The Plan for Those Who Don't Want to Give Up Their Favorite Foods

If you’re like most dieters, you don’t want to say goodbye to white bread, chocolate or even your favorite sodas. You might think you can do it when you’re celebrating on December 31st and shouting out your New Year’s Resolutions, but when January 14th rolls around, and you’ve gone two full weeks without, it starts to get a bit depressing.

There is a way to diet without having to part with your favorite foods. But if you’re looking for a quick weight loss plan, where you shed 20 pounds in two weeks, this isn’t it. Look at some of the other plans for something more fitting to your needs.

Many experts who deal with behavioral eating issues recommend that you learn what’s called “normal eating habits.” This is very hard initially, but eventually it becomes second nature for you and it’s a form of dieting that you can adopt for a lifetime.

Normal eating means you’re going back to the roots of how you used to eat when you first born. You knew when you were hungry (and cried for food, although you won’t be doing that now), and you stopped when you were finished, refusing the bottle anymore by pushing it out of your mouth with your tongue to signal your fullness to your caretaker.

You didn’t stuff yourself until you were miserable or binge one evening and starve yourself the next. Yet somehow, that’s exactly what we learn to do over the years as we suffer from a poor body image and get influenced by our peers and by the media and marketing moguls who want to sell us products.

We may sit down to a healthy meal one night and say, “Oh I can only have two bites because I pigged out last night.” It’s like you’re punishing yourself every time to feed your body for mistakes you’ve made in the past.

When you’re an adult and no longer having to ask Mommy and Daddy if you can have a piece of pie or stop for fast food, it gets harder and harder to control how often you cave into those cravings.

So instead of saying, “No” to certain foods that you adore, I want you to look at eating in a different way. And let me warn you – it’s going to feel very uncomfortable for a while until you suddenly feel a wave of relief wash over you.

Normal eating starts with eating what you want, when you want. That means listening to your body – including your mental and physical state.  Your mind might be saying it wants to eat, but your body’s not in agreement.

There’s no stomach growling or feeling in the pit of your stomach that you need to fill ‘er up! Your mind, though, is pointing out how happy those doughnuts would make you or how great it would be to stop working for five minutes and head to the vending machine.

Your first goal with this weight loss plan is to play referee for your mind and body. Whenever you think about eating, turn your full attention to your mind and find out why it wants you to eat.

Is it because your stomach is signaling it’s starving and the mind is doing the rational thing by alerting you to the dilemma? Or is it because the mind wants some sort of satisfaction and it’s saying food has always done it for you before, so why not go for it now?

Then turn your attention to your stomach. Give your hunger a number on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being absolutely starved. If you’re tipping the scales into the true hunger side of things, and your mind is in compliance, then do the normal thing a human would do – EAT!

Don’t wait until red lights are flashing and alarms are blaring that you’ve gone too long without food. Then you’ll be in danger of gorging.

How to Eat

Once you’ve made the decision that you’re going to eat, you’ll need to relearn the right way to do it. You’re not going to eat mindlessly anymore. Until this become something you do without thinking, I want you to carefully choose your foods and portions – but I’m about to shock you with some very pleasant news:

When I said before that I want you to eat what you want – I meant it. We have to get rid of your food guilt so that you instinctively give your body what it wants on a regular basis.

If you’re dieting, and you give in and have a piece of cake but there’s always the nagging thought of, “I’d better enjoy it now because I’m supposed to be dieting, so I can’t do this again,” what’s going to happen?

You’re going to overindulge!

You’re going to eat every bit of that slice of cake, pick up crumbs with your index finger and possibly lick the plate clean – or maybe not, but some people do.  Now let’s look at another scenario:

There’s ZERO guilt associated with eating a slice of cake. You aren’t thinking it’s a “bad food,” and you aren’t worried about eating it all now – because you can have it today, tomorrow, and the next day if you want.

What occurs when you have this mindset is that the anxiety goes away. Not at first, mind you – food guilt is a hard thing to get rid of. You may have to coddle yourself and remind yourself that it’s okay. Some people have even forced themselves to enjoy the slice of cake daily for a week until they stop feeling panicked that it’s going away sometime soon.

When you’re not in danger of losing your favorite food, you feel relaxed. You eat more slowly and savor the food. And you’re perfectly fine with leaving some on your plate because there’s always tomorrow if you want to eat more.

