Prepare To Lose Weight

Healthy dieting and long term weight loss most often requires you to change your eating habits and can result in significant changes to your lifestyle.
Before you begin a serious weight loss program you may need to prepare yourself mentally for the changes that you will have to make. This is an important first step for most people.

To help you prepare yourself, write down the reasons why you want to lose weight and how serious you are about losing weight. Confirm in your writing how committed you are to following your weight loss program. Also write down where you have to make major changes in your life, including what you eat, where you eat, and how you eat.
Look at your eating habits and decide if there are any that you can break. Remember, breaking a bad habit and replacing it with a healthy habit, will work towards a healthy new life style.

It’s important to review the amount of exercise you do now, and how much you are prepared to do in the future. Exercise should eventually become a part of your daily routines: Plan to walk to a store if it is close by, or to visit a friend. Wherever possible walk whenever you can. If the weather is cold, walking will burn off even MORE calories.

If your children are at school, walk to meet them and encourage them to enjoy the walk home. Walk your dog, he will love it, and you will benefit as well. Examine your usual daily activities carefully, and try to work in some exercise with something you enjoy doing.

Look at the size and style of the clothing you wear now and compare it to what you want to wear when you have reached your weight loss goal. Write it all down.

Preparing yourself mentally before starting your weight loss program, as well as visualizing the positive results, will help to keep you motivated.

Set a realistic set of weight loss goals and factor in a self reward system for when you reach certain goals.

Plan a healthy diet that you know you can live with. A great deal has been written about crash diets that in almost all cases only work for the short term if at all, and most people will give up after one-two weeks.

It’s also important to keep a book to record your weekly weight loss. Weigh yourself prior to starting your diet, and then weigh yourself the same time and day once weekly.

Your family will also benefit from a healthy diet and lifestyle. Childhood obesity has become a major problem worldwide. More children are now being diagnosed with Type 11 Diabetes, as well there is the problem of heart disease at a much earlier age. If you are worried about your child being over weight, talk to your Doctor. Tests will confirm or eliminate any medical condition that may cause the problem. Any changes you make that encourage healthier eating, will benefit your children.

Remember that the aim of your weight loss program should be a change in your lifestyle and long term eating habits. Your diet changes must be reasonable or you will not be happy, and your diet will become hard to maintain. Your new eating and exercise program should be designed to help you lose pounds and keep them off, as well as to keep blood pressure and cholesterol low. It should not be a difficult, tasteless, crash diet approach to weight loss, but a long term change towards healthy eating for you and your family.

Any extreme reduction in food intake should be discussed with a Doctor or trained nutritionist.

About The Author
Margarete Abel is a Health Educationalist formerly with the Health Education Unit, Perth, Western Australia.
Websites include: http://www.ozebizz.com
http://www.goldongold.com

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