Weight Loss: How to Visualize Yourself to a New You

Do you still have a skinny picture hidden in the back of your wallet that you pull out whenever you want to relive the “good old days?”  You may be onto something positive, and it is more than just harboring dreams of days gone by.

Many experts now recommend that dieters visualize where they want to be so that they can achieve their weight loss goals more quickly.  That could mean fitting into your jeans from when you were 20, or just being a healthy person for the first time in your life.

Visualization techniques help people achieve their goals by bringing them one step closer to reality.  If done correctly, you begin to live life as if you have already reached your healthy weight, which reinforces good habits.

Picturing yourself healthy is a good way to encourage you to stick it out and adhere to your diet and exercise plan.  You have something to look forward to and you know what it will feel like once you get there.

Visualization is more than a static image. True visualization techniques use all of the senses. You can close your eyes and imagine what it would feel like to lose 100 pounds, not just how great your backside will look in a new pair of tight-fitting jeans.

It is also a technique that does not require any special skill, money, or time – you can do it anywhere and no one will ever know that you are secretly visualizing your weight loss success.

You want to start by fully imagining how your future self will be once the weight is off and you are at your goal size.  Picture yourself sitting down to a healthy meal at a nice restaurant and envision the smells, tastes, and sounds around you. What are you wearing? Maybe your skinny clothes or that outfit you have been wanting. How do you look? Probably the best you have looked in years, or maybe ever. How do you feel? I am willing to bet you have never felt better.

What feelings would you have at that very moment?  Surely a sense of satisfaction, one that will carry into the present and help you work harder to make that image come to fruition. Do not picture yourself sitting at a table as if you are a nearby diner.  Instead, visualize the scene from inside your own body – the new you that worked so hard to lose weight and get fit.

As you implement visualization techniques to your daily diet plans, you can also reaffirm your goals as you do it by focusing on positive affirmations.  The process of visualization can be addictive in itself because it brings about a sense of self-confidence and excitement about the future that is in store for you.

This is a great quote to keep in mind when you are visualizing your way to a healthy new weight: “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.” – William Arthur Ward

For more diet and fitness tips including product reviews, recipes, and helpful advice, visit http://www.getskinnyandhealthy.com/.

Lose Weight AND Cheat On Your Diet

How many times have you hear a diet counselor tell you to cheat on your eating plan?  It is not often, but that may be the exact key to helping you learn lifetime healthy eating habits.

Flexibility can mean the difference between being able to stick it out long-term and giving up for good.  Sometimes a little cheat of chocolate can keep you from feeling utter desperation and deprivation. Of course moderation is the key, but life is too short to completely deprive yourself of your favorite things!

Giving in is very different from giving up.  When you give in and have a little taste of heaven, you are not giving up on your diet plan – you are just being flexible!  Does this mean you can give in 24 hours a day and consume as many calories as you feel like eating? Of course not.

Not if you want to lose weight, anyway. But successful dieters understand the importance of having a little leeway to live life according to their own needs, and sometimes that includes something off limits.

It may not always be a psychological craving, either.  Your body will alert you to deficiencies of certain vitamins and minerals.  If you are dieting, your body may be lacking certain nutrients and making you crave foods is the only way it knows to get those nutrients back in its system.

Even if it is not a biological craving, giving in can also alleviate the tension you may feel about being on a diet in the first place.  It is better to just vow to eat healthier and be fit, but in reality, fitness and weight loss plans are billed as “diets” and it instinctively gives us a negative connotation because we assume it means giving up our favorites. And giving up our favorites can mean missing that celebratory glass of champagne or giving up eating at your favorite restaurant on your birthday.

Worried that giving in occasionally will result in giving up permanently?  That rarely happens for those who have given themselves permission in advance to have anything they want in moderation. You just have to make sure you are in control at all times. Do not sit down on the couch with a full bag of potato chips – this would be setting yourself up for failure! However, it is perfectly ok to throw a handful of chips on a paper towel and sit down to snack.

You don’t have to feel disgust and shame in your decisions if you know ahead of time that it is perfectly okay.  Not many official diet plans have a built in craving component.  They simply say everything good is gone forever, so you may have to make some exceptions and tailor your plan on your own.

Your body will clue you in to the fact that it’s in need of something you’re not giving it. Sometimes it may be carbs, and even if you’re on a no-carb diet, you have to make the decision as to whether or not you’ll address your body’s needs and give yourself permission to cheat – just a little.

For more diet and fitness tips including product reviews, recipes, and helpful advice, visit http://www.getskinnyandhealthy.com/.

Willpower and Dieting - Who's to blame?

Many dieters fail to follow through on their food plans and inevitably blame one culprit – willpower.  Some will argue that there is no such thing – you either make a choice and stick to it, or you don’t. 

Others feel willpower is a mystical component of ourselves guiding us in the choices we make.  You might not have an opinion about willpower, but you still may feel comfortable using it as your excuse whenever you make the wrong choice about what you should be eating.

When you are digging around in the refrigerator at 2 o’clock in the morning and wind up devouring an entire chocolate pie, it is not willpower’s fault – it is a conscious decision you made and for which you need to take full responsibility.

But with that said, you also should not attach any guilt to that decision.  Just because you hold yourself responsible for a dieting mishap, it is not any reason to beat yourself up and label yourself a failure.

Here’s an idea: from now on, when you are dealing with an inner battle between caving in and quitting and staying the perfect path to success, stop and realize that there is always a solid middle ground you can adhere to.

You want that chocolate pie, but the diet says you are not supposed to have sweets. Not at all.  Instead of using the dieter’s excuse of no willpower and eating the entire pie in just under two minutes flat, give yourself permission to indulge just a little bit. Even if it is a full slice, it would be better than eight slices.

