My best tip? Stop trying to lose weight. Trying to lose weight is a disempowering goal, because you can have no direct affect on your body fat content short of liposuction. So put the scale away for a while, because that's not helping you become a healthier individual.
Instead of having the goal to lose weight, try instead having a goal that is the action you want to pursue. These are long-term goals, behaviors that you are going to have to keep doing if you want them to keep working. Perhaps you could have the goal to cut out deserts from your diet, or the goal to work out more. Whether or not you lose weight, these are healthy behaviors that you'll want to continue doing. Plus, these are goals you can control. You can directly control whether or not you eat a cupcake, whereas you cannot directly control whether or not you shed a pound of fat. If you aren't achieving your goal, you'll know what to do. You stop eating cupcakes.
As for dieting, my suggestion would be to first cut out unhealthy food before you try to reduce amount. It is a huge shock to your system to start eating like a rabbit in both quantity and quality of food. Personally, I started by cutting out starches, breads, pastas, cereals, and sugary foods. I made no attempt to reduce the amount of food that I ate, only the content. I gained weight on this diet. However, my waist size went down. That goes to show you how useless the scale really is.
You don't have to change your diet as drastically as I did. I did it for multiple reasons, ranging from the crappy feeling that I would get after eating a lot of sugar to scientific evidence linking long life and low insulin resistance. I feel a lot healthier now, even after eating a handful of bacon, just not having my body having to deal with a huge carb load. If you start by cutting out the foods that you feel are unhealthy for you, you will naturally become more healthy. You can cut calories later, but first make sure that the calories you are getting are good ones.
|