Each day of the year, thousands of people begin a diet program with the intent of losing weight. And people do lose the weight and keep it off, but sadly a great number of people become frustrated and quit early in their diet programs. Discouragement leads to depression, which in some cases leads to an emotional eating and henceforth gain weight instead of losing it. If you are one of the sufferers of this trauma because of repetitive failure inspite of the best efforts. The points to be considered are….What went wrong? Why did the diet fail? Why was the only thing lost money from your bank account, not the fat banked in your body?
Let’s analyze few reasons why you can’t stick to your diet …
and how to fix them
1.It doesn’t fit your lifestyle and it’s arbitrary…
When you say you’re going “on a diet” it may also mean, at some point, you’ll be going “off your diet”. This often happens when people try to adopt a diet plan that doesn’t fit with their daily schedule or routine and happens most commonly with people who are made to follow arbitrary diets. Maybe it needs a lot of food preparation and you just don’t like to cook for yourself, or don’t have time. Maybe there are too many restrictions, you quickly get bored, or you can’t find anything you can eat when you go out with friends or family.
How to overcome: Instead of trying the latest fads and unsupervised “diet”, to shed weight, focus on making lifestyle changes for the long term. If you don’t have time to cook or don’t enjoy it, seek out recipes that are quick and easy, and gather knowledge about low calorie foods served in your favorite restaurant.
2.Your expectations aren’t realistic…
Once you’ve decided to “go on a diet”, and loose the extra kilos, you may have high expectations for your weight loss specially if you find yourself making a lot of sacrifices. Like in most of the cases, you may also expect to lose more than you can safely achieve over a period of time, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.
How to overcome: First, know that a safe and reasonable rate of weight loss is up to about a kilogram per week. And recognize, that when you’re working to establishing healthy new habits, it’s natural to deviate once in a while. Rather than letting this diet slip turn into a diet fail and giving up altogether, you must try to learn from your mistakes and allow some time for the new habits to get best results.
3.You don’t change your surroundings
What is available around you has a big effect on your eating. There are temptations all around you, and if you don’t take charge of your environment, it’s just too easy to give in. Replace the grocery around you, in your kitchen, pantry and even in your office desk.
How to overcome: Replace tempting, high-calorie foods out of your house with healthier items. Rather than a jar of candy on your desk or a bag of cookies on your kitchen counter, put out some fresh fruit or protein snack bars. Cut up some fresh veggies and put them in the most visible spot in your refrigerator where they’ll be the first things you see. Stock your freezer and pantry with healthy choices like boiled chana salad, quinoa salad or bean salad, so that you always have what you need to put together a healthy meal.
4.You skip your meals
Very often, people think the quickest way to weight loss is to just eat as little as possible and skip meals. This leaves them hungry, tired and cranky … and craving sugar and caffeine to get them through the day. Skipping meals and snacks usually doesn’t help you lose weight, because you’re likely to just eat more at your next meal and this is disastrous for weight loss.
How to overcome: Establish a regular eating pattern that will keep you from getting hungry. In general, people feel the need to eat about every 3-4 hours during the day, which means you need at a minimum three meals and a snack in the afternoon. When you know you’re going to eat every few hours, it makes it easier to control your portions at each meal and snack, too. And make sure that each meal and snack provides some low-fat protein to help keep your hunger under control.
5.You eat for emotional reasons
If you turn to food when you’re feeling depressed, angry or stressed. If one is depressed or stressed, the best resort to settle this is good food, I mean faulty food .If you find yourself eating when you’re not really physically hungry, you’ll want to work on finding other ways to make yourself feel better.
How to overcome: When you get ‘emotional’ or ‘stressed’ and feel the need to eat, take a moment to stop and simply think what it is that you’re feeling, is this hunger or just thirst. Rather than ‘stuffing down’ the negative and guilt feeling with food, just let it subside. You can also tell yourself that you’ll wait 5 or 10 minutes before giving in and believe me, chances are you’ll get busy doing something else and forget about eating altogether. Exercise is one of the best mood-lifters around.
So go ahead and overcome your shortcomings and follow a diet which is customized and tailored JUST FOR YOU…!!!
