Great Tips to be Successful with Your Diet

Check out these strategies from to ensure a more successful diet. Good stuff!


5 Tips to Stop Cheating on Your Diet
#1 – Script Your Day
Each night review your plans for the next day, and script out your schedule. So at seven o’clock in the morning you know what you’re doing. At nine o’clock you know what you’re doing, and so on. That’s the same mentality you have to take with your nutrition. You have to do the meal planning at the start of the week and know what you’re going to be eating. You also have to know the “bad eating” situations that you’re going to be in. If you know those, you can plan ahead with solutions to those obstacles. In fact, you should prepare two solutions for every obstacle. So, if you know that Wednesday you have meetings all afternoon Wednesday and then have to leave work right away for a family event, then you have to know that there’s obviously an obstacle there. That means you need to plan out two solutions around that obstacle, whether it’s eating before the meeting and then having something ready to go in the car or on the bus on the way to your activity.

#2 – Create the Correct Self-Image
Basically if you have the self-belief in yourself that you aren’t a cheater, then you’re not going to cheat. It’s that simple. The only catch is, you have to honestly believe in yourself. Your self-image must be of a person who does NOT cheat on their diet. It’s all about having the right mind-set.

#3 – Plan, Shop, & Prepare Your Meals in Advance
Tip #1 was all about mentally planning for obstacles, but this tip is about the actual physical preparation of your meals. You have to spend the time either on the weekend or during the week creating all the food for your fat burning goals. Most people would be best off to do this on Sunday morning rather than Sunday evening or Saturday instead of Sunday. You will also have to spend some time – but less than on the weekend – “topping up” your meal preparation. Scripting, planning, shopping, and preparing your meals is perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT component of a successful fat loss program. Oh yeah, and I can’t forget actually EATING THEM too!
Remember: Once you accept how hard it is to lose fat, then you WILL succeed.

#4 – Brush Your Teeth After Every Meal
This one ain’t fancy, but it works! After you eat, brush your teeth. You’ll find you cheat less if you just brushed. This works great for those folks who are big-time snackers and gravitate towards a bag of chips or other munchies. So if you have dinner and then you know it’s lights out for food consumption for the night, brush your teeth. Same trick works at your job. If there are donuts or other goodies sitting around, brush your teeth and avoid temptation. Nothing tastes good if you have toothpaste in your mouth!

#5 – Our Old Friend, Social Support
Obviously the office is going to be an area of difficult situations, with office lunches, parties, donut days, Halloween Candy, and all the other holidays. You’re going to have some people who are going to “pressure” you into eating something you don’t want, so you have to plan ahead to deal with them. You go back to the scripting and planning AT LEAST two solutions for the peer pressure. And do your best to avoid those people and the bad situations. Spend your meal times with your nutrition buddy instead. Eating at home is another problem, especially if you have kids and treats for them at home. But you need to try and get your family behind you and supporting you. If your spouse doesn’t have a weight problem, then they might not see the big deal in eating healthy. But that’s when you need to be open in communication and negotiate a solution. To avoid night-time snacking, you need to create rituals to avoid mindless eating.
Rituals can include:
Brushing your teeth after dinner
Keeping snack foods out of reach and out of mind
Limiting yourself to a small snack-sized bowl, rather than eating out of the bag.

All of these tips will help you stay motivated and cheat less.
But REMEMBER…
A complete change in behavior will NOT happen overnight. You need to work on this everyday, and always try to be better than yesterday.
It might be a two-year plan for where you go from binging twice a week to taking it down to once every three months. Don’t get frustrated by set-backs, and NEVER GIVE UP! It might take you two years to do that, but you know what? If you’re 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years old, you have another 30-60 years to live. Better to stop the habits in two years than live with them for another 5 decades. Enjoy the small victories and you can pull it off if you stay motivated & consistent.
Remember: Today’s goal is just to be better than yesterday.

