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Is your personal health and wellbeing worth losing a few pounds for? Any overweight person who has ever visited a doctor has, at the very least, been warned of the risk to one's health. Much in the same way smokers know the risks associated with smoking, overweight people know the risks of obesity. I believe it is rather useless to try to assign outside blame for one's eating disorders. The fact is that when I was a size blimp no one forced food into my mouth. Food, good or bad, didn't simply jump off the table and land between my teeth. What I had to do was figure out why I ate to excess before I could ever quit the obsession and begin to lose weight. My 12 step friends like to say, "Denial isn't just a river in Africa." To deny one's disorder when it comes to food and weight is simply a way to hide behind one's discomfort with one's weight. Some people even go so far as to proclaim "fat is the new thin" by expressing pride in their obesity. Dieting for Your Health: Excuses Much of this behavior is rooted in the fact that every overweight person I know, including myself, tried every diet imaginable. We might give a diet two or three months to work. Then, disappointed in the results, flip into a different diet. Sometimes we would give up altogether and then in the classic yo-yo effect, gain back more weight than we took off. The yo-yo effect is worse than not losing weight at all. Simply going on a diet will not make the pounds go away. Losing weight is a bit more complicated than that. Unless one commits to a change in one's lifestyle, making positive changes over time, diets will not work. Dieting for Your Health: Commitment If you aren't willing to take the stairs, to walk a little more today than you did yesterday, to take steps to remove the harmful effects of the food industry from your refrigerator, then any diet you try will fail. If you can't let go of expecting the impossible then dieting is not for you. In this case, the impossible is instant gratification. You go on a diet and you lose a few pounds then plateau. Yikes, it doesn't work. I may as well go back to my old style of stuffing myself. If that is you, do not diet. Seriously, no diet will work. Dieting for Your health: Solutions You have to learn to let go of harmful habits, one at a time. This comes down to setting reasonable goals for your weight loss program. Make a list of the things you immediately want to remove from your diet. My list would include things like: -Refined sugar -Refined white flour and products made from flour -Starchy vegetables -Carbohydrates -Salt -High Fructose Corn Syrup -Ingredients I can't pronounce Once your list is made, rank that list. Choose the number one thing you want to get rid of completely in your diet. I have written before about the length of time it takes to make a behavior into a habit (14 to 28 days). So for the next two to four weeks, cut number 1 from your daily consumption. Then go on to the next item on your list and repeat. By the end of two months, you will have changed two habits into positive energy. Keep this up until your list is exhausted. The number one thing most people need to learn is that dieting isn't always a good thing. What most people who are overweight need more than anything else is to incorporate positive lifestyle changes into their daily routines. People scoff at the notion of taking the stairs or parking farther away and yet those are perfectly plausible methods of working a little more physical activity into your day. If those do not work for you how about learning to dance? Seriously, there are beginner dance classes in most communities that will welcome and invite dances of all ages, sizes, and fitness levels if you are willing to make the effort. What a great way to get fit, learn something new, and have fun without filling deprived. I don't know about you, but for me, and I am speaking personally here, I have a tough time with the frustration that comes along with changing one's behavior. There are times when it just doesn't seem worth the effort. My trick is a simple one. Let's take the worst culprit in the world of making you fat, SUGAR. Giving up sugar was the hardest thing I have ever done save for quitting smoking. The trick for me is just this. So I am feeling frustrated and I want to quit. Well, I CAN quit tomorrow, but not TODAY. It is easier to get through today than it is to think in longer terms. So I know that any time I choose to, I can go back to eating sugar. I just won't do it today. Remember that no diet will work unless you aggressively approach changes in your lifestyle. You must work your diet or, frankly, your diet will work you. ———————————— Sara Dawson is the managing partner at Proven Rapid Weight Loss, a Fischel Group Company. Her personal journey going from ‘chubby’ and unhealthy to thin and healthy is one that anyone who suffers from being overweight or in poor health, or both should know. Sara encourages you to visit her Proven Rapid Weight Loss Blog where she shares her story along with tips and ideas for healthy weight loss.
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dieting, health, commitment, struggle, habits,
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