10 Winning Weight Loss Strategies

It always amazes me that after all these years of expert advise from Atkins, Gullo, Jane Fonda, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and so on that we are still asking how do I get my weight to an acceptable level, keep it there and feel bloody good about myself.

I reckon I have read and seen the most on the art of loosing weight. Partly because of my own body and the dilemmas I put it through in my hedonistic life.

Like most of us I have succeeded countless times in loosing weight.
Several kilos lots of times!
8 kilos in three months.
8 kilos in three weeks.
I was fantastic at it. Then up it went and again and again and again.

Now without blowing my own trumpet too much. There are loads of things that I’m pretty bloody good at. I manage most tasks I undertake with relative ease. How is it then that I, like almost all of us, have difficulty in keeping my weight in check?

So I spent some time reading “the Experts” and amongst them I found Stephen Gullo.
In he blew like a breath of fresh air amongst all the red and green dots, calorie and GI tables, and carbs and fat phobias!

I found out there is nothing wrong with our characters! We don’t have the correct strategies!

“You can eat as much as you want of anything” say some. “Bullshit” says Gullo.

Many people are overweight all of their lives because of one or two specific things they always fall down on. For example chocolate or pizza. We can as easy as pie fix our weight problems as long as we don’t take the first bite of that type of food.

But as we pointed out before “you must get your head right”. You don’t need more character. You don’t need a strong will either. You just need a strategy that works. Just learn from your mistakes and see the patterns for yourself.

1 The only character you need is the character to get a plan

There are, as a general rule seven situations where you eat.

• At home
• At work
• At restaurants, fast-food outlets and cafes.
• At friends and relatives
• When you travel
• On holidays
• At parties and special holidays. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving etc.

You meet the same food and the same temptations every time! Now.

Identify your food pattern

1. Make a note of where it is you make a pig of yourself.
2. Make a note of where you don’t. As a rule the cause of being overweight is that you eat too much of just a few things. You know, extra sauce, chips, pizza, lots of cheese or sweets and chocolate.
Write ‘em down.
3. Make a note of what excuses you use to “stuff your face”. Go on be honest write ‘em down.
4. How would you like your mind to be? Now you can be strict with your answer.
Can you see the pattern emerging?

Ok you have identified the problem food and the problem situations. The next step is instead of weighing yourself every day. Once a week ask yourself the following:

Swap the scales for these questions

1. Am I eating every third or fourth waking hour? A meal or a good between meals snack?
2. Am I planning my eating? Do I ensure that there is good healthy food at home? Have I got my mind right before I put myself in “food temptation situations”? Don’t go to them feeling hungry! Eat a little before you leave.
3. Avoid the food you have weakness for. The ones that you always eat too much of.
4. Know the difference between how you feel and hunger. Avoid eating for consolation that you had a bad day at work. Or that you are angry or sad. This has nothing to do with food and it resolves nothing.
5. Make sure that you don’t buy “problem food” to take home. (The stuff that tempts you most).
6. Make sure you have eaten enough of the right food, lean meat, fruit and vegetables.
7. Keep an eye on the hidden calories. Yeh you know the salad dressing the sauces. Ask for side dishes at restaurants.
8. Remind yourself this is about giving yourself a happier and healthier life not about the misuse of food.

The result of asking yourself these questions is you will quickly be aware that you haven’t started to fall back into your old habits.

2 Your history of eating is more important than the calories!

Your food impression is personal, like your fingerprints.

You over eat time and time again exactly the same way. The same food, the same frame of mind, the same place for the same old reasons.

You had a bad day at work. Buy a bag of toffees or chips or crisps (whatever you call ‘em, in the UK they are crisps.). Stop off and take a couple of drinks, “just to take the edge off the day”. Grab a bag of cakes and biscuits or cookies, sit in front of the TV and eat on auto pilot until they are gone!

And you know which food triggers off over eating!
Take out the cheese plate and you can’t stop. Or it’s a bag of peanuts, chocolate.
Grab a bag of crisps and you eat the whole bag. (Always the giant size too eh?) Take a biscuit or cookie and you’ll eat at least seven.

So when do you over eat? What triggers it?

1. Make a note of the grub you eat often and lots of.
2. What time of the day is it?
3. When do you overeat?
When you are: Angry, Stressed, Bored, Happy, Sad, Alone. What about here: Parties, Cinema, Self service, Restaurants, or when you are drinking Alcohol? Maybe all of them?

Solutions:

1. Stop eating peanuts or whatever else triggers your overeating.
2. Replace your food trigger with something else. You probably cannot eat just one cookie in the afternoon but have no problem with just one portion of chocolate mousse. Of course there are more calories in the mousse than in one single cookie but there are loads more calories in ten cookies than one portion of mousse.
3. Try to put a limit on yourself. Buy a small bag of crisps not the giant family size. When it’s gone. It’s gone. Don’t for crying out loud eat straight from the ice cream tub. Serve yourself a portion in a bowl so that you know how much you have. (OK I know it’s not easy, I do it myself).

