The low-down on sticking-with the diet plan

How’s the new eating plan going?  Are you sticking with it?  Is it easier, or harder than you imagined?  What absolutely is and what absolutely is not working for you?  What questions do you have about nutrition labels or ingredients?  What are your questions and concerns?  Let’s talk it out…

These are just some of the questions I ask during health coaching sessions and grocery store consultations I have with my clients.  Eating with meaning is one of the 6 steps to Lose Weight, Find Yourself™, and it’s crucial to your success.  (Read more about the 6 steps in my upcoming book “Lose Weight, Find Yourself! 6 Steps to Having a Healthy Relationship with Food…Bite by Bite and Pound by Pound.”)  Before I lost my weight, I ate with reckless abandon.  If I wanted it, boy I just ate it!  Now that my life has changed and I’m eating to live, not living to eat, I am much more aware of what I put in my mouth.  Do I still enjoy eating?  Hell yes!  Do I still get to satisfy my cravings?  Again, hell yes!

LWFY is about finding the right eating pattern for you which does not have you mourning every bite of cake you can’t eat…that simply won’t work.  My reason for successful weight loss and maintenance (for over a decade!) is due to my finding the right lifestyle that celebrates the joy of exercise, weight loss, health, and nutrition.  Knowing that the food you are currently eating is slowly making you sick should be reason enough to change, BUT believe me I have been there and continued eating all that yummy garbage because I was deep in the cycle of food addiction. I don’t blame you for having a lot of trouble jumping off the merry go round.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…If I can do it, you can do it!

Ok so what do you do about it?  Have you already switched to lighter alternatives to full fat / full calorie foods?  Have you switched out that bread for lettuce?  Have you replaced your sugary soda with diet, or seltzer water?  Have you started baking your food instead of frying?  These are some of the easiest first steps in creating changes in your diet.  They are simple and effective.  Buying light variations of what you are currently eating is a way for you to at least get the ball rolling.  I don’t expect you to go from eating double cheeseburgers and fries, to Quinoa and beets in one day. (I don’t like, nor do I eat Quinoa or beets, but you get the point.)  When you make these small changes, more changes will follow.  Physically, you will be cutting calories and begining to lose some pounds.  Psychologically you will continue making more positive steps to reach your goal, because one small change inevitably leads to another.

Make these easy and smart changes, don’t overwhelm yourself.  If you haven’t started losing any weight, it’s going to be difficult to stick with it because you haven’t seen any results yet.  Once the pounds start coming off you’re going to love the way it feels to step on the scale, and that will keep you motivated to stick to the plan, I promise.  Plus healthy food tastes delicious, you will be satisfied.  At the end of it all if you absolutely have to have that Snickers bar, then have a bite or two, savor it, throw the rest out, and keep on movin’.

I’ll leave you with 4 Bobby-isms as my bottom line advice to sticking with your eating plan:

-You have to want it to get it, no one is going to hand it to you.

-It’s you against the food, but only the wrong food.

-The power to stick with your new diet (and your new exercise plan) comes from within.  You are in control, not your cravings.

-You have to desire the hot body more than the food, it’s really that simple.