Why Your Diet May Not Be Working

Jennifer, a middle-aged single mother with one six-year-old daughter, has been skipping sweets for a few weeks now.  She’s also become a stickler for portion control.  She feels as if she’s eating less than ever, and she’s been diligently exercising for an hour at a time at least four days a week.  Yet, she hasn’t lost a single pound.  The question is, “Why?”

This is a dilemma which affects dieters the world over.  They think they are taking the steps necessary to lose weight, but nothing seems to be happening.  In essence, they are trapped in a dieting rut and they don’t know how to free themselves.  As a result, they become frustrated and depressed and may then engage in binge eating.

One of the problems with diets is that they are often standardized.  As a result, they don’t take into consideration your individual physiology and metabolism.  They provide a cookie-cutter approach to weight loss—an approach which may not work in your individual case.  As a result, an increasing number of people are turning to dieticians to formulate a person weight loss strategy for them.  This process has been made easier through the Internet, where you can correspond with a dietician any time of the day or night via e-mail.  The dietician can also act as your personal coach, helping you through your dieting dilemmas.

Another reason that you may be failing at your diet is because of a lack of support.  You may have family members who can eat whatever they want and seemingly not gain a pound.  As a result, they may fill your refrigerator with junk food, leading you into temptation.  Also, you may feel as if you have no one to turn to in order to discuss your weight problems.  In order to solve this problem, many individuals look to psychotherapists to help them with their food-related issues.  This can be particularly important if an individual has turned to purging in an effort to combat their weight problems.  Bulimia is a serious disease which must be treated in order to ensure the good health of the patient.  Thankfully, there are a number of treatment programs throughout the U.S. specifically focusing on bulimia.

Yet another reason for diet failure is hidden calories.  You may literally be consuming calories and not even realize it.  For instance, the frappucinos that are so popular today are loaded with calories—as many as 600 in a single serving!  You may also be indulging in sugary sodas—another source of extra calories.  By taking a few simple steps, such as eliminating the exotic coffee drinks from your diet and substituting skim milk for whole milk, you may be able to eliminate the hidden calories that are denying you dieting success.

Lack of consistency can also be a diet-killer.  You might go on a diet for a while, then quit before you’ve made any measurable progress.  It’s only natural to want to see quick results.  The problem is that healthy weight loss involves losing only a couple of pounds a week.  That means you’ll have to stay on your diet for months before you see appreciable weight loss.  Discouraging?  It can be, but if you keep a positive attitude you can achieve your ideal weight.

You may also be more successful in your dieting if you consider it to be a lifestyle change.  Therefore, your diet becomes a meal plan for life.  This means that you must change the way you look at food.  It is designed to be fuel for your body, and nothing more.  As a result, you should not turn to food to make you feel better or to provide you with a sense of comfort.  A lifestyle change implies commitment; it means that you are prepared to follow the plan for the long haul.  If you feel as if you cannot be on your diet for any appreciable length of time, perhaps it’s time to consider a different diet.   Your aim ultimately should be not simply to lose weight, but to become healthier.  A fad diet will not allow you to reach that milestone.   Therefore, you must choose your diet carefully.

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Why Do We Cheat On Our Diets?

If only we could solve this question, the world (for many) would be a better place! Well, the reality is that there are real answers to this question that will apply to many people. It will take a good dose of reality and a brave heart to stop denying what really happens. Read on to discover some answers that may change your life forever and give you the impetus to lose weight and keep it off!

Justification?

Being overweight can be used as an excuse for being unhappy, especially when you do not do anything to help yourself. Subconsciously, over-eating is a comfort for many people and this then allows them to hide behind their weight problem and helps them to justify rejection and avoid being hurt. They can then shift the blame of rejection on their weight-problem, without addressing other aspects of their fears. Sometimes it seems easier to hide behind your “weight problem”, than address other matters where you may have a greater fear of failure.

Eating Without Thinking?

If you are concentrating on another activity while you are eating you are more likely to overeat because you are not fully aware of how full you are feeling. This factor can be difficult to change because it is not a conscious action. Try to only eat when you don’t have a lot of other distractions. Sit down, eat slowly and enjoy the food you are eating, and remember that it is not always necessary to go back for seconds. It takes 20 minutes for food to reach your stomach and for your brain to register that you are full.

Cravings?

The famous “Pavlov’s dogs” were conditioned to eat at the sound of a bell, and we human are much the same when it comes to habitual cravings. If you wonder why you always feel like a chocolate when you sit down to watch a movie, or you have to have a box of popcorn….think again. You are not necessarily craving these foods because you are hungry, but rather consider force of habit. During the time when you have a craving, try to ask yourself whether you are really hungry or not. If you are hungry, reach for a low fat snack rather than a chocolate bar or bag of crisps.

Indulging?

