Good Diet Plan

A good diet plan has 4 essential components. The mistake a lot of people make when trying to lose weight is leaving out 2-3 of them, or not doing any of them in a way that’s going to help.

1. Mindset

You need to clearly define what you’re aiming for before you start. When people ask me for help with weight loss I ask them what they want, “to lose weight” is a common reply. This is very vague and doesn’t really mean anything. You can’t emotionally attach and get excited about “to lose weight”.

If you have no emotional attachment to where you’re headed, how long do you think you’re going to stick with it?

Mindset starts with very clearly deciding what you want. You decide on your destination, and when you imagine being there is feels really good – like imagining a holiday before you actually get there. A good diet plan has to include this.

2. Recognise & Deal With Emotional Eating

Do you ever eat when you’re not physically hungry? Do ever eat beyond feeling full? If you said no, I’m not sure I believe you! These days people eat for reasons other than being hungry.

Most people’s eating habits run on auto pilot. Overcoming emotional eating, i.e. any eating that isn’t in response to physical hunger, involves thinking about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and making pre-thought out plans to tackle it.

3. Nutrition

A healthy, nurtured body is a body at its ideal weight. You won’t achieve this by going on any kind of restrictive diet.

Two of the most important things when it comes to nutrition, are hydration and carb intake.

Thirst and early hunger feel the same. If you’re not keeping your body well hydrated you will feel more hungry and end up eating more than you need. Many people drink a lot of dehydrating drinks containing caffeine, which makes this worse.

Carbs are the biggest nutritional issue when it comes to weight problems. The white stuff is the worst – sugar and refined stuff such as white flour and white rice. A good diet plan will cut these down as much as possible.

4. Exercise

Especially in January people tend to pile in with unsustainable exercise plans. If you’re not particularly active, a better place to start is your baseline activity – how many steps do you take in a day? A pedometer can help you here.

Modern day hunter gatherers have been studied, and on average they take 10,000 steps per day. So that’s considered a good amount to aim for.

It’s easy to increase your daily steps, e.g. a brisk 20 minute walk will clock up over 2,000. This adds to what you’re doing already with your usual activity.

Any good diet plan will include these 4 things. The mindset is the key one, and it’s this that will keep you going until you achieve your goal. It will also keep you where you want to be.

My weight loss book covers these 4 things in a lot more detail, and explains how to do them in the best way to lose weight and get really healthy. You can get a copy by clicking this link:

http://www.oodlebooks.com/living-the-slim-life/