I have tried eating healthy and working out so many times I have lost track.
I have even lost weight and put it right back on after a few months.
Does this sound familiar? It certainly does to me.
I understand the challenge with long term weight maintenance. It is not easy and I sometimes think that we are conditioned to believe that long term weight maintenance is impossible. It is not!
With my years of experience I have found that these 3 areas make it easier to win the challenge of long term weight loss:
1. Keeping your favourite foods
Usually, on healthy eating programs, most people are made to believe that keeping their favourite food is impossible; no ice cream, no cake and definitely no pizza!
My approach is very different, I believe that long term weight maintenance requires us to eat what we like and like what we eat. My reasoning is that food has a lot of significance attached to it; childhood and family moments, university moments, celebrations and some of these moments make us very happy.
Sometimes the opposite happens: the more you deny the more you crave and then what do you do? You overindulge and feel guilty; why would you want to keep repeating this pattern of behaviour and why would I want to encourage it? This will lead to only one unwanted outcome over time and this is not what we want or need.
2. Stop eating with your eyes
Sometimes we eat for no reason other than we see the food. It’s in our eyesight and it looks too good to resist. Are we hungry at those times? Most of the time the answer is NO. On some occasions, we may even be full. A good example of this is when we go out to eat, we have a full meal and feel content but then we see those beautiful desserts; oh boy we’re in trouble now.
3. Cost and convenience
One of the concerns expressed about healthy eating is the cost of the food and the time to prepare it. The Bajan Diet Designs meal plans and recipe books include affordable ingredients that can be found locally. Remember eating out can be expensive, certainly more expensive than buying and cooking for yourself. The added bonus is you know what you are putting in your body.
Once you make a decision to improve your quality of life through healthy eating and exercise, you need to give yourself a chance to slowly change old habits and build new ones. You can gradually introduce the new foods one meal at a time and organise your food prepping methods as well.
The habit of planning and prepping your healthy meals makes it easier to stay on your weight loss programme. Too often the temptation to eat unhealthy food is higher when we are hungry and we think of FAST and CONVENIENT solutions.
Stay strong… you’re almost halfway there.
