By MACROS | Published on January 15, 2017
The first week of a new eating plan is easy. You’re enthusiastic so you buy all your new healthy foods and clear the biscuit tin. You just know this time will be different. However, after the first week, your shopping starts to look slightly different. Your enthusiasm wanes and you start thinking differently.
Fast forward a few weeks and your diet is all but done with. What happened? You joined the millions of people who find sticking to a diet really tough. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be like that. Follow these simple tips to stay on track and avoid another fat loss failure.
Be realistic
If you rarely cook for yourself and the closest you come to eating vegetables is a slice of carrot cake, then aiming for a complete overhaul is setting yourself up for failure. Make slow changes to habits instead. Only add new ones when you’re comfortable with things. Start by eating veggies at every sitting, or protein. By adding in more good stuff, you will reduce the bad stuff automatically without even knowing it.
Be balanced
Know that no food should be off-limits completely. You only really want what you can’t have and by telling yourself you’ll never taste a chocolate bar again, you’ll crave nothing else until you eventually cave in. Practice moderation. Stick to your calorie needs and make sure you eat the foods that will optimise health, gym performance and energy levels. However, you should also know that 2,000 calories of good food and 1,900 calories of good food with four squares of chocolate will ultimately have the same result.
Know your weakness
Know when balance needs to be ignored. Everyone has a food they can’t live without and it’s best to keep these for very rare occasions. If you can’t stop at one, don’t start in the first place. Hide the food, or even better, don’t buy it.
– RELATED: The Best Five Foods For Weight-loss –
Become accountable
Eating healthily or for fat loss is hard when you’re on your own. You’re a victim to temptation with only your own willpower to protect you. Willpower is a finite resource, and eventually it’s going to leave you as you order a large pizza and uncork a bottle of wine.
Accountability is the single best method I’ve ever found to keep people on track. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your work colleagues. These are the people you see every day and they will support you. Ask them to keep an eye on you so you don’t snack, ask them not to bring you a doughnut every lunchtime, pin your goals up where they can all see it and tell them when you’ve made progress.
Quantify your goal
A lot of the time people will set a goal but they don’t really know why. They say they want to lose X amount of weight, but because there’s no emotional attachment to that goal, they aren’t really bothered if it doesn’t work out. Don’t think of a goal as something that would be nice to have, think of it as an answer to something in your life you currently hate. You are achieving better health, a longer life and a greater chance to see your grandkids grow up. That sounds a lot more important than losing some weight, doesn’t it?
