Take a Risk Start a Diet, Again

By Anne M. Rensberger, LICSW

Wondercoach

More Weight Control, Nutrition & Exercise Articles

Take a Risk Start a Diet, Again

Is it time to break out of your comfort zone of being a little or a lot overweight? Maybe you have tried to lose weight and failed, or you did and it came back and you decided just to accept yourself as you are. I think you can do better. You can leave your comfort zone.

1. Dance Dance to just one song a day in the comfort of your home. Move whatever you can. If you can dance, let it rip. If you can't, wave your arms and move your legs to the music.

2. Develop new recipes Scour cookbooks to find two or three lower calorie entrees that you like. Perfect them and make them your signature dishes.

3. Feel stupid. You will mess up at some point. Did you get the hungry at midnight and eat whatever you could get your hands on? Forget shame and figure out why that happened and try not letting it happen again.

4. Challenge yourself Break one old bad eating habit. Learn to tolerate hunger. Many of us who suffer from obesity have screwed up hunger signals and we just have to learn to ignore them.

5. Focus on what will make you happy Will it be to find your clothes getting loose, to feel in control of your eating, or to not to be the fattest person in a room?

6. Develop an unspoken smugness Learn to say no to the wrong food when others are diving in or gobbling seconds. Calmly say no and then smile inwardly.

7. Spend your money on experiences Instead of buying the latest gadget, as a part of weight management you should spend your money and your time on an outing. At least once a week get out of your home and do something new. It will get you moving and produce a memory that will never go out of style like that high tech cell phone will.

8. Start now There is never a good time to start a weight management plan in this crazy world, so just start now. It does not have to be a Monday morning to start a diet.

9. Pat yourself on the back Nobody cares if you are dieting again. Maybe if you lose a lot of weight they will comment, but get used to patting yourself on the back for that pound lost or that walk around the block.

10. Have no regrets There is no enemy like our own dug-in unhealthy habits, so bring your better, smarter, wiser, cunning self to the challenge. As Wayne Gretzky said, “You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take.”