Most diets leave a person battling with hunger yet the most effective way to lose weight should not involve any struggle with hunger.

The body needs food to survive and one of the ways the body makes sure that it gets this fuel is through the feeling of hunger. For most people in developed countries, not having enough food is not a problem. Instead, people are more concerned with losing weight and controlling their eating. The body has a fine balance, however, and eating too little by ignoring hunger can lead to gaining weight rather than losing it. This is often what is behind the yo-yo pattern of weight loss and regaining typical of most dieters. Successful weight loss is not a matter of how little a person can eat, but how they balance their eating.

Not only does the body’s metabolism slow down if it’s not fed enough (leading to a body that stores fat readily and burns it more slowly), but ignoring hunger to the point of excess leads to out of control eating. Almost everyone has experienced the feeling of ravenous hunger at one time or another and its resulting feeding frenzy. A slower metabolism and overeating spell weight gain, not loss. Clearly, careful care of hunger is important in any plan for losing weight.

It can be frustrating to go on a diet and lose weight only to regain it. After all, 90% of dieting attempts fail. What can we do to improve our chances?

Despite being told that most diets fail, the public is still vulnerable to quick weight loss promises that won’t work in the long run. Most of these people have histories of going on and off diets, over and over again. It’s puzzling why they would try the same approaches that haven’t worked in the past. Perhaps it’s that little voice saying, “Maybe it will work this time.” “Maybe this diet will work.”

What do People Really Want in a Weight Loss Plan?

People want to lose weight, they want to lose weight fast, and they want to lose weight permanently. There are a million things that will cause weight loss. Any diet, fast, or exercise program where one burns more energy than one takes in, is going to result in weight loss. There are also many things that produce quick weight loss if you’re not talking just fat loss (such as water loss or muscle loss).

The problem is that people usually confuse fat loss with weight loss. Just because there is weight loss doesn’t mean that there is a loss of an equal amount of fat. Actually, the faster the weight is lost, the more likely it is that the weight lost is more water or muscle, than fat. But it’s fat that people want to lose and they want to lose it for good – not to gain it all back and have to start dieting all over again.

How Can One Avoid the Pitfalls of Dieting?

The first thing to do before embarking on a weight loss program is to be honest with yourself. If you are a person with a long history of on-and-off dieting it’s time to face the fact that the types of diets you’ve been on don’t work. Those diets weren’t different from each other just because they had different names (i.e. The Low Carb Diet, The Blood Type Diet, The Grapefruit Diet). Look at what was similar about them. For example, were they stringent diets, did they eliminate particular foods completely, did they not include exercise?

If you are a first time dieter, learn through the experience of others. To date, a lot of research has been done showing that most dieting attempts fail and that fad diets show particularly dismal results. Don’t go down the same road that many others have found to be the wrong road.

Want Your Efforts to Lose Weight to be Permanent?

Consider this Advice:

1. Focus on the behaviors (portion control, increased activity, better nutrition) that help you lose fat, rather than a weight goal number .
2. Make sure that you include consistent aerobic exercise in your plan.
3. Don’t set a time limit for your goal.
4. Don’t go on a rigid, stringent, fad diet of any kind.
5. Make sure that the eating and exercise plan you go on is one that you can follow for the rest of your life.
6. Your body has genetic limits. You don’t know if your body will be able to reach the ultimate goal you have in mind. Instead, keep doing what will make you leaner and healthier and let your body take care of the weight. It will show you how low it can go.

By following these steps, you will keep from falling into the yo-yo trap. You don’t want to put all that effort into losing weight only to regain it and more like most people who go on “diets.”

Being active and eating right are essential for losing weight successfully but there are also other simple things a person can do to make the job easier.
Losing weight successfully involves a lifestyle change. Getting on a diet that can’t be followed for the rest of one’s life is not only not going to do anything to change lifestyle, but because most diets fail, it wastes time that could be better used doing things that work.

There are hundreds of simple and easy things a person can do that add to weight loss success and that work at changing a person’s lifestyle to one that is fat burning.

