A strict regiment of healthy eating and regular exercise is difficult for anyone to follow, but this is especially the case in the early stages of weight loss. Not only are you beginning new habits revolved around better wellness, but you’re also trying to avoid the unhealthy behaviours that you’ve been participating in for years. However, it’s important to note that just because you will soon be on a path to lose weight that does not mean you can never eat a hamburger again.
This may be surprising to hear, but going “cold turkey” is actually less effective than slowly weaning yourself off the habits that are detrimental to your wellbeing. Statistics show that 80% of cigarette smokers who try to quit altogether, rather than using nicotine patches or gum, return to smoke within thirty days – and the same goes for food. Yes, cake doesn’t contain nicotine but, in essence, you have become addicted to the wrong types of food, and simply cutting out what your body has become used to will be a difficult feat to accomplish.
So how do you lose weight in a way that sticks? Implement a treat into your weight loss routine, so that you can indulge in your favourite food once a week. For the first few months of your weight loss journey, it’s important to reward your efforts of staying healthy for six and a half days out of seven. After a while, you can prolong the time between treats – going from a treat once a week to once a fortnight, and then to once a month.
Let’s say your favourite food is pizza. Each slice of your average pizza contains 300 calories – but you know you’d never stop at one slice! If you ate a medium-sized pizza, you could almost achieve your daily calorie intake with just one meal, so obviously this is an important food to cut back on when you’re dieting. However, if pizza is the goal you want to establish for yourself, then that’s what you can earn on a Sunday afternoon, but only if you stick with healthy eating all the way from Monday to Sunday morning. Yet, even though it is a treat, just have two or three slices and don’t waste your calories on fizzy drinks. Why not get a friend to do the pizza diet with you? That way you can split one on Sunday evening, and talk about how it’s all going.
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