Plan & Prepare when Dining Out

When dining out – plan and prepare

What if you have a scheduled lunch meeting, or you’re going out to dinner with friends? No worries! You can eat healthy in just about every restaurant you can imagine if you follow the guidelines, combine the right foods, and stop eating when comfortably full, not stuffed.

For example, at lunchtime, you’ll want a lean, complete protein, a natural starchy carb, and a fibrous carb.

If you’re eating at a Mexican restaurant, for example, you could order fajitas with lean meat and lots of veggies (ask them to go very light on the oil), with a side of black beans and brown rice.

Or if you want to do fast food, go to Subway and have a turkey sub with lots of veggies on whole wheat (hold the mayo but go for the mustard). Even burger chains now have excellent chicken salads with a variety of veggies and some apple slices as well.

Every restaurant has at least a couple of good options, if you follow the guidelines and order wisely. Pick a side salad instead of fries, or request that your chicken or fish be grilled instead of fried. Ask that your food be prepared with no oil or butter; request that sauces, condiments, and dressings come on the side. That way, you—not the chef—have complete control over how much you add.

Here are a few more tips to ensure your success when you have plans to dine away from home…

• Eat regular frequent meals during the day. Don't starve yourself to compensate for your dinner plans. Do eat fewer calories during the day, if you want, to compensate for a beer or other non-program dish, but make sure that you don't go into the meal starved or you'll likely lose control and make unwise choices.

• Also, if you begin feeling hungry before dinner, eat a small healthy snack to hold you over. This will allow you to arrive at the meal pleasantly hungry so you can relax, eat slowly, and enjoy the meal rather than needing to devour everything in sight.

• Be sure to order what you really want when eating out. If you only order what you think you should rather than what you really want, you may be satisfied physically but not psychologically and you’ll most likely crave something more and give in to temptation later in the evening. Just remember to make healthy changes to the foods: cut down on the fattening or sugar-packed extras, such as cheese, oil, butter, sour cream, dressings, etc, that are really not needed to enjoy the meal.

The most important point to remember when dining out is that YOU are the paying customer and you can request the way the food is prepared. And unless you say something in advance, your food may be high in fat and sugar, not things you want to be eating for maximum fat loss.

Key points to remember:

1. If you’re dining out, have a small snack so you’re not starved.

2. Be sure to ask the waiter to prepare the meal the way you want it, without all the extras that sabotage good results.

Other Drinks

Other drinks that make fat loss difficult

There are other drinks that make fat loss extremely difficult: those that are high in fat and/or sugar. A can of soda, for example, has 150 calories and 42 grams of sugar!

You can still get a plain cup of coffee, which isn’t high in calories. It’s when you add cream and sugar, caramel, flavored syrups and other fattening, high calorie ingredients that it becomes a problem.

Tall cappuccinos offer up more than 200 calories. Lattes contain 340 calories and a mocha has more than 40 grams of sugar and a whopping 470 calories! Dessert coffees like these have now taken a close second place to sodas as the primary source of excess calories contributing to obesity.

There are two big problems here. These drinks offer far more calories than you need in an entire meal, and these drinks offer no nutritional value for fat loss and good health in general. So, just as you need to choose your foods wisely, be careful what you drink as well. Always look at the labels for sugars, fat, and total calories.

Juices can be high in sugar and calories. And it’s not the same as eating the whole fruit. With juice, you don’t get the healthy fiber and not nearly the amount of vitamins and minerals that fruit offers.

Key points to remember:

1. Limit high-fat, high-sugar and high-calorie drinks, such as soda, dessert coffee drinks, and many fruit juices.

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Alcohol and Fat Loss

Why alcohol makes fat loss very difficult

You can eat a perfect diet and work out until you’re blue in the face and still have a difficult time losing fat if you're not careful with alcohol consumption.

First, alcohol has 7 calories per gram, almost as much as fat (9 calories per gram) and nearly twice as many calories as a gram of carbohydrate or protein (4 calories per gram).

