Diet
A good diet
A good diet is an essential part of healthy living. Approximately 60 million people in America are obese. This makes for a lot of people who need to change their diet so they can regain a healthy lifestyle. You are considered obese if you are a man and have over 25 percent body fat and a woman with over 30 percent body fat. Measure your waist at the narrowest spot and divide it by the measurement of your hips at the largest spot. This should give you a good idea if you have excess fat or not. Women should have a ratio of 0.8 or lower and men should have a ratio of 1.0 or lower. Most people, like myself, can just stand (naked or not) in front of a mirror and know that they need to lose 5, 10, 15 or more pounds.
A good diet can help you achieve the weight goals you are looking for. The first step is to make a mental decision that you are going to lose weight. There are many different diets out there so always consult your doctor before starting one. Set a goal and a realistic time frame for losing the weight and write it down. A good goal is about 1-2 pounds a week. There are 3500 calories to a pound, so to lose a pound a week you would need to either eat 3500 less calories or burn 3500 calories through exercise or a combination of the two. Most of us can easily do this by cutting out the snacks before bed time.
The toughest part of a good diet is staying motivated. Please leave a comment on my website letting others know how you stay motivated while dieting. Some methods may include, taking a picture of you and put it on the fridge. Find another picture of yourself when you were at your desired weight or a picture of someone else at the weight you would like to achieve and put it on the fridge as well and write your goal date on the new picture. Look at these pictures everyday when you open the fridge door. Write your goals down and look at them every day. Have your long term goal and then break it down into months/weeks/days and even hours if you like. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to lose weight. That is your motivation. You may want to fit into a suit for a wedding, wear a bikini instead of a one piece bathing suit, wear that favourite dress again. Maybe your blood pressure is too high or you have diabetes or some other health ailment. It could also be that you don’t feel as young as you used to and the extra couple of pounds don’t go away as easily. Whatever your reason is for dieting will be your biggest motivational tool. Find as many reasons for dieting as you can think of and write them all down or get pictures of them and put them on your fridge. Don’t stop with the fridge put them on your computer, cell phones, work stations and any other place or device that you visit frequently. Make a daily diary of the foods you eat and drink along with all your activities. This will allow you to stay focused on your goals and also enables you to monitor what works and what doesn’t so you can improve on it.
A good diet starts with you making the right choices. If what you are doing right now is not working then keep making other choices until you find the one that works for you. Don’t deny yourself the healthy living that you deserve. There are no excuses, including age, to keep you from reaching your goals.
