10
Secrets to Reach Your Ideal Weight -- Healthily and Happily
Deirdra Price,
Ph.D., author of Healing
the Hungry Self,
shares the secret to reaching your ideal weight by freeing yourself from
the obsession with food, weight, and appearance.
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Stop Dieting.
Diets don't work-they make you fatter! For every round of dieting (eating
less than 1200 calories a day), your weight increases an average of 10
percent. Your body interprets dieting as a famine and reacts by burning
fewer calories, losing lean muscle mass, and strengthening, enlarging,
and multiplying fat cells.
-
Eat Three Meals
A Day. Make three meals a day part of
your lifestyle. Start eating healthy, balanced meals now choosing food
from all food groups. Three meals helps you burn calories and avoid the
emotional slump that comes from starving your body and brain.
-
Eat The Foods You
Love And Crave. You can have your cake!
When you eat chocolate, cookies, candy, and chips in moderate amounts (one
serving) along with healthy foods, you won't gain weight. It's when you
deprive yourself of these foods that you overeat and put on the pounds.
-
Change One Behavior
At A Time. Create success by changing
one behavior at a time. It's easy to become overwhelmed by altering to
many things at once or setting unrealistic goals. Pick something that's
doable and when it's part of your lifestyle move on to the next.
-
Stop Weighing In.
Throw away your scale. Weighing yourself fuels the obsession with appearance,
setting your mood for the day. Most people can tell what they weigh by
how their clothes fit. Once you develop a healthy style of eating and exercise
your weight won't fluctuate.
-
Let Your Weight
Adjust Itself Naturally. Let your body
decide what it wants to weigh to be healthy. "Whipping your body into shape"
hasn't worked. If it did, you'd weigh what you want to now. With balanced
meals and exercise you'll permanently shed excess pounds.
-
Get Moving!
Physical activity is the best method for controlling weight. Most people
either under- or over exercise, which doesn't affect fat storage. Exercising
three to five times a week at a moderate intensity is the best way to burn
fat and build muscle at the same time.
-
Do Three Things
To Avoid Eating Over Emotions. Feelings
must be processed, not ignored. People starve, binge, purge, or graze to
avoid unpleasant emotions. It's not only what you eat, but also why you
eat. Pick three activities like sitting in a quiet place, taking a walk,
or calling a friend to move through feelings without eating over them.
-
Develop Body Acceptance.
Accept the reality of your size, shape, and weight without judgment. By
developing body acceptance you foster a win-win situation. If you lose
weight while changing habits, great-you win. If you don't lose weight,
or lose less than expected, you still win because your body was okay to
begin with.