#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.
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