Take preventative action by giving yourself permission to learn and make mistakes and recover.  Dieting and learning how to eat healthy takes time. As all of us have learned at one time or another, it is not a skill you will master overnight.

However, make sure that before you make any decisions (even those which mean you may steer off the dieting path temporarily), you take ample time to consider the consequences.  Do not rush into anything.

Even giving pause to your good eating habits will only help to instill them into your daily routine.  Unfortunately we are not programmed to think before we eat in today’s world.  We are usually on the go, in a hurry, or mindlessly doing other activities while we make eating decisions. 

In reality, many of us are on autopilot when it comes to eating. We have pizza every Thursday. We drive through Starbucks on our way to work each day. We can't pass up on Taco Tuesday. In a hurry? You know where all of the fast food restaurants are. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. We just have to reprogram our thoughts, just like we do whenever we need to break a bad habit.

Do not let willpower (or lack thereof) get the better of you.  There is no reason to fear failure if you are willing to take responsibility and learn from your mistakes as much as you celebrate your successes.

For more diet and fitness tips including product reviews, recipes, and helpful advice, visit http://www.getskinnyandhealthy.com/.

Why It's Ok to Daydream About Fatty Foods When You're Dieting

Are you sitting at your computer trying to ignore the nagging feeling that you’re missing something (like a chocolate chip cookie)?  It is perfectly okay to admit that you daydream about not following your diet. Just do not let your daydreaming turn into a reality.

It is completely normal and you should not feel guilty that you are still longing for those “off limit” foods.  Do not believe the hype when diet manufacturers say their plan (or food) is so good that you will never even consider going back to the fattening foods you consumed before. You probably will, and that is completely okay.

Some manufacturers say that when you finally rid your system of sugar, you will not crave it anymore.  But dieting pitfalls often occur because of habits we have formed around certain foods, not necessarily because we are encountering a biological phenomenon. For example, maybe you always have pizza Friday nights. Or maybe you are used to starting your day with a coffee drink that is full of fat, sugar, and… of course… a few hundred calories.

While it may be great to know you are normal, what can you do about it?  Sometimes it feels as if these daydreams will eventually lead to complete diet failure.  But these daydreams, or cravings, do not have to lead to the end of your diet. 

Facing your food issues is a good way to put them behind you. If you ignore the feelings, and suppress them long enough, you may binge one day when you are not feeling particularly strong. Some of us are emotional eaters or stress eaters. This could trigger an eating binge or diet failure when you are just simply having an overly emotional or overly stressful day.

So what is the first step? Stop thinking of yourself as a dieter – someone who has to abandon a certain food for the rest of his or her life.  You may have eliminated the food while you became healthier and fit, but it does not mean it has to be gone forever – only until you have your food fears under control.

Over time, as you begin to accept the fact that your favorites dishes are not necessarily gone for good, you will daydream about them less often and then you will be able to go about your day without food clouding your thoughts at all.

            Daydreaming comes into play as therapy.  Your mind misses something, so it is trying to relive it again for you.  It is just a phase of growth for your diet plan and you will feel a great sense of accomplishment when you realize one day – at the end of a day – that food did not cross your mind even once.

            Becoming healthy is a long journey. You do not just give up poor eating habits one day and wake up thin the next. It takes mental and physical preparation to get you to a place where your body is fit and your mind is functioning without fail to help you make the right choices.

For more diet and fitness tips including product reviews, recipes, and helpful advice, visit www.getskinnyandhealthy.com.

           

Choose Diets You Won't Give Up On

Are you fighting the diet battle again at this stage in your life, worried that once again, your willpower will leave you unarmed and you will quit before you achieve your weight loss and fitness goals?

Whether you’re a first time dieter or one who has been going around and around the track for years, you will be happy to know that it is possible to pick a plan and stick to it until you get to the weight you want to be. Break the vicious cycle!

The first tip is to try to choose a diet plan that is not too strict for you.  You know the kind – some have special limits on carbs, protein, calories or anything that is the color white.  The ones who lose weight long-term have to learn to live in a world where nothing is off-limits, but moderation is key. Basically unrealistic versus realistic.

Other diets have plans where you are supposed to start and stop, again and again, until the weight magically comes off.  This can get tedious and send you on extreme highs and lows emotionally and physically as your body is forced to adjust to the new circumstances.

Instead, try to find a plan that shows you how to eat healthy for a lifetime.  If you know it is okay to sometimes have a special treat, or indulge in a glass of wine, then you will not have to go form one end of the spectrum to the other – you maintain and will always be on a balanced course that is safe for your body and easy on your emotions.

Fasting, purging, and binging (even on healthy foods) is a sure way to develop poor eating habits and it can confuse your body because it is being given mixed messages.  One minute you are devouring pound after pound of fresh fruit and vegetables, lean protein, and carbs – and the next you are surviving on nothing but hot water with honey and red pepper mixed in. I know this sounds crazy, but it is all too common.

Before you choose any diet, evaluate it for a lifetime plan.  Could you exist without ever eating another morsel of sugar again in this lifetime?  Could you turn away bread at every meal for the next thirty years? Could you realistically learn to love this way of eating? 

Some diets make it seem like their rigid plan is one you could adhere to forever, but caving in could cause you to regain more weight if you get discouraged and give up for good.

No diet plan is 100% comfortable when you are used to being able to eat with freedom from careful consideration.  Still, there are many plans that offer sensible ways to eat where you never have to leave an entire food group off of your plate.  Don’t follow a fad – instead, follow your heart and make up your mind to choose a diet you feel comfortable implementing into your life.

For more diet and fitness tips including product reviews, recipes, and helpful advice, visit http://www.getskinnyandhealthy.com/.