Let’s talk more about stopping.

This is something you have to practice, too. You’ve probably heard how it takes your brain 20 minutes to get the signal from your stomach that you’re full. This isn’t a myth. So you want to slow down while you’re eating.

You’re not going to stop when you’re feeling full. You’re going to stop when you’re no longer hungry – there’s a big difference between the two! Refer to your scale from 1-10 on hunger and fullness and stop once your hunger has been satisfied.

It’s a feeling where yes, you could eat a lot more if you wanted to. But you’re also not sitting there feeling like something’s physically gnawing at you to eat more. The mind is a different story.

You are going to feel like your mind is gnawing at you to eat more because it’s used to getting stuffed with food. So there’s a bit of uncomfortableness until this becomes old hat for you.

Back to eating what you want, when you want.

If you want cake for breakfast, eat it! If you want leftover fried chicken for lunch, go for it. You can eat what you want and lose weight when you apply the principles of eating only when physically hungry and stopping before you get full.

During the first week or two of this program, if you feel extremely panicked about ridding your life of good food/bad food labels and keep using words like “indulging,” then you may put on a couple of pounds because you’ll still be eating more than your body really needs.

But that feeling will subside and you’ll relax and the weight will come off effortlessly. How about timeframes? Your body does need fuel in the morning. Try to spend the first two weeks training it to get hungry upon waking.

You might start out very small – eating just a tiny bit since you’re not used to eating breakfast and won’t feel hunger. Then after a few weeks, your hunger in the morning will be real.

I’m not going to give you timelines for your meals – but check in with yourself throughout the day. Don’t get so engrossed in work that you forget to eat and by 5 PM, you’re famished!

Your meals will gradually get smaller – if you’re stopping when no longer hungry – and you may find yourself eating more frequently, but in tinier amounts. This is good and it’s why so many dieters have succeeded with the 5-meals a day plans.

Exercise Tips

The mental happiness you’re about to feel on this plan will likely result in a more invigorated state of mind for you. You’re used to feeling physically drained on a diet. Sometimes, we start out energized and motivated, but put so much pressure on ourselves to lose weight that we wear ourselves out until we quit.

For this particular weight loss plan, and with your doctor’s approval, of course, I want you to get up and move when you want and how you want. Oh no – more freedom – can you handle it? J

I think you can!

Throughout your day, I want you to check in with your body and ask it – physically and mentally – if it needs some exercise. And by exercise, I don’t necessarily mean going to the gym at 4:30 AM before work and spending 1 hour and $100 with a professional trainer.

I mean move. Get your heart rate going. Let your legs stretch. Your heart is a muscle and it can only grow strong if it gets to work out. And that can be done in many ways. Your daily exercise can include things such as:

·         Walking to deliver a message to a co-worker instead of emailing them

·         Getting up from your couch and dancing or walking in place for a few minutes during all of the commercials of your favorite show

·         Cleaning house

·         Working outside in the garden or yard

·         Taking a stroll around the neighborhood

·         Parking farther away from the door to places you frequent

·         Jumping up and down and having fun like a five year old on a mini trampoline while you watch Desperate Housewives

It doesn’t have to be boring or traditional. It can be fun! I am not asking you to count steps or time your workouts. Just tune in to your body. If your legs feel cramped, get up and give them some movement for a little while. If you’re feeling kind of anxious or depressed, exercise will release endorphins, so sometimes it will be a mental reason that you provide your body with some exercise.

Mindset Motivation

Consider this particular plan your key to freedom from the diet war you’ve been waging all these years. Finally, there’s no measuring, no limitations, and no demands made on you.

You get to be you.

You get to choose more than you ever have before when you’ve been on a diet. I want you to focus on being good to your body and mind. Listen to them. Help them guide you in your decisions.

They helped you survive and grow and flourish as a child and somewhere along the way, you tuned them out in preference of a world of media that told you a size zero was normal and that you shouldn’t eat things that taste good to you.

The first two weeks will be the hardest – but not for reasons you typically associate with dieting, like denial. They’re going to be hard because you’re putting trust back in yourself – and not in the hands of diet manufacturers who earn $30 billion or more off of your weight gain heartache.