Ten Easy Gems For a Fat-Burning Lifestyle

1. Make gradual changes – People who use a gradual approach to making weight and lifestyle changes tend to be more successful at making the changes permanent. Rapid weight loss as well as taking steps that are too big with other behaviors can set a person up for failure by making them feel overwhelmed.
2. Keep the big picture in mind - People who aim at making lifetime changes instead of just going on a “diet” have been shown to keep the weight off more permanently. Striving for a healthy way of life rather than just to lose weight insures consistent, progressive, fat-burning changes.
3. Don’t fall for unrealistic diet plans and aids – There are plenty of “diets” to choose from. Wise people learn to bypass those that promise things that are impossible or improbable. “Diets” that have quirky names and advertise large amounts of weight loss in short periods of time are the type of diets that are best passed up.
4. Make lifestyle changes a priority - People who consider their weight loss and exercise goals important and make the behaviors that will accomplish these goals a priority, achieve their goals more quickly.
5. Don’t take advice from yo-yo dieters, instead seek advice from experts – Taking advice from people that are frequently going on and off diets and losing and regaining weight, is not a good idea. It’s better to observe someone who has been thin and fit for many years and seek expert advice.
6. Strive to eat more nutritiously – Feeding the body what it needs is not only good for health but also prevents overeating.
7. Eat enough calories and eat frequently – Under-eating slows metabolism resulting in a body that stores fat easily. People tend to get hungry about every three hours. That’s because the body performs best when given fuel frequently throughout the day so it’s best to listen to the body. If the body is hungry it needs to be fed.
8. Don’t eliminate carbohydrates - The body needs carbohydrates to function effectively. Diets that eliminate carbohydrates usually end in compulsively eating the same carbohydrates that were eliminated and ultimately, regaining the lost weight.
9. Eat the last meal of the day at least 3-4 hours before bedtime - Metabolism slows down later in the day. By eating the last meal early more of the calories consumed are burned off.
10. Increase activity and exercise – The most fat-burning weight loss tool available to everyone is exercise and general movement. People who exercise on a regular basis and are active tend to be more successful with weight loss than those that don’t use exercise as part of their weight loss plan.

These are only a few of the many easy tips that help people be successful at losing weight. Since gradual progress is more effective than quick weight-loss goals, starting with the ten weight loss gems above is a good place to start. More weight loss gems follow.

Copyright Lavinia Rodriguez. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

People tend to expect things from themselves they’d never expect from a family member or a friend. We can accept our loved ones and friends, regardless of what they look like. Yet, too many people don’t think twice about rejecting themselves for their own appearance.

Here’s an exercise I use with my clients: Picture your child or yourself as a child. Now say the things to that child that you repeatedly tell yourself about your weight and appearance. How do you imagine that child would feel? What would she think? How motivated would she be to change?

Would you say these things to a child you love: “You’re a fat pig. What’s the matter with you? You have no self-control. Why would anyone want to be with you the way you look?”

No, neither would my clients. When they think of their own children or other loved ones, they love them for who they are. They list what they love about them without hesitation. Yet, they don’t treat themselves with the same respect and love. Why is that?

Treasured imperfections

No rational person thinks the laws of physics apply to everyone in the world – except themselves.

Yet perfectly intelligent people forget that even when applied to oneself, the “laws of life” are consistent. Praise, reward, encouragement, kindness and compassion motivate. Rejection, criticism, cruelty and general negativity do not.

And here’s another puzzle: How can it be that another person’s imperfections are endearing? Do you remember the hanging skin on Grandma’s arms, or the fact that those arms were always open to you? Maybe thinking about Dad’s bowed legs brings up feelings of affection for him. You might have inherited his legs. Do you feel the same affection toward yourself that you feel when thinking of Dad’s legs? Why not?

One of the psychological barriers to successful weight loss is how we treat ourselves, and what we expect from ourselves. If the expectations are overwhelming it becomes extremely difficult to succeed. Many people come to me saying things like:

• “I can’t accept myself until I get all the weight off.”

• “I hate myself. I’m so fat.”

• “Look at my thighs! They’re huge. I’m gross.”

Would you say these things to anyone you love:

• “I can’t accept you until you get all the weight off.”

• “I hate you. You’re so fat.”

• “Look at your thighs! They’re huge. You’re gross.”

Then why would we think that treating ourselves like this would do any good? Rigid expectations lead to negative consequences. Weight-loss programs coupled with these types of statements don’t last long, and willpower has nothing to do with it.

Changing expectations

If this sounds familiar, here are some tips to try:

• Lower expectations to levels that make sense, such as, “I’m going to work at increasing my activity level gradually until I’m doing something active on a daily basis.”

• Praise all efforts along the way. “Wow. I got my exercise clothes on today and took a little walk. That’s more than I’ve done in months. That’s great!”

• Be a problem-solver, not a critic. “Well, it seems that my planning today didn’t allow enough time to shop for a nutritious meal. What can I do to prevent this next time?”

• Be accepting on a daily basis. “I’m doing this to change what I can realistically change and accept what I can’t. I may not be perfect, but no one is. I’m pretty swell just the way I am.”

Even if it feels awkward at first, practice becoming your own biggest fan. Cheer for yourself, with goals that make sense and are achievable. You’ll love yourself for it.

