Thursday, November 27, 2008

Spot These 3 Pitfalls in a Calories Loss Diet and Lose Weight

By Rowena French

Even with the best of intentions, most people who start a calories loss diet generally give it up during its early stages. They do this because they are unaware of a number of very common pitfalls that stop them from succeeding in their quest to lose weight and get healthy. Learning to spot these early so that you can avoid them or work around them is a way to make sure that you stay on your diet and reach your weight loss goals.

Making extreme changes to your daily menu is a common pitfall, especially on unreliable diets. If you start an eating program where you eat only one type of food and eliminate everything else it will be very challenging to remain committed to this diet. The modifications to your eating plan need to be introduced gradually and in a balanced way. This will mean that your diet will impact on your body in small ways and you will avoid the kinds of cravings that can tempt you to give up on your diet and fall back into unhealthy eating habits.

Setting unrealistic goals is tempting especially as, when you first start dieting, you might lose anywhere from five to ten pounds in the first couple of weeks. When that happens, of course you feel like the diet is great and you want that kind of weight loss to continue but most of the time early weight loss is all water weight. Real weight loss does not happen that fast. Experts say a healthy rate of weight loss is one to two pounds per week. So if you tell yourself that you want to lose ten pounds a week every week you are setting yourself up for disappointment. If you begin to feel disappointed and believe you are failing on your calories loss diet, you are more likely to give up on it and go back to your unhealthy lifestyle.

Using food as a reward is a real pitfall to be avoided because one of the most common ways that we all reward ourselves is food. How many times have you told yourself 'I stuck to my calories loss diet all week so one cheeseburger will not hurt me'? Well that cheeseburger will hurt you. In the long run, it will be just more calories that you need to burn off. Instead of rewarding yourself with food for a job well done, take the same amount of money that you would have spent on a food treat and spend it on a new blouse, a new lipstick, a book, a new CD, or something else that will motivate you to keep going on your weight loss journey. - 15266

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