Healthy Living - Get off the Diet Cycle

As summer fast approaches there will be many women pulling out tried and tested diet plans from last year or even last month in vain of getting in shape for summer. If you are one of these women, then before you do stop and think at what you are doing. If "that" diet was so successful why are you back on it? Shouldn't you have maintained the weight you lost? Okay, so you didn't, but this time it is going to be different and I will tell you why. Because this time you are not going to approach it as 'being on a diet".

The key to never having to diet is to STOP DIETING. What you have to psyche yourself into is replacing that dirty word "diet" with "change of your lifestyle". The first and foremost thing to remember is this; Deprivation means starvation, so it's time you seek substitutions and make better choices. Take the focus off what you can't eat and replace this negative notion with what you can eat - the options of what you can eat are greater, believe me. We all have a tradition where one night a week we get together with friends or family and have pizza or take away, and there is no reason why you should stop just because you have decided to change your eating habits. You can turn a traditionally high-fat fast food into a healthy meal. When it comes to pizza simply chose your topping carefully. Eliminate the cheese, eliminate the meat and go for a vegetarian or seafood pizza instead. The wonderful thing about pizza is that you can design your own.

When I feel like pizza my standard order is a vegetarian with no cheese. If you can't bare the thought of not having cheese, then make sure you have a low-fat shredded variety at home or with you, pop some over the top and give it a burst in the oven. Whala!

When people go on diets they make drastic changes to their eating and exercise habits. While their intentions are good, their actions are too extreme to maintain long term. Undertaking new health behaviors should be done in small steps. You should not feel deprived and only manage to get through each day in finding solace with the knowledge that it is only short-term. Remember. This time will be different.

Focus on what you are adding to your life rather than what you are taking from it. If you have sustained the same eating pattern for a long time, be patient to change, as any pattern that is repeated day after day is resistant to change. Take any habit that you do regularly and try and break it. It is not easy.

The downfall of many well-intent dieters is that they try and change their eating style all at once. Instead of cutting back on all fats at the same time, introduce it in stages. For example, start off with your dairy products - milk, cheese, yogurt, etc. Instead of full cream milk, change to a reduced-fat variety and when you've accustomed to that start using skim milk. Having accomplished this do the same with other dairy products followed by meat. Consume more chicken and fish instead of beef. Buy 97% fat free ham and chicken slices. When you have accomplished this, the next step is sweets and treats. There are plenty of lovely low-fat sweets on the market. The time frame in which this will take will vary. It could be a two weeks, a month or two months. You will know when you are ready for the next step. In the meantime you should be introducing more fruit and vegetables to your daily diet. Don't just stick with apples and bananas, broccoli and carrots try different produce like champagne watermelon and papaya and savoy cabbage and broccolini.

By tackling it in stages and not all at once you will be putting less stress on your system, mentally and physically. It will help you avoid withdrawals, especially ones from sugar, as your body will notice the difference.

Years ago doctors came up with a dieting model that best exhibits the dieters cycle. Basically they said that people diet because they are dissatisfied with their body, more than because they want to be healthy. Sad but true. Researchers concurred that when you diet you feel deprived and feeling deprived leads to overeating and overeating leads to greater dissatisfaction with your body. This is how the cycle begins. Anytime you eliminate total food groups from your diet you are bound to feel deprived and that feeling does eventually lead to overeating and bingeing on that eliminated food group. If you have always enjoyed a muffin with your friends on a Sunday afternoon you still can. If the café you go to doesn't offer a low-fat substitute, take your own. There are heaps of low-fat muffin mixes on supermarket shelves. (Invest in a Beville's Muffin Magic maker, they are great). There is no secret to successful dieting as there really is no such thing as a successful diet - the success you can expect is changing the way you eat to live.

Diet company Light 'N Easy claims to be the most successful diet plan on the market. People may experience success in the short term, but realistically, can you subscribe to their meals for the rest of your life? It will cost you a fortune.

Furthermore, sure they will provide you your meals, but what happens when you stop the delivery? Have they educated you on eating properly? Have they provided you with the recipes, ingredients, etc, on the meals you ate? Worse still, who is going to do the shopping for you so that you can avoid the confectionery isle and in-house taste-testings? When embarking on a new way of life you must educate and equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to help you sustain your new life for the rest of your life. Forget the weekly tabloids, buy fitness and nutrition books and magazines. A great magazine to get is SHAPE. Learn all there is about the body. Equip your kitchen with aids such as scales, a non-stick fry pan, a steamer. More importantly invest in a good pair of runners and hit that pavement and if you daggy exercise clothing go out and get some groovy co-ordinates. It will make you feel great if your look the part.

Furthermore, there is no point to losing weight if you have to then carry around excess skin. Toning up while shedding weight is very important. So don't forget resistance training. By this I don't mean two cans of soup, as some people suggest. Get serious and invest in a set of free weights with different weight ranges, or join the local gym.

Having said all this, if you have to follow a plan to kick start your new lifestyle. Next month I will give you a plan that will help. It is not extreme, but it is a start. It worked for me.

Now CLICK HERE to whip up a storm with my amazing FAT FREE chocolate cake!