By Lavinia Rodriguez
Printed in St. Petersburg Times July 31, 2010

Weight-loss talk is heard too often these days. If there’s a new fad diet going around, you hear about it and its so-called “successes.” • Weight-loss success ought to be defined not by how much weight has been lost, but by how long the weight loss is maintained. • People who have had long-term success with weight seem to be relatively quiet. You don’t usually hear, “I’m going on 10 years of managing my weight successfully,” or “I haven’t binged in 15 years!” • There are plenty of weight-loss myths that get in the way of weight-loss success. Here are some real-life examples, with names changed to protect patient privacy:

Myth 1: The Less You Eat, the More You Lose

Jeanie walked into my office sharing her frustration at a life filled with one diet after another. “I’ve tried every diet,” she told me. “You name it, I’ve tried it.” It quickly became clear that Jeanie subscribed to the myth that you have to keep eating less in order to lose more. Her diets became more restrictive through time. After years of such diets, her body had compensated for her starvation attempts by slowing its metabolism, making it more difficult for her body to burn fat and easier for it to store it. Without her realizing it, Jeanie’s diets were contributing to her weight problem.

With education, Jeanie was able to restructure her thinking and behavior. She started to eat more often, stopped skipping meals, and avoided long periods without eating. She focused on nutritious meals that were satisfying, preventing extreme hunger and feelings of deprivation.

She learned to allow time for her body to start burning more again. After all, she had been abusing it for a long time. Those kinds of physiological changes don’t happen overnight.

Once Jeanie understood how her body worked, she was able to give up the belief that the less you eat the more you lose. Then she started to gradually lose weight. By being consistent she made these changes part of her lifestyle and was able to manage her weight successfully.

Myth 2: If You Have a Busy Life, That’s Exercise

George was a busy guy. His work kept him on the move. Through the years, his body had put on an unattractive spare tire. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “I’m busy all the time at work. Why can’t I lose weight?”

George had confused busyness with fat-burning exercise. The type of exercise that burns fat is sustained activity that gets the heart pumping, creates deep but relaxed breathing, and lasts 30 minutes or more. Most of the busyness that George thought should be fat-burning exercise was stop-and-go activity.

George decided get up a half-hour earlier to get a run in each day. He started out slowly and worked up to running 30 minutes at a time. In addition, he used the run to decompress from the stress of work. Gradually, George’s body started to show the fat loss he was looking for.

Myth 3: Carbs Make You Fat

Leni was a believer in the no-carb craze. She was proud that carbs never touched her lips. Never, that is, except when she binged on carbs several nights per week. “Why can’t I control my eating?” she said. “I know I shouldn’t eat carbs, but I lose control!”

Leni didn’t realize that the reason she was bingeing was precisely because she was trying to eliminate carbs. Although some carbs are not very nutritious, they don’t, in and of themselves, make you fat. If they did, all people who eat bread and pasta would be fat.

Leni loved carbs. Her stringent rule of no carbs was actually causing her to lose control by making her feel deprived. This psychological deprivation made her preoccupied with carbs. It’s no wonder she lost control. Once she understood why she was bingeing, Leni was able to work on letting go of her rigid expectations, eat high-quality carbs and feel satisfied. Gradually, she regained natural control of eating, the binges stopped and she lost weight permanently.

• • •

There are ways to lose weight, but only a logical approach will keep it off. It pays to take the time to be honest with yourself about approaches that are only perpetuating the problem and start down the right road to a life of leanness. Even if the weight loss is slower, it’s not nearly as frustrating as losing and regaining the weight again and again.

Previously published in The St. Petersburg Times July 17, 2010

Americans like to eat out a lot. Unfortunately, eating out can get in the way of managing our weight. There are ways, however, to lessen its caloric impact.

Eating out can be fun and flavorful but it can also be fattening. Restaurants are businesses so they are concerned with the bottom line . One of the ways that restaurants get people to return is to make the food irresistibly flavorful. How do they do this? By enhancing the flavor with fat and spices (mostly salt). Fat and salt are inexpensive ways of making food tasty.

When we eat out we have no idea of how much fat, salt, and other ingredients are in the food. We just know whether we like the taste or not. For example, we see that we’re eating chicken but we don’t know how many calories, fat, or salt we’re eating. What we think is a normal meal may prove to be the reason we are frustrated with our weight gain next week.

Restaurant Portions

Another method that restaurants have used to get us to return is by serving extremely large portions. It’s not unusual today to be served enough for four people. Because it’s on our plate we have a tendency to think that it must be a serving for one person, but don’t be fooled – it could be enough for four people.

