Ignoring The Weight Loss Nag In Your Head
Written by Richard Ransome on June 2nd, 2010
As it stands today, one-third of adults are obese. You might fall into this category yourself. Children, too, are fatter than ever. Maybe you have tried diet after diet, but nothing seems to work long-term. Here is a new way to think about weight loss. Begin your weight loss journey inside.
Don’t Be Cruel
To begin with, most weight loss regimens are quite harsh. We classify ourselves as good or bad based on food choices we make. This critical voice inside needs to be silenced. Obviously, being critical of ourselves has done nothing to motivate us to lose weight up. It is not likely to start motivating us now.
A More Humane Way To Lose Weight
Rather than criticizing ourselves, why not be more gentle and build non-compliance into the eating plan. Taking this approach is kind of like knowing that your child might get hungry during an outing and packing a snack for her to take along. This will avoid a tantrum and cranky behavior. Likewise, you already know that if you are stringent and demand 100% compliance of yourself in following your weight loss plan, eventually you are going to binge on that chocolate cake. Building in free meals can disrupt this cycle entirely.
The 85:15 Ratio
How much compliance versus non-compliance you specifically need to lose weight really depends on your genetics, your activity level and how your body responds overall. A good starting point is to have 85% of your meals be in compliance with your eating plan. Eating three meals and two snacks a day, with the two snacks being about half the size of one regular meal, you eat four regular meals each day in total. That is 28 meals per week. If you are 85% compliant, that means that 24 of your meals are completely in line with your eating plan. You can eat the remaining four meals freely.
No, It Does Not Mean Pig Out
Now, just because you have four “free” meals, that does not mean you can binge on anything you want to or eat as much as you want to eat. It means that you can live a little, have that piece of birthday cake or a glass of wine, not that you can eat the whole cake or drink the entire bottle of wine by yourself! The point of building in planned free meals is to thwart any feelings of deprivation that would eventually make you lose control entirely and give up trying to lose weight altogether.
Flexibility
Eating in this compliance/free manner requires that you pay attention to your body. If you are not having any weight loss with the 85%-15% ratio, you have three choices. You can either increase the compliance level to 90%, with 10% free meals, increase your energy expenditure or accept the fact that it will take you longer than anticipated to reach your goal.
You Have Nothing To Prove
Taking control of your weight and overall health is not meant to prove to your family that you really do have the willpower to lose weight. It is to get healthier. Perfection is not required. You will finally arrive at your goal weight if you follow the plan. When you do, you will already know how to adjust the ratios to maintain your weight loss forever.
It’s a fact that if you want to get a handle on any weight problem you need to begin on the inside and work your way out. Get the ultimate inside scoop on this as well as the best weight loss diet on the world wide web now on http://www.weightlossforgood.net
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 7:06 am and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: Health, healthy weight loss, herbal weight loss, weight loss
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