticeable now, because they are part of our daily routine.
The key to making
changes is choosing one change at a time
so you aren’t overwhelmed and so it will be easier to stick with. You can’t really believe you will give up all
fast foods, chocolate, and desserts and start eating breakfast, packing your
lunch and going to the gym every day all at once. And that you can keep that up for more than a
week! It’s just too much to humanly
expect.
So think about this:
-What is one habit you can change?
-Where is the best (and easiest) place for you to start?
Choose a healthier way to replace something you’ve been
doing that you know isn’t good for you.
Eat more of something good for you, less of something that
isn’t nutritious, or find a way to increase your activity.
Next week, you can add another to your list. In time you’ll have a lifestyle of healthy
habits and the weight will come off without you even feeling like you’re on a
weight loss plan!
Take the first step and write a comment to commit to making one, easy change: What will you change this week?
It’s the same with eating.
We have established habits like:
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