Popular weight loss diets are designed to introduce predetermined changes. This is why they are ineffective. A diet that does not take into account individual needs, capabilities and existing eating habits will not change your approach to nutrition permanently. Going on a diet requires sacrifices, but it doesn’t have to mean turning your life upside down. I’ll say more – if your diet requires it, there’s a huge chance that you won’t be able to maintain it for more than a few days. Why? Because starting a diet requires taking the right steps that will not only allow you to make changes, but above all to consolidate them. How to choose a diet for your needs?
STEP 1: BEFORE YOU CHOOSE A DIET FOR YOURSELF, SET YOUR GOAL
I am aware that this sentence is at the beginning of many motivational texts and may already seem overrated. However, the indisputable fact is that it is much easier to take on a more difficult trail if we know what to expect at the top. The same applies to the way we eat, which is why we like diets so much, which guarantee us a certain weight loss in advance.
At the beginning of your journey, it is worth visualizing your final result and recalling it every time you want to give up the challenge. It is important that the goal has 3 very important features:
be specific,
Set in time
and feasible.
For example, a poorly formulated goal is: “I want to finally wear smaller pants”, a good one: “I want to fit into size S pants by July 1st”, unless of course we start in March from size XXL. Knowing your goal you are able to choose a diet to suit your needs more easily – you know what you want to achieve and thus you better choose the activities you need.
STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR PREVIOUS MISTAKES TO TAILOR YOUR DIET TO YOUR NEEDS
If we already have the main goal, now we need to divide it into stages. Everyone knows that in order to fit into smaller pants, you need to limit sweets, eat regular meals, give up sweetened drinks, eat more vegetables, drink more water, and so on and so forth. All these orders usually do not cause any reaction from us, because they are too vague enough.
To know where to start the diet, we should write down our normal eating habits for at least 5 days and then analyze it for the most common mistakes. If we see that sweet snacks are notoriously present in it, the first step should be to determine their elimination. Here we go back to the first point, formulate and time our intention well (e.g. until the end of May, I allow myself only one favorite candy bar each week). This is an important step that allows you to adjust your diet to yourself, check where the problem lies.
STEP 3: BREAK DOWN THE TRANSFORMATION INTO STAGES
It may turn out that there will be more mistakes in our current lifestyle. In this case, you should not change everything at once. Why? Because it will simply exceed our capabilities and instead of reaching the goal, it will lead to total discouragement. How to adjust the diet to yourself? Slowly! Effective changes are those that we introduce gradually. Thanks to this, we give ourselves a chance to accept them and get used to them.
STEP 4: CHOOSE A DIET FOR YOURSELF, BUT REMEMBER TO COMPROMISE
It is much easier for us to think about eliminating our favorite treats if we know that we can get something else in return. Depending on the goal we have set for ourselves, compromises will touch on different aspects, but the most important thing is that there are some at all. The easiest way to present it is to use the example of sweets.
If you have been snacking on something sweet every day so far, try to replace chocolate with lower calorie content (e.g. healthy desserts), and allow yourself chocolate only once a week in controlled amounts. Another example can be physical activity, without which we are not able to achieve such good results. If you don’t like too intense efforts, at the very beginning let’s focus on walking or replacing the car with a bike. An effective diet is one that we are able to maintain, i.e. a diet tailored to your needs, not a rigid schedule of meals and workouts from the Internet.
STEP 5: INSTEAD OF CHOOSING A READY-MADE DIET FOR YOURSELF, CHANGE YOUR THINKING
Don’t put your diet above all other aspects of your life. Until now, food has been just one of many parts of your everyday life, so keep it that way. Excessive focus on the fact that from now on we limit the number of favorite treats makes us crave them even more.
Stop thinking about dieting, focusing on its negative aspects, such as constant restrictions, giving up pleasures or even something like punishment. Start thinking of it as a chance for your dream body, well-being that you have been missing for several years and health that no one can take away from you.