Do you regularly switch from following a meal plan and losing weight (being “good”) and falling off the plan and regaining weight (being “bad”)? It’s a frustrating but very common cycle.
Nutritional and Fitness experts believe that behaviour modification strategies, rather than following ‘diets’ can help you break this self-defeating cycle and make lasting lifestyle changes.
Enlisting the aid of qualified professionals (e.g., a registered dietician, a physician, a personal trainer and/or a psychologist) will make it easier to interrupt old behaviour patterns. You can also begin to practice the following lifestyle change principles which will go a long way in helping you achieve improved eating practices and ultimately live a healthier, happier lifestyle:
1. Stop Dieting
How can you lose weight if you don’t diet? Creating a deficit of about 500 calories a day for one week should result in a 1-pound weight loss. Most people can incur a large part of this 500-calorie-a-day deficit by exercising and making moderate changes in food intake. In choosing this approach you avoid the negative consequences of rigid dieting. Too many people live their life on a ‘diet’ and they switch from one diet formula to the next. Instead start living your life… and start eating for health INSTEAD of eating to ‘lose weight’. This realignment of your eating focus will improve the types of foods you eat AND therefore improve your health resulting in weight loss and improved physical performance.
2. Become Physically, Not Externally, Connected to Eating
Internal hunger cues such as; a rumbling stomach, a slight headache, fatigue, irritability and decreased concentration are meant to remind you to meet your energy requirements and maintain your natural set point weight. Reconnecting with your physical signals of hunger and satiety can help you acquire the internal power to regulate your food intake.
Try to a note of when you ‘externally’ connect to food and the types of foods you turn to. This helps you better understand reasons you eat certain foods, or circumstances when you turn to food. Habits are difficult to break (but not unachievable), and we have for many years of our lives habitually used foods at certain times of the days, or during particular activities. Knowing this is happening helps you better control your lifestyle by replacing or avoiding these circumstances.
3. Use the Rating of Perceived Hunger (RPH) Scale
Using this scale can make you more aware of your internal hunger and satiety cues. Think of 0 as indicating extreme hunger and 10 as signalling extreme fullness. With the scale in mind, begin to read your body’s signals. Your target range should be between 3 and 8. If you go to 0, you may eat too much too fast, particularly since it takes your brain 15 to 20 minutes to sense that your body is full. You should begin to eat at 3 on the RPH scale and stop at 7 or 8, when you’re comfortably full and satisfied.
4. Distinguish Between Emotional and Physical Hunger
Physical hunger is a physiological process that occurs every three to four hours. When you don’t listen to hunger cues, your hunger subsides and your body begins to slow down to conserve energy. Emotional hunger involves eating when you’re sad, happy, anxious or bored. Understanding when you are trying to satisfy emotional needs with food can help you find more appropriate ways to meet those needs.
5. Choose Alkalising Food
Nobel Prize Winner, Dr Otto Warburg has stated that an alkaline body can absorb up to 20 more times oxygen than an acidic body. This means very simply that if you’re acidic, you will feel more tired and fatigued; this is because in an acidic environment, oxygen cannot stick to the red blood cells. In an acidic environment, fungus, mould, parasites, bad bacteria and viral infections begin to take hold and gradually wear down your health and energy.
Ideally your pH levels should be between 7.35-7.45 for optimal health. Aim to consume animal proteins once a day and plenty vegetables, fruits and legumes, nuts and seeds to create a more alkaline system.
6. Do Not Skip Meals
Eating frequently throughout the day (3 small meals and 2-3 snacks) will stimulate your metabolism and keep your blood sugars level. Skipping meals (including breakfast) can slow down your metabolism.
7. Dispel Myths; Do Not Create Them
A safe, consistent and long term weight loss is 1 or 2 pounds a week, not 20. Be wary of pills and meal replacement products that encourage you to (on a consistent basis) to lose large amounts of weight each and every week.
Some weight loss systems may have an initial ‘large’ weight loss, but these are difficult and unsafe to maintain over a long term weight loss journey. If your body is in an increasingly healthier state, then a consistent weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week is more than achievable. Remember, a healthy body comes about from healthy tissues and healthy cells which come about from clean and healthy eating.
8. Be Supportive, Not Critical
People lose weight at different rates. Weight may drop off quickly at first and then plateau, or vice versa. The important thing is that long-term healthy behaviour gets results. Reassure yourself that you are working hard and remember that hard work pays off. Also remember, that is common to have set-backs or a small stumbling block along your journey. Use these as little testers, but get over them quickly, do not let it dwell for too long and don’t beat yourself up over it. Just ensure you regain your footing on the right path to your end goal.
9. Watch Your Language
Do you find yourself thinking “I will never lose weight” or “I feel fat”? Watch for thoughts that are negative or irrational, rather than supportive of your goals. See if you can accurately describe your mood. Are you angry, sad or afraid? Understand that “fat” is not a feeling.
Constantly look to use positive, constructive and consistent language. Always look towards your future with positivity and see yourself as already having achieved your goal. This will place your mindset in the setting of you as you want to be and you will therefore find it easier to make the necessary steps to actually achieve it. Look at your strengths and speak language that supports this to maintain a strong a focussed mind frame.
10. Change the Reward System
You are probably used to rewarding yourself and being rewarded by others for losing pounds, rather than for altering your behaviour. Create a system of rewards for the positive behaviours and lifestyle changes you make, rather than the numbers you see on the scale.
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