Many people want to lose weight, and the most used method is to follow a strict diet.
Diets are effective, but there are some precautions and guidelines.
The idea of a diet is to eat fewer calories. It is to eat foods that have lower calories per serving.
If you normally eat meals of 2500 calories per day, and do not exercise, that high calorie level is going to be stored in your body, usually as fats.
Gradually, you will accumulate more weight.
This is the normal process of overweight.
Diet can reverse this process when you eat low calorie-meals.
For example, if your daily intake is 1200 calories, you are more likely to lose weight, day by day.
The degree of your losing weight depends on many factors such as your age, lifestyle, exercise, sleep and emotions.
Normally a diet of 1000 calories per day is good enough to lose weight.
This kind of diet will require you to stop eating many types of foods, like meat, cheese, chocolate, cream, butter, bread, rice, pasta... etc.
Food of high starch or high fat or even high protein have more calories per serving.
To start on a strict diet that eliminates these high calorie-foods is not easy.
You need to maintain this diet for some long time before you see the good results.
The problem with a strict diet is that after a while, the Unconscious Mind will resist it, or behaves like a rebel.
That means after a while, you begin to sabotage yourself by eating more foods. Once this happens, you will regain all lost weight, and maybe even more.
You are more likely to feel depressed or desperate after you took that hard effort of the strict diet.
Most people find themselves in this bad situation.
This is one reason why most diets do not succeed in the long run.
To overcome this possibility, I would like to share with you some practical tips.
Tips For a Successful Diet:
1-Do not starve yourself. Do not stop eating for a long time.
This may sound strange. However, it is proven by scientific research that once you start starving, or not eating food for some time, your Unconscious Mind (UM) interprets this behavior as if you are under famine. Under famine, the body or the UM, begins to slow down your metabolic rate significantly. This is to protect you against death. This is the body survival behavior. Therefore, if you start a too low calorie-diet, say like 500 calories/day, you will not lose a lot of weight because your metabolic rate has also slowed down significantly.
This is why it is important to give the right signal to your UM. Start dieting slowly and gradually.
Do not over do it. Do not starve yourself.
2-When you start your diet, interrupt it once a week.
This means you can follow your diet for 6 days, but once a week allow yourself to eat anything, even high calorie-foods.
Why?
We know about the UM. It is always working for your benefit. Once you begin eating undesirable foods just for the sake of weight loss, you are in effect making a sacrifice for taste and delicious foods. You are, in a way preventing yourself from eating what you love. This sense of sacrifice will backfire after some time. In a way, it is like you are "Fed Up" or "Tired" of this strict regime.
At this stage, your UM plays the role of a "Rebel."
More likely that you want to stop this sacrifice. You reach a point where you "Don't Care." Meaning you want to eat whatever you stopped yourself from eating. That is normal behavior. If you reach that point, do not blame yourself. Do not criticize it as if you are weak. Accept is as human nature. This is why it is important that you allow yourself once in a while, like once a week to eat whatever you want. Treat yourself and let your UM be satisfied.
3-Eat food in a much slower rate.
If you usually eat fast, try to slow down. Eat as slowly as you can. This slow process will make you feel full sooner than you normally feel. This means you will eat a smaller amount of food. This will very much help you to follow your low calorie-diet.
The idea behind this behavior is that when you eat, the signal from your stomach to the brain needs some time to reach you. This signal from the stomach is about feeling full. When you feel full, the stomach "senses" it and sends the signal to your brain that you are full, and then the brain "understands" it and gives the feeling of being full.
If you eat fast, you will more likely eat more that you should or need because that signal has not yet reached the brain, or at least the time lapse has allowed you to eat more.
Eat your food slowly, trying to chew each bite more slowly, and the result will be that you will not eat all of the food in your plate.
4- Reward yourself once you notice any weight loss.
This is to keep the diet continuing. This is to "persuade" your UM that you are happy with this diet. This will maintain your motivation for this strict diet. Remember that your motivation for anything is not constant and sometimes it gets weaker. Rewarding yourself by any way is very helpful.
How to reward yourself?
Whatever is important for you. You can go to the movie, or dine in a nice expensive restaurant or buy some perfume... etc.
Remember that there are many tools for losing weight other than the diet.
Those tools will be explained in the coming articles.
Good luck.
Tips and tools for losing weight and how to follow a good diet are all explained in coolaura.com
