3 Secrets of successful dieting

Try as we might to stick to a diet, many of us simply don’t have time to prepare elaborate diet-friendly foods every day. Fortunately, there are three simple steps to successful dieting.

Known as the three Ps, let’s explore the ways planning, preparation and practicality could help you reach your weight loss goals…

1. Planning

If you follow a well-planned and easy-to-stick-to diet, it will become easy to prepare diet-friendly meals so you won’t end up raiding the vending machine at work.

“The secret to losing weight lies in knowing how much and which carbohydrates to eat, but knowing this won’t help you if you don’t plan adequately,” say the developers of The Diet Everyone Talks About, a 10-week carbohydrate-controlled eating plan that has been helping South Africans to lose weight for over 20 years.

By carefully planning your meals, you can ensure that you don’t eat more than your daily kilojoule allowance, and that you won’t be caught in a situation in which you’re so hungry that you are tempted to cheat.

2. Preparation

Before you embark on any diet, you need to prepare yourself for the dietary changes by ensuring you have plenty of allowed foods on hand and prohibited foods are removed to avoid temptation.

When it comes to making lunch for the office, we often don’t have the time in the mornings to prepare a whole meal for later in the day. We get up, do the necessary, try to look presentable and fly off to work without giving a thought to what we'll be eating later in the day. This often means that lunch at the office can turn into an unhealthy and expensive meal.

Why not create a lunch drawer in your desk, dedicated to low-carb snacks and healthy lunch ingredients. Practical things to have in this drawer include biltong sticks, droëwors, cans of tuna, sardines and salmon, a jar of pickles and a jar of sugar-free peanut butter.

3. Practicality

In addition to your well-stocked lunch drawer, here are a few other practical tips to help you stick to your diet:

• When you’re cooking your healthy, diet-friendly dinner, cook an extra portion and pack it into a container to take to work the next day. Try adding a different sauce or a sprinkling of feta or parmesan cheese so that you don’t feel like you’re eating last night’s dinner

• Slice up some veggies into sticks every few nights, and keep them in a container in the fridge, taking a portion to work each day to snack on

• And with your lunch drawer on hand, even if you run out off time to prepare the night before, you'll still be able to stave off hunger without breaking your diet

• By planning adequately, you will be able to make the right food choices so that you can lose weight and keep it off

For more information visit www.the-diet.co.za

Recommended reading: The science of resisting diet temptations

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