So even just a couple of drinks can set you back as much as 300-400 calories, which will make creating that critical calorie deficit very challenging.

In addition, when you consume alcohol at the same time as food, your body tends to burn the alcohol first, sparing the fat. The more alcohol you consume, the more likely some of your food will be stored as fat.

And studies show that alcohol not only makes people hungrier but at the same time, it lowers their inhibitions, so they are more likely to binge or make unwise food choices. The more you drink, the less you care about what you are eating and how it might be sabotaging your progress.

This is not to say you have to cut out alcohol altogether. Alcohol, just like fat and sugar, can be consumed in moderation. If you drink regularly, we suggest cutting back to a glass every other night, or a glass on the weekends, or only when you go out to eat.

There are ways to minimize the impact alcohol has on your diet. If you’re going to indulge, please consider these suggestions:

• Choose a light beer over some of the heavy microbrews. Several lite beers now have as few as 64 calories in a 12-oz. bottle, whereas some microbrews have more than 200 calories!

• Use diet soda, diet tonic, Crystal Light, or seltzer instead of sugary mixers such as juice, regular soda, or syrup in mixed drinks. That can save you 200 to 300 calories or more per cocktail.

For example, lemon Crystal Light, fresh squeezed lime or orange juice, and a little tequila will offer a lot less calories of a traditional margarita because you’re cutting out all the sugar and calories from the mixer. Some margarita’s have more than 500 calories and close to 100 grams of sugar! But a Crystal Lite margarita has less than 100 calories, and it tastes really good.

• Do you enjoy wine? It can be a fine choice, as it has fewer calories than many cocktails and most all microbrews. However, consuming 3 or 4 glasses means a lot of additional calories, so watch your intake.

Don’t’ forget the water. For every alcoholic drink you have, drink at least one extra glass of water. This will help your body metabolize the alcohol and may counteract some of the dehydrating effects of the alcohol on the body, such as next-day hangovers.

It takes your liver 1 hour to process and metabolize 1 ounce of alcohol, so space your drinks out accordingly. The less you overload the liver, the better it will be able to process the alcohol and work on any fats waiting to be broken down.

If you plan on going out with friends for a drink or two, plan accordingly and eat fewer calories throughout the day and try to be a more active as well to help maintain a calorie deficit.

One last word about alcohol. In general, alcohol has few, if any, nutrients; that’s why they’re called empty calories. If you’re getting 500 calories from a few beers, for example, it means that you’ll be missing that same amount in beneficial nutrients that support fat loss, muscle building or preservation, and good health in general, such as fiber, protein, and vitamins and minerals.

So, for maximum weight loss, keep your drinking to a minimum and only indulge once in a while. .

Key points to remember:

1. Limit alcoholic beverages as much as possible, as they are very calorie-dense and often lead to overeating or making unwise food choices.

2. When you do drink alcohol, choose wine or lite beers instead of microbrews, and choose cocktails mixed with sugar-free juices or sodas.

3. Also, when you know you’ll be drinking, plan accordingly. Eat fewer calories throughout the day and be more active to account for the extra calories that you will be consuming in the alcoholic beverages.

Belly Fat

The Extreme Dangers of Belly Fat

Doctors around the world agree that belly fat (in particular, the internal belly fat that surrounds our organs) is the most dangerous kind of fat there is.

You could say it’s “Public Enemy #1” when it comes to your health (and appearance).

The reason?

Internal belly fat surrounds all of our vital organs inside our abdominal cavity, and because of this, it can “interfere” with our body’s natural physiological functions.

This can lead to health issues such as insomnia, headaches, anxiety, and depression, joint pain, infertility, low energy, allergies, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and the list goes on and on.

To make matters even worse, excess belly fat dramatically increases the chances of potentially deadly illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, Alzheimer’s, and even stroke.

And if all of that weren’t enough that dreaded belly bulge makes us look less attractive and it can demolish our self-esteem and confidence to boot.

Not good…

How Do You Know If You Have Too Much Belly Fat?

