Weight Control
BUILDING NEW SKILLS, ONE SKILL AT A TIME
Top 10 SKILLS for long-term weight loss SUCCESS!
Are you ready to lick this once and for all? No more diets, no more depriving, no more berating yourself!! What is the KEY TO SUCCESS??
- Make the deliberate decision to choose health over indulgence, so that your choices to eat properly and exercise are more important (most of the time) than indulgences in poor eating, sleeping and exercise habits.
- Commit to a schedule of food shopping, having ideas, and a plan for healthy choices for meals and snacks almost daily. Taking all the food you need to make this happen with you every day.
- Commit to staying active/exercising, at least 4 days per week. Having this planned into your life as a top priority insures that staying healthy stays on the top of your list. Don’t forget, what do you have without it?
- Keep a diary. It is essential for many of us. Choose one that you know you can stick with – handwriting it in a pretty journal, an online diary, a checklist, pictures and a checklist, whatever works!
- Plan the activities of shopping, planning which foods you will have for meals and snacks, writing, and exercise INTO a calendar or date book will be essential, so that unless there is an emergency, you will follow through on these health priorities! If something unavoidable arises, always and as immediately as possible, plan an alternative time when you will fulfill the health priority. This is where our excuses and rationalizing kicks in – don’t let it!!
- Batch cook. A tray of chicken, a pan of turkey meatballs (ground turkey meat, egg whites, bread crumbs, and a good sauce to pour over it, then steam for 15 minutes), London broil, 5 yams (to pull out for 30 seconds in the microwave), a fresh turkey breast to slice down for several meals, pot of brown rice to keep in the fridge, soups (healthy pre-made or put up a big pot of veggie soup on the weekend to draw from all week), bagged salad (have box of grape tomatoes, shredded carrots and purple cabbage, red and green peppers, scallions, and light or non fat dressing). Also, sliced turkey breast and/or lean roast beef from a deli and good whole wheat bread (consider Arnold’s whole wheat thins) with mustard makes a great sandwich. Keep healthy, vegetable-based soups on hand to add to any meal or use as a substitute for salad or other veggie as you wish. You may wish to grill lots of veggies once a week to use on sandwiches, in salad or just heat as a side dish. This insures that you will have some yummy, healthy food almost always available for those evenings or lunches where you don’t feel like cooking or your schedule does not permit it. Consider topping a nice salad with any one of the above proteins.
- Resolve to conquer emotional eating, and eating for reasons other than hunger. Strengthen healthy non-eating habits to replace eating if not hungry (reading, listening to music, indulging in a hobby, calling a friend, taking a walk, learning something new). Don’t confuse fatigue, thirst, desire, habit with eating when you are not physically hungry. Check in with your gut for growling, or a feeling of lightheadedness before choosing to eat.
- Don’t eat just because it is a certain time, or there is food available, or the smell of food wafts past your nose. These all stimulate DESIRE, but if you indulge if you are not physically hungry, you are overeating and reinforcing this habit!
- At celebrations, gatherings or when on vacation be extremely discriminating in your choices. Act most of the time as you would normally, making deliberate, healthy choices most of the time.
- Assert yourself verbally to others that you are making careful choices in quality and quantity of foods. Ask for what you need! Respectfully decline when it is not a good choice for you! It is YOUR body, YOUR waist, YOUR health!
diamondnutritioncounseling.com The Nutrition Counseling Specialists