Day Two

A/N (Author's note)
I'm back with more diet help! I won't be able to update every day, but I'll try to update as much as I can. I really appreciate the support from everyone! :) Keep posting comments: I love to hear all of you!


Now that you've hopefully started changing your diet habits, you probably want to know where to go from there. As I said yesterday, it's all about the little changes that make a diet really work. It's a lifestyle change, not just a diet that you follow until you lose the weight and then go back to your old eating habits. That's why so many people who go on fad diets or pills never keep the weight off - they always go back to bad eating habits and gain the weight they lost.


For those of you who asked me to make a diet plan for you, keep in mind that you don't have to be really strict on the diet plan. It's more of a general plan for you until you know enough about food and health to make good health decisions and lose weight at the same time. I went on a diet two years ago and I made a strict diet plan for myself for about six weeks. I lost 17 pounds, but I gained it all back because I was on a certain diet program (the Special K Diet) where you eat a bowl of cereal for each meal but dinner, when you can choose what you eat. I got so sick of eating cereal for two meals a day that I started eating whatever I wanted because I made myself not eat certain foods, and so I felt deprived.


The lesson I learned from that is to not force yourself to cut certain food groups, but eat them in moderation. For example: If you have an obsession with chocolate, don't completely stop eating chocolate for the sake of your diet. Eat chocolate in lesser amounts; that is, if you had 5 bars of chocolate every day, lower that amount to one bar of chocolate each day. It may seem like no chocolate to you, because you've been having five bars of chocolate every day, but your body will get used to the lesser amount of chocolate and you won't try and sneak in more.


Another important factor to think about when trying to lose weight - do you actually pay attention when you eat your food? Or do you eat in front of the T.V. or while listening to the radio? Eating with distractions makes you think you're not digesting any calories when you really are. That makes you want to eat more - and that gets you off track in your diet.


Also: How fast do you eat? It's been shown in studies that people who eat faster tend to gain more weight or weigh more overall than those who eat slowly. That's because it takes about 15-20 minutes for you to recognize that you're full, so you often times overeat when you eat fast because more food gets digested before your body realizes that you're full.


Do you eat from bags? You know what I mean - potato chip bags, popcorn bags, you name it. When you eat food from a bag, you usually stop at the bottom of the bag, because, of course, it tastes too good to put away. You know the feeling - you want to put the unhealthy food away but you feel like you're addicted to the food and you won't let yourself put it away. There is a solution to this problem: put the food in a plate before you eat it and put the bag away before you get tempted. That way, you won't feel like you have to eat the whole bag, and you'll end up eating less wasted calories than you normally would.


I don't know how many of you know this already, but celery has negative calories! That means you burn more calories eating celery than the amount of calories in the celery. Keep in minde that this is only true with plain celery - celery with dip or peanut butter or anything else won't be negative calories.

Some more healthy foods to consider:
All fruits (strawberries, bananas, kiwis, watermelon, etc.)
Vegetables (corn, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, etc.)
Wheat bread - not white bread

That's all for day two! Tomorrow, I'll talk more about exercise and stuff to avoid while on a diet.