Weight Control - Dealing with Stress
Dieting - Back to Basics
This blog is for people who have been on many diets and just keep failing. You know how to count calories, you know what is healthy, you come up with these great diet plans, but you just keep on crashing.Your diets just don't go anywhere.
If you were fairly successful at keeping your weight under control when you were younger, but are having problems with your weight in recent years, then you might want to consider the role of stress in your life. Stress can not only make us eat more, but it can also deplete our willpower. This may be a time to go back to basics.
In a highly stressed lifestyle, you need to try a new approach that requires less willpower. The fact is that we all have a limited amount of willpower. Research has also shown that willpower can be drained by mental stress, so a diet that may have worked for us in a less stressful time may not be appropriate now. You might think of it as a compromise diet. A diet that takes little energy or willpower to continue, while causing a minimum of stress. It is a diet that I use when my life is in chaos and willpower in short supply. This simple diet has only 3 basic rules.
1) Eat a big high protein meal in the morning. It may be a lot of calories for one meal, but it will make it easier to avoid overeating for the rest of the day. The protein will help you to think more clearly throughout the day and to deal with stress.
2) Avoid foods with fructose. This is so important if you tend to overeat. Your body tends to natural regulate its own weight with most foods, but fructose messes this up big time, it actually makes you hungrier, not great when your willpower is low. Fructose is turned into body fat much faster than any other food, including even fat. The reason for this is that fructose is rapidly absorbed through the small intestine and quickly converted to body fat, while the actual fat in your food is absorbed much more slowly.
3) Get some exercise, even if it just doing some calisthenics in your home. It is not so much the calories burned, but just a few minutes of exercise can decrease hunger and make you feel better. And sometimes, you will find that a couple of minutes of exercise will motivate you to do more exercise later in the day.
These three basic techniques won't get you the perfect body, but they will keep you at a reasonable weight without much effort. You will start to feel better about yourself and then, hopefully soon, when your life is going better, you can consider a more rigorous diet. Good luck and never give up dreams.
How to lose weight with this simple change
Many people could lose a fair amount of weight doing just one simple thing that does not require any change in the foods they eat. It isn't a complete cure for obesity, but it can be a major start to a healthier body. The change: just change what you drink.
If you drink soda throughout the day, you are probably consuming a large amount of HFCS or high fructose corn syrup. When you drink soda, just imagine shooting fat directly into your arteries. Because the truth is fairly close to that. Fructose is absorbed very quickly through the intestines and turned into fat by your body. You are basically mainstreaming fat.
Instead, start drinking tea. Even if you add sugar, it still won't be as harmful as drinking soda with HFCS. Most teas also provide some anti-oxidants for your health. The next thing about tea is that the ritual of preparing the tea will tend to slow down the amount you consume. Lastly, most people sip tea, while they chug soda.
The psychology of drinking tea is completely different than that of drinking soda. While you may get a large 64 oz. soda, you will probably only use a 16 oz. tea cup at the most. That alone means you will consume less.
So if you are a soda drinker, switch to tea. Your waistline will love you for it.
