How To Stick To Your Diet

How many times have you resolved to stick on to a diet and not been able to keep it ? Here are a few tips that will help you realise your goals.

1. Donot change your diet all together overnight. Instead change you diet in small steps. For example, go for grilled or baked food instead of fried food. Have dry fruits instead of candy. Once you are used to a change, make your next small change. Within a few months you will be eating much healthier. A crash diet might sound a lot more tempting with quicker results. But remember, all the lost weight will come right back as soon as you get back to your unhealthy food habits. So take small steps in changing your food habits and stick on to it life long.
 
2. Eat everything sitting down, slowly, and enjoy every bite. A growing number of studies confirm that just by eating slower, you’ll consume fewer calories — in fact, enough to lose 20 pounds a year without doing anything different or eating anything different.
 
3. Start a food diary. List all the things you eat in a day. Record every thing you eat, from your meals to snacks and drinks. At the end of the day, add up your calorie consumption for the day and see if it meets your goal.
 
4. Always plate you food. When you eat straight off from a bag or can you donot realise how much you are eating. Always put your food on the plate. That way you have a natural stopping point and can see how much you eat.
 
5. Avoid buying junk food while shopping . If you have junk food in your home, you’re more likely to give in at some point and eat it. So clear you house off any junk food that you are likely to consume.
 
6. Give in to your temptations every once in a while. Eat in a very healthy way but allow yourself to have one favorite food, in moderation, once in a while. This makes it easier to stick onto a diet rather than giving it up all together.
 
7. Donot go for drastic diets where you eat less than 1200 calories a day. You will feel tired and low all day. You might experience headaches as well and your body will go into starvation mode. This will reduce your metabolic rate and when you finally get back to your normal diet, you will gain more weight than you initially had.
 
8. Donot eat food just because they are good for you. Enjoy what you eat. Find the foods that you love that are healthy. For me, I hate raw vegetables but I love yogurt. So, I chop some vegetables very fine, add some salt, pepper and green chilli to it and top it with some low fat yoghurt and it works great for me.
 
9.  Have snacks in between your meals. You could opt for any healthy snack of your choice- dry fruits, nuts, maybe a poached egg. Donot ever let yourself get hungry. When you are starving, your body needs sugar and you start eating whatever you can find which mostly ends up being a doughnut or burger.
 
10. Sometimes you just cannot help but give in. But  thats OK. Just put on your jogging shoes, get out of the house and burn some calories.
 
11. Last but not the least, stay motivated. Set realistic goals and work your way towards it.