Stop Dieting and Get Into Your Lifestyle Mentality

Author: Lindsay Hogg

People avoid lifestyle changes because they don’t seem as effective as the craze diets out there that you can lose 5 pounds on, in a day. There is a need and desire to lose weight fast (trust me I know it all to well). A wedding coming up, a beach vacation just around the corner… and you need to drop as much weight as possible.

But where has that taken you so far on your weight loss journey? For me, it’s often back to the beginning or I end up gaining back more weight than I started with before some silly fad diet. This isn’t to knock all eating plans, some regimes like Weight Watchers work for some people, but majority of us just gain the weight back in a constant stream of yo-yo diets.

But you can start dropping the weight sooner and faster than you think. We tend to not believe we are losing any weight if we aren’t deprived or suffering. The difference between a diet and a lifestyle change is perspective, lack of pain in the process and short term vs long term results and happiness.

Perspective
Weight loss is the answer to all problems and you will be happy with everything and anything once you are a size 0. Thus, you believe that if you slip up the tiniest bit, you’ve ruined everything.

Fact
Being happy takes way more than being a size 0. Weight gain is often the result of deeper rooted issues. When you start to focus on healing the underlying emotional issues you will not only feel happier, but the weight will start to melt away with ease.

Diet
You obsess over numbers on the scale.
Lifestyle
Instead of obsessing over numbers, you get to concentrate on yourself and what makes you feel good.

Diet
You struggle for a few weeks and manage to lose weight, but it’s only temporary.
Lifestyle
You lose weight with ease and create long term habits that will keep that weight off.

The point I’m trying to get at here is that time, after time, and time again, these diets have failed you. Maybe not in losing weight initially, but in keeping it off. Again, there is about 10% of people who these diets have worked for, but for most of us, we just need to change a few bad habits.

Take your lifestyle changes one at a time, like drinking water instead of juice or pop. I lost 3 pounds in one week just because I stopped eating past 8pm. Most of us are pretty familiar with what is healthy to eat (whole foods that actually come from nature), but we eat processed crap or overeat. Be mindful of what you’re putting in your mouth and why you’re choosing to eat it. You are constantly creating a future with your actions of today.