The science says if a man has a belly circumference of more than 40 inches, and a woman has a belly circumference of more than 35 inches–measured around the widest section of the stomach at the belly button–then they’re in a very high risk category for conditions mentioned above.

Another way to know if you have too much belly fat is to simply divide your height in inches by two. Your belly fat circumference (again measured around the belly button), shouldn’t be more than half your height. So, for example, if you are 5’10 tall (70 inches), your “belly measurement” should not exceed half of that, or 35 inches.

But, let’s face it; you don’t need to do all these measurements to know if you have too much belly fat. All you need to do, right now, is place your hands on your belly and take a squeeze. If you’re getting a big, ol’ handful of belly blubber then you know that it’s time to do something… and fast.

The 3 Reasons You Can’t KILL Belly Fat

Reason #1: You’re a Basket Case

When your mind is not at peace and not “in balance,” all sorts of belly-bulging hormones go “wacky” and out of control. This can really cause some serious belly bulging.

What causes this imbalance?

• Not getting enough sleep
• Running yourself ragged at work and with family obligations
• Worrying and stressing about life…

As a result of mental and emotional stress, your body will automatically release a fat storing hormone called Cortisol. This is bad because Cortisol’s favorite thing to do is to “redirect” fat storage to your abdominal area.

Scientists believe your body does this as a natural “preservation technique.” You see, constant stress sends a signal to your body that it’s under attack and your body responds by storing belly fat reserves around your organs to 1) protect them and 2) to make this fuel source available for quick energy needs.

You see, you body is somewhat lazy (read: efficient) and in times of stress it doesn’t want to pull energy [fat] from far away, like your leg for example. It wants fat close to your internal organs… in your belly.

Reason #2: Your Body is Like a Vending Machine

If you peer through the glass of most vending machines you will see a bunch of sugar-filled, chemically-stuffed, over-processed, “dead food” that is slowly killing you, bite by bite. (Ouch…)

And because we eat this type of food wayyyyy to much (we're also talking about fast food and processed food), our bodies quickly become what we eat.

We’re “walking vending machines”—slow, sluggish, and falling apart with each awkward step.

Here are the A, B, C’s of what makes bad food, well… bad:

A. Obesity Additives:

Did you know that most of the tens of thousands of food items which line our grocery store shelves are made and controlled by only four or five GIANT multinational food corporations who only have one goal in mind—to make more and more money? It’s true.

What’s more, the food chemists that work for these food kingpins are paid big bucks to create “Frankenstein foods” that are manufactured within huge, robotic, assembly-lined factories.

Here, they dump all kinds of (mostly) man-made preservatives, additives, and chemicals into the recipes for our favorite meals and snacks–in just the right amounts–so these “fake foods” can sit on grocery store shelves for months, years, and even decades, without going bad. (YUMBO!!)

Out of these toxic food chemicals, there are 7 referred to as “Obesity Additives.” Research shows they have a big, negative impact on our health and waistlines.

And, all you need to do to experience some SERIOUS weight loss fast is to exorcise these “DEMONS” out of your kitchen.

How Do These 7 Obesity Additives Make You Fat?

Good question. Studies show…

• Two of these additives interfere with a hormone called leptin which sends a signal from our stomachs to our brains to tell us we’re full. Without this signal we keep eating and eating.
  
• Other Obesity Additives create weight gain by causing hormone imbalances. That’s right, a fat-storing hormone called insulin skyrockets in your body (hello belly fat!), while a fat-burning hormone called glucagon is shut off. (Not good.)
  
• Another additive (in excess) can cause a mineral imbalance in your body that causes you to become “bloated” with water weight all the time. (Ever feel bloated?)
  
• And yet science has proven that some Obesity Additives actually addict us and cause us to eat uncontrollably by altering brain chemicals called neurotransmitters—just like the street drugs cocaine, morphine, and nicotine do. (Maybe this why you can’t “eat just one.”)

