How to Stay on the Low-Calorie Track Despite Difficult Challenges?

Food isn抰 the only important factor when it comes to losing weight. Sure, excess food will pack on the pounds while eating less helps you shed them. However, you still need to know how to eat properly in order to steadily lose weight and get a healthy weight for the rest of your life. Even so, you should consider one important fact: Everyone eats, but certain people do not become overweight from eating. They seem to live daily on junk food but never get sick or gain weight. Obviously, there must be something else that affect weigh gain and it is likely has something to do with what is happening in your mind rather than what is on your plate.

For those, who have tried to lose weight before, they should look back over their previous diets and think about their past successes and failures. Focus on how and when you started to regain that bulging waistline. What happened? Why did you lose control and started to overindulge with food? Why you stopped exercising? Remembering your past failures and mistakes can help prevent them from happening again. This could be your first attempt in dieting, and it pays to be fully prepared for the difficult challenges faced by many early dieters. You should take note of roadblocks you face, notice how and when they appear. This is an important step to reassess your dieting plan and make sure it is still effective.

Working through the inevitable challenges

You are struggling to stick to a healthy, low-cal diet and one day, you find yourself in the middle of an office party or a wedding anniversary celebration? You should have one thing: a good and workable plan. For example, you can bring a low-cal meal and eat it during the party. But if, you can抰 resist yourself, you should have plan B, for example by spending an extra hour in the gym or be prepared for an active weekend.

There are many more ways to deal with special circumstances, but you should remember that you won抰 blow your diet with a single celebratory evening. Try to enjoy yourself and don抰 go overboard, there抯 always tomorrow. Of course, it is inadvisable to visit a party every night when you are on a low-calorie diet, but when you can monitor your progress regularly, there should be enough room for unpredictable excess.

Challenges during a low-cal diet may include common events that trigger high-calories intake, for example as a response to your emotional problem or eat when you are not really hungry or even still full. The "remedy" is to identify and address any trigger so you can eliminate things that encourage you to eat even when you抮e not hungry. Some of the likely triggers are anxiety, loneliness, and boredom, which come from within you; some other factors, including dealing with an angry spouse or an unpleasant work situation may be beyond your control. No matter how irresistible those triggers are, you should know how to deal with them before moving on. Otherwise, you will continue to treat food as a salvation whenever you抮e forced to face emotional situations.

Assessing your progress regularly

When taking the self-help method to weight loss, you need to monitor yourself because you are the only one who determines your success. (It is a good idea to have a diet buddy, which will allow you to monitor each other.) Self-monitoring is important, even with a diet buddy. Basically, you act as a dieter and a counselor simultaneously. After setting up a diet plan, you should check in regularly with a professional counselor to know whether it抯 working.

When performing self-monitor, you need to stop occasionally and ask these questions to yourself:

?Are you feeling comfortable with this program?

?Can you lose weight steadily?

?Can you reach your short-term goals?

?Are your support systems working for you?

?What steps you do to improve your low-cal lifestyle?

?Does your current eating habit need revision?

?What will you do next?

There are some tools you can use to monitor your diet progress including your weight change chart, scale (for regular weigh-ins), and journals to keep track the kind of food you eat each day, the amount of calories you consume, the type and intensity of exercise and any other important information that can help you to progress from a low-cal diet into a low-cal lifestyle. After starting your low-cal plan, you should regularly review your early progress and make sure you are taking your plan into the right direction while ultimately reaching your goals. When you have reached your goal weight, it is important to immediately start a weight-maintenance phase. You should look for advices on adjusting your eating habit and exercise plans while developing long-term weight-control techniques that may work for you.

Looking for help

Reading can help you understand everything you should know about losing weight and healthy lifestyle. But often you still need additional helps. Don抰 worry; you can find help everywhere!

If you are doing everything necessary to lose weight but you have limited success, then you may need help. Your relatives and friends should be a good place to find help. Successful dieters tend to have a firm support system in place which can encourage them to build and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Most people can抰 deal with dieting challenges alone.

At some point, you should look outside family members and friends for additional advice and support. Depending on what kind of help you should get, you can look in these places:

?A local branch of major nation-wide commercial weight-loss centers and organizations.

?In-house weight-loss programs in larger hospitals.

?Some doctors specialize in weight control. Make sure you get a referral from someone you can trust.

?Peer-led organizations such as Overeaters Anonymous gather in clinics, churches, and other civic centers in most towns and cities.

?A state-certified nutritionist or registered dietitian is usually qualified to help develop a sensible weight-loss plan.

?Psychologists who are trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy may help you in solving weight issues.

 

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