If you have found that dieting is more of a chore than a reward-giving nature, then you should consider different ways to approach your weight loss mission. You may believe that you just have to push through hard times when you want to eat and force yourself to just put up with a smaller leaner meal. Indeed, sometimes you should and do need to do this. However, dieting should not feel like a war within yourself. Dieting should be a lifestyle and thus, no longer remain a diet. If your weight loss goals are within reason then you should not have to feel as if you are in boot camp.
Drink More Water
Water is clearly healthy and it fills you up if you have enough of it. This can work in your favor. For example, if you drink a liter of water before you eat, you will feel fuller sooner. You’re not actually doing anything other than fooling your body into thinking that it has ingested enough in one meal and thus, your appetite will die down. Drinking water also boosts your metabolism by about 20-30% for about 1-1.5 hours. This can mean that if you drink water before and after a meal, you can quickly digest the food and receive the energy from it. You won’t feel like you need to snack more often to top up energy levels. Not to mention, food is absorbed in the food you eat while in your stomach. Thus, the food will bloat up and expand, stretching your stomach and again fooling your body into thinking it is full.
Go to Sleep
Your body will do the majority of it’s overhauling while asleep. This is because your body can devote all of its energy to fixing wounds, injuries and improving your body without needing to walk, talk, think consciously and all the other sorts of things we do when awake. As you might imagine, this means that your metabolism will also speed up during your sleep, making sure that nutrients, minerals and vitamins that you digest are fed to your muscles, bones and veins. This is how the body readies itself for the next day. If you are getting 8+ hours of sleep a day, this means you weight loss is slowly bearing fruitsby hitting the sack early and regularly each day.
Eat More Protein
Protein is very dense, compared to carbs and fats. Protein can also help to repair your body and grow muscle mass. It’s been shown that if you have about 25% of your daily diet consisting of just protein, obsessive thoughts about food will reduce by about 60%. One of the reasons this occurs is because protein is filling. Your mind and body react positively to feeling full after a meal. This might be because of evolutionary reasons such as a full stomach linked to a higher chance of survival, or it could be that you feel that you had a good meal because it was filling. Either way, it’s been shown that by having more protein in your diet, you can cut your overall caloric intake by up to 400 calories. It can also boost your metabolism by about 80-100 calories. You feel fuller, your metabolism speeds up, you cut down on how much you eat; what’s not to like about a high-protein diet?
Controlling Appetite
One of the reasons why you may be overweight is because of a lack of appetite control. It’s important to note, there is a difference between being hungry and thinking you are hungry. We have ways to fool ourselves into thinking we are hungry when we are not. This might be that you didn’t eat until you were full, so you need to ‘top up’. You might believe that the meal wasn’t appetizing, didn’t taste good and so you want more food that will satisfy your taste buds. There is an endless range of ways you could lack discipline.
To aid you in your discipline, you can use a helping hand. Saxenda is an appetite suppressant that simply affects your appetite but doesn’t change your body physically. It’s a simple injection that doesn’t go deep into your skin, it’s more like a click needle. You’ll begin with about 0.6ml for about a week, then you can increase it over time to 1.8ml a day. It’s a 12-week treatment, so it should be used as a starter to your diet. Once you have been on it for 3 months, you stop and then allow your own discipline and experience to take over.
Eat Real Food
One of the reasons why food might be something you struggle to control is because it’s often filled with chemicals. Artificial flavors, complex sugars, and chemicals you can’t even pronounce are in every processed food known to man. Once upon a time, processed foods were a godsend. They made meals quicker and less hassle. You could just pick up some barbecue chicken breasts and not worry about making your own sauce or rub. However, this lends itself to bad eating habits. If you don’t know what’s going into your food, you don’t make it, you’re detached from what food actually is. It’s not just a fuel source, it’s going to decide how healthy your mind and body are. Eating real food means you buy more raw foods. More raw meats, vegetables and ingredients like species, herbs, fruit etc.
Don’t Eat at Your Desk
Many of us don’t take the time to actually have a real lunch. We eat at our desks and now that many people are working from home, this has become an even bigger trend. Lunchtime is not just about eating. It’s also about relaxing your mind, enjoying your time to think and slow down before you get back to work. Food should not be resolved into your mouth so you can get back to work. You’ll make choices of convenience and not health when deciding what your lunch should be.
It’s a good idea to make a lunch you really like, but do so a day before you eat it. Pick up a lunch recipe book. Lots of us have dinner or dessert recipe books but not many of us have one for lunch or breakfast. Get some inspiration for a special lunch, such as a cheese salad with exotic fruit.
Go to a Luxury Dieting Spa
If you just need a helping hand or two, go to a luxury dieting spa. Many of these spas are in exotic locations, such as the Lefay resort in Italy. It’s focused on helping people who are on a weight loss program to lose weight, it helps customers to detox, engage in therapy to find out what is causing the abnormal eating behavior as well as focusing on your emotional growth. Learning to be more kind to yourself and knowing that healing cannot be done by external means like food, drink or other things, is part of the path you will follow.
It’s a good idea to go alone or perhaps take a close friend or your partner. Bear in mind that a lot of things they offer are a mixture of resort spa activities such as yoga, facials, massages, heat pools, but also, dieting, fitness regimens, jogging, cycling, learning about food etc. So don’t think you’re just arriving on the scene for a week or two of being waited on hand and food.
Why does weight loss have to be a struggle? We put too much pressure on ourselves to find a ‘secret’ to losing weight. All you have to do is start off by drinking more water, getting enough sleep and eating more protein.