Frequency of Eating Out and Weight

Americans do like eating out frequently. With our fast-paced lifestyles, some people eat out more than they cook at home. That’s unfortunate because the more we eat out, the harder it is to manage weight.

How to Out-Smart Restaurants

How can we still have fun eating out without ruining our goals for fitness?

• Gradually reduce the number of times that you eat out and replace with quality meals at home.
• Don’t starve yourself all day to compensate for the meal out later. It will make you hungrier and will cause overeating. Eat enough to satisfy during the day but pick foods that are high in nutrition and fiber, and low in fat.
• Reduce or eliminate how much alcohol you drink when eating out as the effects of alcohol will only cause you to eat more and will add more calories.
• Ask for a “doggy bag” at the start of the meal and save part of the meal to have the next day.
• Eliminate the extras such as appetizers and desserts. These only make your “four-person meal” more like a “six person meal.” If you really want the appetizer or dessert then forgo the entree. Decide which is most important to you.

How to Handle Menu Choices

If you’ve done your job of not being too hungry or inebriated when you’re looking at the menu, it should be easy to choose a healthier meal. Here are steps to take:

1. Decide which meal you would really like.
2. Look for the most nutritious (more fiber, more vitamins, less fat, less salt) meal on the menu.
3. Ask yourself if you’d be satisfied with #2. If yes, then order it. If no, go to #4
4. Look for a meal that resembles your first choice but is more nutritious. Ask yourself if you would be satisfied with that choice. If yes, order it. If no, go to #5.
5. If you feel you won’t be satisfied with any of the alternate choices go back to choice #1. Now look for ways to make this meal more nutritious. For example, ask for meat to be baked or grilled instead of fried or saucy, ask for a lower fat vegetable, and don’t put butter on your bread.

It’s easy to gain weight from eating out. The smart ones learn to manage it well.

How to Eat Healthy Food Without Measuring, Weighing, or Counting

Diets that involve rigid measuring, weighing or counting never last. But there are simple and fun ways of improving nutrition without becoming a scholar on the subject.

Who wants to be bothered with studying up on nutrition to eat better or lose weight? Learning about vitamins and minerals, number of servings, and what food qualities affect what body functions can get tedious and boring.

Isn’t There an Easy Way to Improve Nutrition?

You don’t have to be a nutritionist or a biologist to improve your nutrition. All you have to do is:

1. Want to eat better.
2. Understand that learning to eat better is a process and needs to be done one step at a time.
3. Strive for continual improvement rather than perfection.
4. Be willing to experiment.

The 1-2-3′s of Better Nutrition

• One: Food Groups

The first thing to do to improve nutritional intake is to have a general knowledge of food groups. Most people are familiar with what these are:

• Protein/Meat Group-foods such as meats, eggs, beans
• Fruit/Vegetable Group-all fruits and vegetables
• Grains/Cereals Group-breads, pasta, cereals

Although the particular food groups differ depending upon the source, concentrating on the three basic food groups above will get you started in a good direction and keep you from feeling overwhelmed about how much to know. Remember it’s about increasing nutrition, not about perfection. Later, if you wish to learn more and continue to consume higher quality foods you can get into more details. For now, keep it simple. The psychology of change is important to success.

• Two: Color

The most nutritious foods have bright colors. Instead of boring ourselves with what vitamins and minerals are in different foods all we have to do is focus on color in the following ways:

1. Look for foods that have bright colors such as green, yellow, red, orange, and black. Fruits and vegetables are the most colorful foods.
2. Strive to make your plate colorful. A plate that has mainly beige and brown foods is not what we’re looking for. Make it look like a beautiful color wheel.
3. As you approach each meal ask yourself, “What colors have I eaten today? What colors am I missing?”
4. Strive to have a meal where most of the plate is composed of bright-colored foods.

By following the above, your nutrition will improve significantly and you will have had fun doing it. It’s that easy.

• Three: The Comfort Group

These are the foods that give you warm fuzzies – your favorite foods. It’s important to include comfort foods in any eating program as trying to eliminate them completely makes it more difficult to succeed at your goal. It’s one of the main reasons most diets are broken sooner or later. However, the focus here should be to see how your comfort foods can be made more nutritious. For example, if your comfort food is ice cream perhaps you can add colorful berries to add more nutrition and fiber. Experiment with your favorite cookie recipe to see what can be added or eliminated to add nutrition and still keep the flavor. Don’t eliminate these foods – just make them more nutritious.

