Plan
You have decided to give yourself the gift of a better life in 2010.- a thinner, healthier, more enjoyable life. How do you fill such a tall order? This requires a plan – not just another diet, but a comprehensive plan to change your lifestyle. Your have the will to change your life, now lets talk about the how. Forethought is essential.
Your plan will need to address you as a whole, not just you as an eating machine. Your weight problem isn’t just about food. In addition to your food choices, you need to consider your social life, family life, your friends, your activity (or lack there of), your habits, your work, the stresses in your life, and your spiritual life. Write down how each of these things affects your eating habits. Do they contribute to over-eating or do they support healthy habits? How can each of them change, to support health, without losing their value?
When you are consider the people in your life, can you talk to them about how they can support your decision? Will they help remove the temptations that have contributed to your overeating? You will need to make them understand how important this is to you. If they don’t support you, how can you minimize the effect they have on your choices. For example: will your family, or the people you live with, support your decision to prepare foods differently? If they refuse to make changes themselves, you may need to prepare your meals separately or choose only certain foods from the menu. If the family is having fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and cole slaw, you could remove the skin from a piece of chicken breast and put low-sugar barbeque sauce on it, bake a small sweet potato for yourself and make the slaw with light mayonnaise. Better yet, talk them into BBQ’d chicken, baked sweet potato fries and low-calorie slaw.
Another example might be, do your coworkers always want you to go out with them to restaurants that only offer unhealthy, fattening foods? Your plan, in this case, could be to 1) bring your own lunch 2) to ask them to go to a different restaurant or 3) to ask the waiter to prepare your food differently. You could ask for broiled or grilled fish rather than fried or ask for steamed vegetables rather than fries. Of course, you would get better results at a restaurant that caters to people who want to eat a healthy diet.
When addressing your social and spiritual life, consider how they affect your self-image as well as your lifestyle. In most cases, you would not be making your life “better” if you suddenly gave up your social and spiritual support systems. You can, however, plan how you can change the way you relate to them in terms of their influence on your eating habits. For example, if you have pot-luck meals together and most of the food is loaded with fat and sugar, you could bring something healthy that you really like. Bring something that could serve as a meal, such as a great salad, with a variety of vegetables and fruits and topped with grilled chicken, salmon or bean relish. Who knows, they might really like it too and may begin to ask you about your new healthy food choices. You might be able to slowly change the way everyone eats, helping them to have a healthier life as well.
When addressing stresses in your life, consider how they are affecting your health and how much they are preventing you from making the changes you need to make to lose weight and keep it off. One example might be, your job demands long hours of high-pressure work. A job change might be out of the question at the time. Think about how you can cut the time you have to spend at work. Maybe there are ways to increase your efficiency. Maybe you need to talk to your boss about getting help. Also, consider whether the pressure you feel is self-induced or a result of external pressures. If they are self-induced, you need to consider how your motivations to overwork impact your goal of a better life. Is the promise of a better income worth it, if it destroys your health? Is the need for recognition clouding your judgment? Maybe you just need to learn how to prove your worth by showing your boss what you have accomplished and ask for promotions or raises. Your boss may be too busy dealing with his or her own issues to notice yours. Don’t resent it. It is just part of the human condition. Be your own advocate.
Next week I will discuss your diet plan. What’s the very best “diet” to help you achieve permanent weight change?
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