3 Recognise that sometimes it’s the fault of the food not yours!

Oops! What happened? Your sitting there with a whole one litre of empty ice cream package in front of you. Suddenly you’re wondering what have I done?

You sigh! I have no discipline. I have no will. I must have some sort of eating disorder.

Stop Right There. It’s more than likely the food’s fault not yours!

Research shows that certain foods influence the brains chemistry. It varies enormously from person to person.
Your friend Malin who eats two spoons of ice cream then says no thanks that’s enough doesn’t need to be a person with stronger strength of character or will power.
Her body just is less receptive chemically for certain tastes and substances in food.

If your body has inherited a sensitivity for say sweet things and you eat sweet things at a certain time (when your hungry and hasn’t had any nutrition for 3-4 hours) your brain reacts by increasing the appetite and creating a craving!

Now list up the food and snacks that create moorish cravings with you.

Some solutions for how to handle the moorish cravings.

1. Always eat your favourite crave food after a meal not when you have that the cravings three hours later. It’s on an empty stomach the effect on the brain is at it’s worst.
2. Wear the demands out or down. Eat ice cream, crisps or whatever you want twice a day for fourteen days. After lunch and after dinner.

4 Get some structure into your eating habits

People say it was a lot easier before. Not funnier but simpler. You ate three cooked meals a day and that was that. Today’s freedom of choice makes it more difficult to keep account.

The risk is that you eat too little at breakfast, (or nothing at all in a lot of cases) hardly anything for lunch and dinner (and kid yourself that you have been really good and saved a load of calories) and then all the snacks and between meals junk. That cookie(s) doesn’t count does it? At the end of the day you haven’t the faintest idea of what you have eaten.

Lets get one thing straight if you want to loose weight keep it off and have a fantastic amount of joy and self esteem you have to have some structure in your eating habits.
The biggest mistake you can make is to hop over mealtimes or eat irregularly.

This is your structure

1. Eat three times a day.
Proper meals when you sit down and eat in peace and quite.
2. Always, always eat one in-between meals meal.
In the afternoon between four and five o’clock. Plan It! This will prevent from falling into the chomp chomp trough after work. A good in between meal can be yoghurt, fruit a sandwich with boiled egg. Make sure that it’s not too small. This is an important point in your weight loss.
3. Never go more than 3-4 hours without having something to eat.
4. Never go to a party or a restaurant feeling hungry!
Don’t bother about ruining your appetite. It’s you who care about not ruining your weight loss and the best thing you can do is to eat a little before you go so you don’t lose control.
5. Don’t go shopping for food when you are hungry!

5 Don't mix emotions with food or drink

Do you eat for comfort when you’re sad? To give yourself a kick when you’re tired and worn-out? Do you eat when you’re stressed? You are not alone. Because it works. To give yourself a bit of pleasure, eat something tasty. Gets you in a good humour and wraps itself around you like a blanket.

Then it’s only the consequences you have to face.

Typical comfort food

Most of us when choosing “comfort food” go for something from the following:

• It has to be sweet. (Sweets, ice cream, cakes.)
• It has to be salt (Crisps, peanuts, pizza).
• It has to be creamy (ice cream cheese).
• It has to be crunchy (biscuits, peanuts)
• It has to be finger food. (Sweets, candies, nuts).

Strategies that break comfort eating

1. Don’t buy stuff you eat to comfort yourself.
Stupidly simple but very effective. If there is no easy access then you will quickly realise there are other ways to get rid of stress or emotional upsets.
Go for a walk, call a friend, read a book, do some light exercise, go to Q n A at Yahoo and ask a few questions. Keeps your fingers busy too.
2. Change comfort food cravings for more nutritious food.
Something that does the same function. It should taste good, salt, sweet, creamy, and crunchy or pick food.

I used to sit in front of the TV to wind down always with a bag of crisps (chips). I love crunchy stuff. Anyway I changed from crisps to raw beans. It worked wonderfully.

I got to pick and crunch and that’s what I needed to wind down after a stress full day.

Now you might prefer cauliflower heads, celery, carrots.

If your consolation food is ice cream then carrots are not going to do the trick are they? Try something like strawberry smoothie or a sweet creamy protein drink. Vanilla yoghurt with loads of fresh berries and exotic fruits?

Ok? Make a note of some alternatives for yourself.

That should be enough to get you started. Compliment this stategy with a best selling training system, find it here! I'll give you the 5 last steps tomorrow.

My StumbleUpon Page