Dieters : Put MORE focus on food

If you're always on a diet you probably spend half your life thinking about food – what you can eat and what you can't, what you'd like to eat if only it was allowed, what you'll have for your next meal, what you shouldn't have eaten at the last one...

The last thing you think you need is to spend more time thinking about the seductive addictive substance that lies at the root cause of your weight problems...

But I'd like to offer an alternative viewpoint.

What if you focused on the quality of your food as well as the quantity? What if you decided that you would only eat the very finest, most delicious and nutritious food available – food that was good for your body as well as your taste buds? And enough of it at every meal to feel pleasantly satisfied. Wouldn't dieting get a lot easier to stomach then?

Now you may doubt that such food exists but you only have to look at the myriad of available low-fat low-calorie recipe books to see that delicious and nutritious real food is available to anyone who is willing to make the effort to seek it out and cook it.

The secret of losing weight without losing heart after a week is to look for those recipes that you will personally enjoy. Build up your own collection of winners that you can enjoy for the rest of your life.

Of course you can overeat on healthy delicious food as well as you can on junk but it's a lot easier to stick with modest portions when you cook and serve yourself just the right amount - you don't have to fill your plate like they do in a restaurant. And because you know you can cook the same delicious dish again at any time and that you have planned something just as delightful for your very next meal, it's hard to feel deprived by stopping at the point where you are satisfied rather than stuffed.

My own personal collection of recipes has stood me in good stead over the years and I am forever experimenting and looking for new ones to make meals even more exciting. Does your food match up? Why not add a few recipes to your repertoire this week and for the next few weeks. Keep it simple if you're not used to cooking. Some of the best recipes I have take just 10 minutes – faster than you can order in a pizza.

Weight loss has never tasted so good.

Janice Elizabeth

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Request her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Why did I do that? How to deal with a lapse in your weight loss efforts.

If you've had a bad day on your diet (or a bad binge or even a bad week) don't despair.

I know it's all too easy to beat yourself up over it. You feel guilty for breaking your promises to yourself and sabotaging your diet and more than a little angry and depressed at your lack of control.

But before you get too gloomy and reach for the Ben and Jerry's which somehow escaped you last night, stop and think for a moment.

A bad day or even a bad week is not enough to "break your diet" unless you let it get you down. It's what you eat over the long run that counts. It's eating more calories than you need day after day after day that makes you fat not a one-off over-indulgence.

But what can you do if you really did go mad last night? What can you do today to get back on track after you've come off the rails?

• Whatever you do don't weigh yourself unless you love being miserable. Chances are you had a load of sugar and/or salt last night and you'll be retaining more water than a camel embarking on a trek across the Sahara. Consequently, you'll have gained more pounds than you possibly could from the extra calories you ate. So don't even think about stepping on the scales for 2 days.
  
  
• Every day, but especially today you should aim for eating modest portions of healthy foods whenever you are hungry, stopping when you are satisfied rather than stuffed. More than ever today you need to feel in control. So no starvation rations or you'll only set yourself up for a hunger-induced "clear out the cupboard" binge later on.
  
  
• Normally it's best not to skip breakfast but if you are still full from the previous day, it can wait. Just make sure you have a healthy snack ready for when hunger does strike.
  
  
• Take time to enjoy your food today. Sometimes we hardly taste the food when we are eating too much, we eat it so quickly, trying to stop ourselves thinking too much as we shovel it in. Actually taste everything which passes your lips today and put yourself back in control.
  
  
• Spend a few moments thinking about why you temporarily blew your weight loss plans. What thoughts were running through your head? What situation had you put yourself in? What can you learn from that? How will you deal with those thoughts, those situations next time because as sure as eggs are eggs they, or something similar, will happen again. Be prepared.
  
  
• Stay positive. Relax a little. Tell yourself "Yes, I broke my diet but that's OK. I'm human. I'm not meant to be perfect. I'm going to treat myself well, eating healthily as much as I can. If I have the odd lapse it doesn't change my determination to keep going." Build yourself up. Give yourself a little (non-food) present. You deserve the best and you can do whatever you set your mind to.

The best way to get over a lapse is to treat it like the insignificant blip it is and just get right back on track!

Janice Elizabeth

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Request her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Dieters : Questions you must ask yourself when you want to lose weight

Now I know you're always asking yourself questions. You know the ones like "Why can't I lose weight?" and "Why does everything that's bad for you taste good?". But those questions won't get you anywhere – except maybe helping you feel sorry for yourself and setting you up for a spot of comfort eating.

A more empowering set of questions, on the other hand, will get you off to a good start if you're about to begin a weight loss program (or keep you on track if you're in the middle of a diet).

Here are the questions to ask when you want to give your weight loss efforts a real kick start.

Why do you want to lose weight?

