From Flab To Fit

While working out is only half the battle to losing weight, it can play a big factor in keeping the weight off as well as reshaping your body.  Knowing how to stay motivated to keep working out can come in handy when you feel like quitting your workouts.

It’s too tempting to fall off of the diet wagon after you’ve been depriving yourself of your favorite foods.  One night of bingeing can lead to a few days or a few weeks, and then you’re back where you started.  It’s only natural that you will lose a little of your motivation as time goes on.

So how do you stay on whatever diet you choose?  Add one cheat day per week to your diet.

If you’re worried that a cheat day will ruin your entire diet, you’re wrong.  Here’s a few reasons why you NEED a cheat day.

1.  One cheat day per week will help you to stay on track the rest of the time.  No longer are you feeling deprived!  You still get to eat your favorite foods.

2.  A cheat day will kick your metabolism into high gear.  It’s true that varying your calories daily will keep your metabolism running hot, and a high-calorie cheat day will do the trick nicely.

3.  You won’t feel like you’re on a diet with a cheat day.  It’s a mental trick that can make your diet more of a “lifestyle” change.  And when you have a healthier lifestyle, you’ll never have to worry about your weight.

Of course, you can’t have a cheat day without a few simple rules to guide you.

1.  Never let your cheat day last over one day.

2.  Never have more than one cheat day per week.

How do you have a “proper” cheat day?

Everytime you have a craving, write it down on your list.  When cheat day comes around, eat what’s on your list.  It’s as simple as that!  Remember:  don’t deprive yourself on cheat day!  It’s your key to being “good” for the rest of the week!

If you need a good diet plan to follow, read my review on Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle by clicking here.

You can also check out a great fitness model training program that can take you from flab to fit-enough-to-be-on-the-cover-of-Oxygen-magazine by clicking here.

It can be difficult to start a new diet.  You might start out thinking how great you’re gonna look in a few months, but after that wears off, you start thinking about all of the foods that you’ll never eat again.  This is when the cravings kick in, and you might find yourself “falling off the wagon” to binge on your favorite foods.  Before you know it, you’re starting the cycle all over again.

How do you stop the cycle?  Give any diet 30 days to make a difference. 

The next 30 days are going to come and go no matter what you decide to do or not to do with them.  Do you want to continue on as you are and then look back in 30 days wondering “what if”?  Or do you want to give it your all to lose some extra weight and be proud of yourself at the end of 30 days? 

Think about things with this example:  a woman is overweight at 175 pounds.  With her current eating habits, she’s gaining approximately 2 pounds a month.  At the end of a 6-month period, she will have gained 12 pounds, making her weight 187 pounds.

Now take this same woman, and instead of continuing with her bad habits, she puts in a little effort to cut some calories and exercise.  She loses a modest 1 pound a week, or 4 pounds a month.  At the end of 6 months, she’s down to 151 pounds. 

What is the size difference in these two scenarios for this woman?  Of course, it varies tremendously between all individuals, but at the end of 6 months, there’s a 36 pound difference which could be a few dress sizes at least. 

So what’s stopping you from giving your diet 30 days?  Are you worried that you won’t lose enough weight in those 30 days?  Look at the big picture…look 6 months down the road and see how much 1 pound per week can add up. 

As mentioned before, time passes regardless of what we do.  We can either choose to change what we don’t like about ourselves, or we can continue on as we are and be even more miserable.

If you need a good diet plan to follow, read my review on Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle by clicking here.

You can also check out a great fitness model training program that can take you from flab to fit-enough-to-be-on-the-cover-of-Oxygen-magazine by clicking here.

I know you’ve heard this saying before…it’s preached at weight loss meetings, posted on forums, added to profiles. It’s a popular saying that we read passively and forget about. Until you get it’s meaning. Then, your whole world may change.

I am admittedly a binge eater. But, I’m more like a 24-hour binge eater. I never stop. My weight keeps going up and up and up. I’ve tried dieting, and I can keep it up for about a week, and then I “fall off the wagon” for a few months until I get motivated to try again.

The problem is, the motivation doesn’t keep going after the diet starts. I guess I could try harder. I could meditate on my reasons every single day, and try to hold onto that thread that keeps me going.

And then I found it. My catch phrase. And it’s not new to me, I’ve read it countless times, but never got what it meant until a few days ago.

It was the afternoon, and I had just ate lunch and then gorged myself on a bag of chips. I was bending over to pick up a file off the floor and distinctly felt the unpleasantness of my ever-expanding gut hanging over the top of my pants. Immediately, the phrase came to mind - nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

I truly got it at that point. I am absolutely miserable feeling the way I feel in my clothes now. And those chips that I HAD to have? How long did the pleasure of those salty chips last? Thirty minutes max? If I was thin, how much pleasure would I feel? Everytime I put on an outfit for the day, everytime we have an event to go to and everything fits, everytime I bend over and nothing is hanging over my pants - the pleasure of being thin would last a lifetime.

So for the past few days, I’ve been repeating this mantra to myself whenever I feel like I need to overeat. And it’s working. I don’t just say the words, I feel them. I envision what pleasure I will feel when I don’t feel fat anymore. I haven’t felt the need to overeat since I’ve done this.