Too often when we get sick of trying to lose weight, we may resort to an extreme to get those pounds off. The problem is we’re force-fed a diet of quick and easy diet tips. These oft-misused pronouns leave us frustrated and overwhelmed.
When this happens, we are prone to the following choices. These choices are uncomfortable, they are demanding and they are very, very tough. They work, but they are far from healthy or ideal choices to make.
Starving Yourself
In our young, we call this anorexia. It’s an eating disorder. While we need to employ healthier eating habits – starving yourself is not healthy. While it’s true that people can trim back on their excess and put off meals by as much as 1 to 3 hours. This will reduce your overall caloric intake. That will begin a weight loss process. However, this plan will lead either to an unhealthy loss of muscle and water weight or lead you to binging when you finally do allow yourself to eat.
Be aware of what your teenager is going through. When you consider the number of stories we pound into our media about childhood obesity, the pressure on teenagers is already excessive. This just ups the ante of psychological stress. Be aware of their eating habits and watch out for symptoms that they are starving themselves to lose weight or to reach a body image as proposed by our culture.
Eliminate Fun Foods
Instead of starvation, we choose to eat a diet of bland meals. Imagine the decrease in excitement when you take spices and fun flavors out of the diet. Diets of plain white rice, plain white potatoes, plain vegetables and plain meat are palatable but eventually you will decrease what you are eating because it isn’t exciting.
This fulfills the requirement of making us disinterested in food. It will also help arrest our need for comfort foods. There is nothing exciting about eating these meals and thus by keeping our meals boring and tedious, we start to lose weight. Again, this isn’t an ideal solution because we run the risk of eliminating foods that we need to eat – foods that provide us with nutrition.
Driving the Points Home
While it may seem that I am hammering on these points this week, it’s important to understand. I’ve tried a lot of different diets over the years. At my largest, my weight exceeded 250 pounds. My self-image was vastly affected. Every disappointment I experienced with a diet led me to harsher choices either internally or externally.
These harsh choices are not healthy. They lead to even harsher set backs and the negativity of the loop is worse than the problem that brought you to the table in the first place. Discovering the right diet for you means making better choices, making lifestyle changes and enjoying the diet you choose.