With these Obesity Additives working against you, it’s no wonder you haven’t been able to win the belly bulge battle in the past. Failing to lose weight isn’t always your fault.

B. Uncontrollable Cravings:

Here’s something you may not realize… your body is severely undernourished and starving for certain nutrients. You see, your body needs specific macro and micro nutrients to run properly or you will get mentally and physically sick. I’m talking about illnesses such as heart disease, some cancers, diabetes and depression, for starters.

So, if you’re not eating the right foods that are packed full of nutrients your mind will constantly “scream” at your stomach to eat more. It does this in the form of cravings and hunger.

Problem is, most people just eat more “nutrient-dead junk food” and their bodies continue to starve and cravings spiral out of control. (If you feel hungry all the time, now you know why.)

C. Toxic Waste Buildup:

If you think your bulging belly or “pooch” is all fat… think again.

Not eating the right kinds of foods causes waste to become backed up in your colon and intestines. This can give you a permanently bloated appearance.

What’s more, when your digestive system is clogged and polluted, you can’t efficiently absorb the healthy proteins, carbs, essential fats, water, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients your body desperately needs to be healthy and to burn fat at an accelerated rate.

As mentioned above, when your body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs, it signals your mind to tell your stomach to EAT MORE by causing uncontrollable cravings.

As you can see, this is a big problem. You need to keep your digestive system clean to fight hunger.

Reason #3: Your Belly-Burning Furnace is Busted

Another BIG reason you haven’t been able to kill belly fat is because your belly-burning furnace (metabolism) is on the blink.

So instead of humming along burning thousands of calories a day, it’s sputtering and jerking down the calorie-burning-highway in the slow lane. Or, you may even be pulled off to the side of the road with the hood open and the engine smoking.

But why? Good question.

A. You’re Not Eating Enough Food, at The Right Times

Here’s the problem… when most people want to lose weight, they begin to severely cut calories. Sure, they might start losing some weight temporarily, but this calorie restriction method will soon backfire and mangle their metabolism for two reasons:

1. As you’re probably aware, cutting calories leads to uncontrollable hunger and cravings because your body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs to function and be healthy. This causes severe hunger and cravings, and eventually breaks most people mentally… and causes them to lose control, overeat, rebound, and gain even MORE weight than where they started.

2. After about a week of dieting, the hormone levels in your body that are responsible for keeping your metabolism humming along (like the master weight-controlling hormone leptin and the thyroid hormones) start adapting to your new calorie intake, and they plummet like a piano off the Empire State Building. This causes your body to conserve calories.

At the same time, the fat-storing hormone insulin goes berserk as does a hormone called cortisol that is responsible for storing belly fat skyrockets. As a result, your weight loss will come to a screeching halt. At this point, you’ll need to reduce your calories even lower to keep losing weight, or you’ll need to do MORE exercise to burn even MORE calories.

B. You’re Eating Foods With Low “Thermal Burn”

Make no mistake, some foods will fix a “mangled metabolism” by increasing your calorie-burning furnace BIG TIME, while others can actually hurt your metabolism and stop it dead in its tracks.

The truth is, calories from different types of food act very differently once inside your body. Some of them ignite a “Thermal Burn” and others are plain “Thermal Duds.”

Heck, the “Thermal Burn” of some natural foods is so high that they don’t even register on the calorie scale. They’re “FREE Foods” that you can practically eat non-stop without gaining an ounce.

There’s actually four reasons why people can’t lose belly fat...

Reason #4: You Try to “Go” it Alone

Here’s an interesting fact. Recently, doctors and researchers from the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, performed a unique weight loss study and discovered one somewhat “unusual” factor had a profound effect on weight loss over those who DIDN’T have this factor present. Do you know what that factor was?

Social support.

And do you know just how MUCH of a difference it made? A LOT. In fact, those who had a support system in place, such as attending support meetings to encourage them and keep them accountable during their weight loss journey, lost an average of 225% more weight over the two year study period!