Lose weight Without Depriving Yourself
Do you really have to give up all your favorite foods to lose weight? No you don’t. It’s a known fact that if you just cut down on your portion sizes, you can still easily drop all the pounds you want.
In fact, when you attempt to eliminate all your favorite snacks, you end up craving them even more. In many instances the boredom from a highly restrictive diet takes over and you end up binging even more.
Variety is the key to long term weight loss.
Many people have found that highly restrictive diets do more harm than good because (a) they aren’t healthy for you and (b) they tend to cause boredom and intense cravings for foods.
But at the same time, you don’t want to overdo it with the junk food. Too much can not only hurt your weight loss efforts, but your overall health. So how do you cut down and possibly even eliminate bad foods altogether? Here are five tips to make it happen:
#1) Stay full
Many people find their cravings for junk food are the worst when they are hungry. Staying full is often times an effective way to eliminate this.
#2) Substitute a healthy alternative
This might be the most effective strategy of all. Let’s face it all of us get sweet cravings sometimes. But instead of eating that hot fudge sundae, consume either honey or dates. This is not only extremely healthy for you, but it will usually take away your desire for junk food.
#3) Eat slowly
This is very effective if you do cave in from time to time on your cravings. Chewing more will at least help you consume less of the bad stuff and limit the damage. This will help you feel fuller faster.
How many times should you chew each mouthful? Some experts say up to fifty, but let’s face it who is going to do that? In general, twenty five times or at least enough until you feel the food is completely liquefied is good enough.
#4) Have a “cheat day”
This is a popular dieting strategy to reduce the amount of junk food you eat, and it works. Getting it all out of your system in one day is often very effective. Just go nuts. Totally pigging out on your “cheat day” might make you want it far less the rest of the week. This way you get it all out of your system in one day, so your body doesn’t have to deal with it the rest of the week.
Also, it’s been said that once you go back to your more restricted diet the next day, the body will naturally burn more calories due to the change in eating patterns – in other words, you throw your body of keel and it revs up the metabolism.
#5) Eat more frequently.
In many instances eating smaller amounts throughout the day will cause you to be fuller. This will prevent you from snacking on junk food between meals. In many instances people who only eat 3 times a day get very hungry in between.
To sum up: Just try to avoid boredom in any long term diet. This tends to be one of the biggest causes of binging. When you have a healthy diet you enjoy, it will prevent a lot of the unnecessary splurging that is common with “fad diets”.
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