Finally, experiment with different recipes to see if you can find ways to eat those nutritious foods you don’t like by disguising their flavor with other tastes. Sometimes mixing foods you don’t like with those you like a lot will make the whole dish taste good. Chopping less liked foods into tiny pieces to mix with other foods, also can be tried. Just don’t give up on something nutritious just because you feel you don’t like it. If nothing makes a disliked food taste good don’t eat it, but search for the same color elsewhere. It’s about making nutrition easy and fun.

Disclaimer: The above tips do not replace the advise of your health care professional. Consult with your doctor.

People usually think it’s their fault they haven’t been able to stick to a diet. However, it’s not a lack of willpower. It has more to do with the brain.

It’s a well-known fact that 90% of dieting attempts fail. Considering that over 60% of Americans are overweight or obese (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and that we have a huge dieting industry giving Americans a myriad of choices from which diets to choose, it’s apparent that people are attempting to diet but failing at it. This doesn’t make much sense, does it?

It does make sense if we consider how the human brain thinks compared to how most diets are designed. It’s the key to why diets fail.

Why Most Diets Fail

• Most diets are rigid, stipulating black and white rules of what you can and can’t eat.
• Most diets eliminate some foods completely (usually our favorite foods).
• Most diets give unrealistic expectations (such as impossible weight loss expectations or suggesting one will achieve some sort of perfect body)
• Most diets don’t put enough focus on exercise which is the most fat-burning behavior one can engage in.
• Most diets cannot be easily followed for a lifetime.

How the Brain Works

The brain doesn’t like rigidity especially when it comes to what we eat. It does like a flexible plan of eating which says things like, “I want to strive to gradually reduce my portions,” rather than, “I have to stick to my diet perfectly. I can’t eat anything that’s not on my diet.”

The brain responds better to small steps and feels overwhelmed by large goals. It’s easier to think about losing five pounds than a hundred pounds, for example. It will want to resist a plan that says it has to run three miles daily when one hasn’t been exercising at all, rather than one that asks that we go out and just walk a few minutes and gradually increase the distance.

The brain will also tend to resist the thought of not being able to have its favorite foods at all instead of incorporating favorites into the plan.

The Brain Can Be a Friend to Your Weight Loss Goals

Most diets are designed so contrary to how the brain thinks that it will resist attempts to stay on the diet. That is why staying on a diet gets harder the longer one is on it. Sooner or later the dieter quits, thinking the failure was his or her fault rather than the fault of the diet itself.

Instead, if the “diet” or, better said, “the weight loss life plan” is set up to be flexible, positive, realistic, can easily be followed for the rest of ones life, and includes all liked foods, our brain will be our friend rather than resist our efforts. Understanding why diets fail is the first step to success with weight loss.

Is it time  to set a New Year resolution to lose the weight again? All the TV shows that give advice to people are having segments on starting your 2010 diet, how to lose those pounds from the holidays and so on. This could be the first year in a long time that you will decide that you will not buy into the gimmicks anymore. This time you will focus on gradually changing your lifestyle to one that will take you, not only in the direction of getting leaner and fitter, but more importantly, in the direction of making these changes last a lifetime. Remember the tortoise and hare? The hare is like the people who go on diet after diet only to lose weight and regain it time and time again. The tortoise knows exactly what he is doing and keeps his focus even when the hare seems to be passing him by. The tortoise will reach the goal before the hare even if at a slower pace. The tortoise wins.  This year make the resolution to not make another New Year resolution to lose weight. Make it a lifetime resolution to be fit and healthy the right way.

“Fat Americans” – that’s how we’re referred to in other countries.  Look at the facts:  Americans keep getting fatter; no other country comes out with more diets, diet programs and dieting aids; and the dieting industry is making tons of money. Does this sound right? Who is benefiting here? It doesn’t seem to be the consumers. If diets work, why are Americans continuing to get fatter each year? Why are our children fatter than ever before?

Perhaps it’s time for consumers to get smarter about choosing what or who they are going to believe when it comes to how to get lean and fit. What we’ve been doing is just not working folks. What the dieting industry is selling isn’t working. It’s time to stop depending on the dieting industry to tell us what we should do since we aren’t getting what you want from them.

This is the reason I wrote my book, Mind Over Fat Matters: Conquering Psychological Barriers to Weight Management. I want people to be smarter consumers. Yes, I do want people to be healthy, lean and fit, but I also want them to learn what works and doesn’t work. The first step, however, is to face up and admit to yourself, and to the dieting industry, that if it hasn’t worked after so many years, you are going to have to let go of it. Let go of attempts that haven’t ever worked. It’s time to find another way – maybe it won’t sound like the panaceas the dieting industry has been selling, but maybe if it sounds like the panaceas that the dieting industry is selling, that’s the indication that it’s not going to work.  The “Fat American” needs to be a thing of the past.