3 Simple Eating Habits to Make You Lose Weight
Wasting time and money on diets hasn’t worked. Here’s why.
Whether it’s a New Year’s resolution or a summer reunion you plan on attending, weight loss goals are common in our culture. You establish your initial plan, but as time goes on, it becomes hard to sustain.
Losing your motivation makes it difficult to achieve your goals. You start with energy and enthusiasm, and after a while, that enthusiasm wears off. The missing element needed to keep you motivated is emotion. When you are emotionally committed to something, you are more likely to stay with it.
Several emotions motivate me to live a healthy lifestyle. I lost my father when I was 27 years old. He was twice my age and had a massive heart attack. He had diabetes and had been on insulin for several years. His eating habits were not consistent as he would follow his doctor’s suggestions for a while then ignore them. His weight would fluctuate up and down because of this.
I regret my father never met my beautiful wife. He would have been 62 when we were married. My three daughters never knew their grandfather, just like I never knew mine. He died from a heart attack before I was born.
I regret never getting the chance to play golf with my dad. He loved to golf. I remember joking about what a nerdy sport it was (before Tiger Woods, of course). Until we went out in the yard, and I couldn’t even hit the ball in the air. Thirty-five years later, I am now an excellent golfer. I’ve often seen fathers and sons of all ages out golfing together. Sometimes I smile, and sometimes I cry. These powerful emotions serve as my primary source of motivation.
Why do you want to lose weight anyway?
Goals tied to superficial reasons, like physical appearances, rarely provide enough motivation to make changes in your eating habits that will last a lifetime. You have to become emotionally invested.
Whenever anyone asks me why I am so health-conscious, I tell them about my father. I tell them I want to be here for my family. I also want to change the course of my family’s health.
Obesity and high blood pressure don’t have to pass down from generation to generation. I am living proof. I am sixty-two and weigh the same 155 pounds that I did when I was forty-two. It is a result of good eating habits and an active lifestyle. Here are three essential behavior changes I’ve made during the last 20 years.
1. The Hunger Scale.
This first tool is simple to incorporate into your everyday life. It can make achieving your weight loss goals much easier if appropriately utilized.
Develop an internal hunger scale to regulate eating habits. On a scale from one to five, number one means you are starving, and number five means you are stuffed. It would be best if you never waited until you’re at one to eat. It would also help if you also stopped eating before you get to five. Always stay between two and four. Eat when you start getting hungry (two) and stop eating when you are satisfied (four).
We tend to overeat with larger portion sizes when we are starving. Then the neurological signals sent from the stomach to tell the brain we are full can’t react fast enough. That is one of the reasons you overeat. The best thing you can do is limit the amount of food available to eat when you are starving. You can cook a single-serving meal or stop and get a single sub from Subway on the way home.
2. Stop the late-night meals.
Stop eating at least 3 hours before going to bed. If your usual bedtime is 10 pm, you should finish eating dinner by 7 pm. It allows your body more time to digest your food before you go to sleep. It also means you will go longer, around ten hours, without consuming any calories.
3. Bank those calories.
Eating out too often can derail your goals for losing weight. Trying to avoid eating out with family and friends can be difficult. Saying no to these social gatherings may likely give you second thoughts about your goals. You may feel you’re missing out on some of these more enjoyable activities in life. Here’s how I’ve been managing this for years.
Eating out at restaurants usually results in high-calorie consumption. You can bank those calories ahead of time, so they are available when you go out to eat. When you know you’re going out to eat with friends on a Saturday night, for example, plan by eating low-calorie meals the day before, in addition to any meals you may have earlier that day. By doing this, you can order anything that is on the menu you want.
You may eat 1500 calories that evening, but your two-day average calorie consumption is typical. If you decide to eat out on short notice you can achieve the same results by eating light the next day.
Look at the big picture.
Never evaluate your eating habits daily. It would be best if you looked back on how you’ve done over several days or a week to assess how disciplined you were. If you have a terrible couple of days or weeks, don’t be too hard on yourself. Just get back on course. If you implement these simple steps, you will lose weight. Over time these actions will become habits. These new healthy eating habits will cause you to maintain your weight for many years.