Make sure your reasons for losing weight are clear. Do you want to look good? Do you want to feel healthier? Has your doctor given you a health warning? Do you just want to be able to run around the park with your kids? Maybe all these reasons apply. The more reasons you have for losing weight and the more you are aware of them the easier it will be to remind yourself to keep to your weight loss program when the going gets tough. Even better, spend some time imagining how you will FEEL when you succeed. This will do more than anything to increase your motivation.

How much weight do you want to lose?

Set yourself a target. This gives you something to aim for and you will be able to see how much closer you are getting each week. You can never succeed if you don't know what the end point is. "I want to lose weight" is not a measurable goal – you have succeeded (of sorts) after you lose an ounce. Make your goal specific with a target to aim for.

What will you do to lose weight?

Nothing is going to change unless you do. So what changes are you going to make? Will you follow a particular plan or just cut down in general? How will you know if you're succeeding? What exercise will you take (if any)? How will you make sure that you follow your plan? What will you do about the things that might get in the way? Vague ideas about losing weight need to translate via a concrete plan into action. Ask yourself the questions and decide what you will do.

Who will support you?

Some people will actively encourage you and help your efforts while others will get in the way of your plans. Do you know who your supporters will be? And who you will need to avoid or find some way to deal with? Ask for the support you need from those you think are most likely to give it or join a club of people who are also trying to lose weight. These are available online or offline. If you can afford it think about getting a coach – all that focus on your success will work wonders. As for those who are less than enthusiastic about your plans, think about ways of handling them. Of course you'll need a different strategy for close friends and relatives than you need for the guy who brings cakes into the office and insists you eat one!

And the final question?

When will you start?

There's no time like TODAY. No eating the pantry empty before you begin. Dump the junk food and get started right now!

Janice Elizabeth

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Request her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Weight Loss : Keep it Simple

An increasing trend over the last few years has been for diet books to make things complex.

I expect it's because each one vies with the other to come out with some brand new theory or other about why we gain weight and why their diet plan is the only one to help us lose it. And the low fat, low calorie stuff has already been covered!

My problem with this new trend is that the diets all involve more counting and while basic maths was never a problem at school I don't want to use it at the dinner table to know what I can eat. And while counting calories is one thing (most of us are probably walking encyclopaedias by now with how many calories our usual choices contain) the new diets are so much more complex.

With the new diets we need to know carbohydrate counts and fat grams, GI index and all sorts. And sometimes it's not enough to have a straight count we have to work out our percentage of carbohydrates, proteins and fat (yes, follow one particular diet and you have to balance these at EVERY meal).

Somehow I think food was not meant to be eaten like this. It was meant to be enjoyed. Most of us know what is healthy and what is not. Most of us know we'd be better with an apple than a cream cake. Most of us know we need a good variety of all types of food to feel great.

The new diets will not last. More complex stuff will come along and it's sad because we could all lose weight with a few SIMPLE changes.

• Make healthy choices for most of the food you eat
• Vary your choices
• Occasionally enjoy a small portion of whatever it is you love even if it's high in fat or sugar or whatever
• Eat only when you're physically hungry
• Stop when you're just satisfied, not stuffed
• Fill half your plate at lunch and dinner with vegetables or salad, quarter carbs and a quarter protein.

If everyone who wanted to lose weight just followed these simple guidelines there would be many more successful dieters around and a lot less hassle in losing weight.

Why not try it starting today?

Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Request her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

The truth about weight loss

There are so many articles around about losing weight, so much help and information you'd think it would be easier to lose weight.

Every year there's another diet coming out and receiving rave reviews. And people follow in droves - from Atkins to South Beach to GI. But are we getting any slimmer?

The exact opposite is true - the Western world is gaining weight at an astonishing pace.

The fact is that dieting doesn't work.

All we know for sure is that if we eat too much and move too little we gain weight - and this part is easy. Yet when we try to do the opposite by eating less and moving more it's incredibly difficult!

And it's nothing to do with knowing how to do that in a practical sense - we have so much information about nutrition and exercise at our fingertips. We have the theory drummed into us. It's putting it into practise that we're not so good at.

It's all boils down to how comfortable we feel about the changes we are making and whether our desire to change is big enough to get over any uncomfortable feelings we have of moving out of our familiar rut.

The foods we eat and the amount of exercise we take are so locked into our daily routines past and present, our family culture, our habits that we can only make permanent changes by creating new habits and becoming equally comfortable with them.

Diets and extreme exercise regimes don't work because their requirements are so onerous and restrictive that it would be extremely difficult for them to become part of our everyday habits.

Instead we need to learn new ways of relating to food and exercise by gradually making healthy changes in our habits so that we automatically make better choices for life.

Janice Elizabeth

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for natural permanent weight loss. Request her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!