Many of us are not able to keep up the good work for the long haul because we set ourselves unrealistic goals. Remember, planning is just as important as action in reaching your target.

Take a look at the following advice, it will help you be realistic and be prepared. 

1. What if I’ve got a slow metabolism?

EVERYONE can boost their metabolism and make it more efficient. To lose weight you simply need to use more calories than you eat and drink each day.

2. Willpower gone walkies?

Falling ‘off the wagon’ will be an inevitable part of your journey. The key is not to see your route as a constant battle of mind over matter but a path that, despite the odd twist or turn, always leads in the right direction. Also, taking a supplement like Proactol will help you manage the amount of fat absorbed by your body, even when you have these slip ups.

3. The weight keeps creeping back

Keep a food and exercise diary to keep track of what you’re doing and just how far you’ve come. You’ll be able to make necessary adjustments to stay on course to achieve your goals.

4. Always wanting to eat?

Emotional eating is just a bad habit for most of us. Break the cycle by stopping and asking yourself ‘why do I want to eat this?’ If the answer is not ‘because I’m hungry’ but ‘because I’m bored’ then put the food down and go and do something else!

5. I’d have to eat a low calorie diet all the time!

To lose weight sensibly, and for the long term, you need to cut down your calorie intake and become more active. But a diet with TOO few calories will rob you of essential energy and nutrients. To lose weight, women need between 1400 and 1800 calories a day, men between 1750 and 2250 calories.

6. Unless you workout constantly, exercise is just a waste of time!

Research shows that ANY exercise is better than none – even walking for as little as an hour a week can help. Start making small changes and you’ll see a big difference in the long run.

7. If you really want to drop the pounds you have to crash diet

Crash diets DO NOT WORK in the long term. Starving your body of essential nutrients puts it into starvation mode, making you hold on to calories for energy. Over time, many crash dieters end up gaining more pounds than they lost originally.

8. If I don’t eat breakfast I’ll save on calories

Eating breakfast not only kick starts your brain and your system for the day, it has also been shown that people who eat breakfast tend to eat better as they won’t go for fattening or sugary foods to fight energy slumps later in the day.

9. Eating food at night is fattening

It’s not WHEN you eat but WHAT you eat that counts. A calorie is a calorie whether eaten at midday or midnight. Just look at your total calorie count for the day and make a judgement on what to eat in the evening. However, if you eat more during the day when you’re active you are much less likely to go to bed feeling too full!

10. To decrease my body fat I need to cut it out of my food completely

Fat is not your enemy – your body NEEDS fat to function. But aim to get your fat content from ‘good’ sources such as avocados, nuts, oily fish and vegetable oils and not from ‘bad’ sources such as cheese, cakes, pastries, butter or biscuits. Proactol can help you lose fat from food before you put it on.

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James Painter, PhD, RD, has come up with a new, non-dieting approach to weight loss that he calls the “Pistachio Principle.” He says his experiments have shown that people can consume fewer calories without consciously restricting themselves, and yet finish a meal feeling as satisfied and full as does the average American who consumes more calories.

Long-term failure of diets

As justification for the new direction he is taking, he cites the fact that all forms of dieting, including the Pritikin Principle®, the Atkins Diet®, and Weight Watchers®, have yielded poor long-term weight-loss results, and he points to rebound eating in response to feelings of deprivation as one probable reason for their failure.

To address weight issues from another direction, Painter, a professor and chair of the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Eastern Illinois University, advocates a behavioral and environmental approach that he’s developed.

How, you ask, can you have calorie reduction without a feeling of restriction or deprivation?

Why increase those feelings of deprivation?

According to Painter, Americans over the past decades haven’t consciously set out to increase the amounts of fat, carbohydrates, or calories they eat–there’s no grand plan afoot to gain lots of weight. And so, he questions why we would do an about-face and consciously restrict extra calories, thereby igniting feelings of deprivation.

In one of Painter’s behavioral studies, subjects self-selected helpings of either shelled pistachios or those still in their shells. Since pistachios in shells take more effort and time to eat, the actual calories these subjects consumed were 50 percent less than those eaten by the shelled-nut group. And the upshot was, both groups felt equally satisfied with their portions, and equally full.

How you might put the Pistachio Principle to the test:

• Instead of drinking juices, where calories are quickly consumed, eat fresh fruit instead–a whole orange or tangerine, for example, eaten slowly and section-by-section after peeling it, takes longer to consume and has fiber you don’t find in the juice.
• If you have a hankering for peanuts, go with shelled vs. unshelled.
• Try cutting up fresh fruits and veggies into much smaller pieces than you normally would and see how slowly you can eat them.

The bottom line is that it takes your brain 20 minutes to get the signal that you’re full. The Pistachio Principle may slow your eating down to the point where you can feel that the stomach is full before you tuck into that second helping. 

What do you think about the “Pistachio Principle”?

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