This chapter has been written to help you stay on track. You have many weeks ahead of you and you want to make sure each week is a weight losing week just like week 1. The simple answer to keeping on track with the weight loss targets in your Target Plan is do what you did last week!
If you completed week 1 successfully and lost equal to or more than what you set out to do then simply repeat exactly what you did last week. For some people that may be ok. For others it may not be realistic, you may not want to or it may not be actually possible. You may have tried really really hard last week and you are worried you may not be able to apply so much effort this week. The conditions you decided to put yourself in (like booking the whole week off work) may not apply to this week. So I have come up with some helpful tips on how to stay on this program for the long haul.
Here are my tips in order of importance:
1. Commit To Eating Your Target Daily Calorie Intake
2. Record Your Weight Every Week
3. Weigh Yourself Everyday
4. Plan Your Day
5. Don’t Deny Yourself Anything
6. Try New Food & Drink
7. Try Different Eating Styles
8. Treat Yourself
1. Commit To Eating Your Target Daily Calorie Intake
This underpins everything about this diet. You cannot deviate from this. This is how you are losing weight. Doing anything other than this will result in failure. This is fundamental to the whole system. So continue to calorie count and make sure it is less than your Target Daily Calorie Intake. This is the foundation to your success. It is kind of obvious that this would be the most important but it has to be mentioned. Got it? Good.
2. Record Your Weight Every Week
This is very important. You need to keep track of your weight every week. You need to know whether you are losing weight or not and the ONLY way you can know that is referencing your current weight against your original weight. So promise me you will weigh yourself at least once a week on your weighing day and record it in your Target Plan.
3. Weigh Yourself Everyday
Knowing what you weight is on each day is important. It lets you know whether what you ate yesterday worked or not. This continual learning process helps you build up what sort of foods and what sort of quantities you can eat. Some days you will lose and some days you won’t. The only way you are going to learn this is by weighing yourself everyday. You don’t need to record it anywhere. It is just one number and you really only use this number to reference it to the day before and to see how far away you are from the next target. Knowing how far away you are from your next target is important as it should determine what you are going to eat today, tomorrow and until the end of the week when you formally record your weight. Which brings me nicely on the next tip on staying on track.
4. Plan Your Day
Planning what you will eat in the day will help you hit your targets. Just thinking about it roughly will really help. If, for example, you think you are quite a way off from hitting target then you know that you might need to go a bit extreme and only eat one half or even one third of your Target Daily Calorie Intake. This could involve starving the whole day and eating a small sized dinner. Or eating a small breakfast and then only an evening snack. My 52 Step Program is awesome at helping you plan.
Whatever it is you need to have thought about how you are going to restrict the calories you are going to eat in the day.
5. Don’t Deny Yourself Anything
It’s bad enough having to be careful of how much you eat so make sure nothing is off the menu. If you have to deprive yourself of your favourite foods as well then this diet becomes unsustainable. Remember the only thing you have to do to lose weight is stay below your Target Daily Calorie intake. That’s it. Everything you love is on the menu.
One day I had the cravings for Chip Shop chips. I ordered a large portion and finished the lot. It was probably about 800 calories. However I hadn’t eaten anything that day so I knew I could eat the whole portion and I just had to be careful for the rest of the day. You can do this too!
6. Try New Food & Drink
I don’t know about you but if you eat the same thing over and over again you start to go off it. That is why you need to try new food and drink. It’s amazing what you can discover that is tasty, fills you up and is low in calorie. The battle between supermarkets to provide choice is immense so take full advantage of it. Browse the aisles to see what catches your eye. Also make sure you read the calorie content to see that the calories are within the parameters you budgeted for that meal.
So if you budgeted the evening dinner to be 600 calories and the ready meal that has caught your eye is 1,000 calories either reject it, eat less of it or reduce other meals in the day by 400 calories to accommodate the 400 calories that would of taken you over your Target Daily Calorie Intake.
7. Try Different Eating Styles
Give yourself wriggle room on the eating styles. You don’t have to follow it so religiously so much so that it becomes a straight jacket. You are free to change styles whenever you want even on the day. As long as the total calories you expect to consume in the day are lower than your Target Daily Calorie Intake then that’s fine. Try starving all day and having a big curry at night. Try snacking all day and having six snacks throughout the day and no formal breakfast, lunch or dinner. Try having a massive lunch and a light snack in the evening. See what works for you.
8. Treat Yourself
If you are succeeding at losing weight please treat yourself. Not necessarily with food or drink but with other treats. If you do hit target then treat yourself to a new dress. If you do hit a certain milestone weight reward yourself with a trip to the cinema. This will take the edge off having to calorie count and make the whole process that little bit more enjoyable.
Free Book Offer
Get the Eat Anything Diet Book and the Eat Anything Work Book completely free. Simply enter your email in the field below and click on subscribe. The books will be immediately emailed to you to keep forever!