If you’re losing weight, trying to lose weight, or feel like you need to lose weight, you’re probably just as sick as I am of these “easy” and “quick” diet tips that NEVER work!
The following tips are neither quick nor easy. They’re tough, uncomfortable, and demanding (but they work).
- Not eating.
In the long run, of course, that doesn’t make sense, unless you have a secret death wish. It’s worth considering for now. Just like the recovering alcoholic who takes it one day at a time, it becomes possible not to eat “just today” every once in a while. If you can convince yourself that you can eat whatever you want tomorrow, not eating becomes a viable alternative today. Even more short-term, if you’re sticking to what you’re planning to do and not devouring everything in sight, delaying a planned meal by a few hours can make up for your temporary deprivation. A reduction in total calorie intake for the day, week, month is the overall goal.
- Get your body moving.
We all know that exercise is necessary to burn our own fat. Exercise can be tedious and boring, and it gets in the way of getting everything done in our time-poor lives. Those who love to exercise, spend hours in the gym, or train for marathons don’t have a weight problem like the rest of us couch potatoes. So how do we find the time and motivation to incorporate some physical activity into our lives? When we don’t have the time or opportunity for exercise (work, commute, kids, housework) we can sneak activity breaks throughout the day into stolen moments of time. Set your alarm back 15 minutes early and do calisthenics — jumping jacks, killer exercises, sit-ups, jump rope — while the coffee is brewing. Sneak for 5 to 10 minutes every few hours during the workday to walk around the building, do isometrics at your desk, or run up and down the stairs. 5- to 10-minute mini-workouts scattered throughout your usual schedule can add up to an hour or two of activity bursts per day and greatly improve the equation of calories burned in and burned out, leading to increased weight loss.
- Eliminate “Step Up a Gear”.
During “BAM!!” Flavoring our food is enjoyable and fun, it also increases our calorie intake because our food is so good that our taste buds are in a constant state of excitement. In order to lose weight consistently, we need to become disinterested in food as much as possible. Let’s face it, carrot and celery sticks will never make our mouths water; A cup of yogurt, cottage cheese, sauerkraut, or tuna is fine, but it never leads to the sheer indulgence of a heavenly bowl of jambalaya, pasta, a dripping cheeseburger, or a sizzling pizza. We need to confine the excitement of our lives to non-food activities and keep our eating in a boring, tiring realm so that we can limit our involvement, enjoyment, and joy in eating. The less we look forward to our meals, the less we will eat, which is our goal.
- Practice positive visualization.
Use props to “see” yourself thin so that your weight loss goals become a tangible, important part of your everyday life. Instead of the latest “Who did it?” Reading crime novels, clothing catalogs before bed. The airbrushed perfection of the Victoria’s Secret and Banana Republic models may be difficult for you to emulate, but they encourage you to dream of looking attractive. A mental vision of yourself as model-thin is a technique for pulling yourself up every time you are faced with food during the day and boosting your “don’t want” power to reject foods you know you don’t have to need. This technique doesn’t work as well for men, but encourage the men in your life to emulate their favorite sports. Watch movies and television not to escape from yourself and your monotonous world, but to glimpse into a world you intend to inhabit. Imagine yourself as the hero or heroine of your favorite shows: can you even imagine a cloaked crusader, an overweight vampire, or an obese romantic lead? Keep a clear idea of yourself as slim, sexy and fit and you have something to help you through those tantalizing, alluring, almost impossible to resist times in your daily life. It is this mental image of your future self that can encourage you to “just say no” to the immediate joys that surround you.
- Eliminate snacking.
The traditional “three squares a day” eating pattern was based on breakfast, lunch, and dinner as the main meals of the day. Today it is not only our meals that have led to our national obesity, but also our snacks that have fueled the obesity epidemic. Have you noticed that there always seems to be food? There is food everywhere we turn: potato chips, nuts, cakes, ice cream, tortillas, chicken wings, Doritos (Saddam’s favorite), and countless salty, spicy, salivating snacks that have nothing to do with our need to eat , to survive and everything related to our overweight. If we can eliminate these between meals and focus on three (preferably two) meals a day, we can begin to adjust our weight toward our goals. We tend to nibble throughout the day—a pinch of it, a handful of it, and an eye-hand-mouth combo that keeps us munching 24/7. Its allure is undeniable: the salty, spicy, or sweet after-effects of its ingestion linger on the tongue and in the memory (and even longer on the hips).
Thanks to Virginia Bola, PsyD