Eating or thinking about food can be a distraction from your troubles and you may therefore be unnecessarily over-eating. Emotions and hormones can trigger certain cravings, for example, if you are feeling low, chocolate and carbohydrates assist the production of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin helps you feel happier. This is why we might crave sweet or starchy foods during times of sadness or stress.

If you identify with any of the above factors, you could be on your way towards discovering what is triggering you to overeat.

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Your Anchors & How They Keep You From Your Weight Loss Goals

Anchors are the reasons that attach you to any behavior. Your anchors originated from extremely strong repetitive memory associations, which are triggered by your five senses of hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch. You are constantly being anchored in different ways through out your life. For example, when you hear a certain song and it brings back a memory of a certain person, or a place in time, this is an audio anchor or an anchor triggered by your sense of hearing.

Have you ever met someone for the first time and noticed that something about them reminds you of someone or something else? This is a visual anchor or an anchor triggered by your sense of sight. Until now all of your anchors have been installed in your subconscious mind by someone else or by accident and in most cases you were not even aware of them. Now for the first time through the process of Burris MIND/FITNESS, you can learn how to anchor a reaction or behavior you want on purpose and consistently get the results you want over and over, until you are assured of attaining your weight goal.

It is important to understand that your subconscious mind can be triggered into a negative anchored behavior without even pausing to consider what it is doing. It is this type of behavior that is responsible for your worst eating habits. I refer to this type of behavior as “No Thought Eating.” At the time of “No Thought Eating” your subconscious mind has given no consideration to what it is doing and your conscious mind is not even aware that anything is taking place.

A good example of this is when you are feeling fearful, guilty angry, or bored. You immediately look for something to eat, even if you are not hungry. In most cases you will look for what you refer to as your comfort foods, which is anything that is high in sugar, fat or both. Let us say you come across a bag of cookies, without any hesitation you eat one and before you realize it, you are eating the whole bag. Sometime during this “No Thought Eating” binge your conscious mind awakens to what is taking place. You stop your eating binge and now along with feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored; you are also probably a little nauseous. The first thought that pops into your mind is: “Why Did I Eat That? I wasn’t even hungry!” How many times have you asked yourself this self-defeating negative question “Why Did I Eat That?”

The second you asked yourself this question, your subconscious mind is triggered into action to find an answer, which in turn produces a correlating picture. Surprise, surprise what did it find in your subconscious eating behavior program? It found you ate the cookies because you were feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored. Of course it did because that is exactly how you were programmed as a child to react to fear, guilt, anger, or boredom. Once again your subconscious mind will take this answer and the correlating picture of you being overweight and use it to anchor you even deeper to your childhood program.

Here is where the fun starts, what you have to do in order to change your existing negative anchored behaviors of “No Thought Eating?” You simply restructure your question from its negative form of “Why did I eat that?” to a positive form question of “How can I stop this no thought eating when I am feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored?” Your subconscious mind will now produce a positive answer to your new positive question such as: When you are feeling fearful, guilty, angry or bored, find an activity you enjoy in place of eating. Once again these new answers will produce empowering correlating pictures that will move you toward your weight goal. It is truly that simple, positive empowering questions = positive empowering results.
From this time on, it is essential that you are always conscious of your inner voice, thereby insuring that all of your self-questions are positive ones and insuring that you always maintain a positive emotional state.

Regardless of weather your goal is a change in diet for weight loss, an increase in your fitness program or to take control of an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. In the end the question you need to ask yourself is…Am I completely happy with the mind running itself or do I need to take control of it? If your answer is I need to take control of it, then Burris MIND/FITNESS is the answer.

The health of your body is dependent on your mental health and taking control of the subconscious is the key to lasting permanent change of any behavior.

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Fewer Ingredients Means Less Bodyfat

If you’re looking for a way to jack your fat-burning sky-high, here’s a great tip for you: focus on single ingredient meals, especially after 6:00pm.

Note:  this is not a long-term strategy,nor is it something you should do every day. Aim for consuming 3-4 meals per week at first that contain only one ingredient.

Guess what ingredient that is?

–Protein.–

Eating hard proteins foods as I describe in “Simply Eat!” is a great way to get lean. You can do this using animal or vegetarian based protein foods.

The key is one ingredient. Consume your normal meal’s calories all in protein. This will help elevate your thermogenic rate and keep that fat burning.

If you select a second ingredient, select celery — and lots of it. Celery will fill you up and help expend even more calories in the fat-burning
process.

For more tips on why “ingredients”, not calories, are the key to long-term fat-burning and success, go here now –

Simply Eating Meal Plans

This will tell you all you need to know.

Sincerely,

William Redants

What To Eat To Lose Weight

If you are trying to lose weight, choose food based on their weight-to-calorie ratio. You want to eat food that weighs a lot but has few calories and avoid food that is light in weight but hefty in calories.

Fruits and vegetables are the big winners in the heavy weight-low calorie department, according to Tufts University. They weigh a lot because of their fiber and water content and yet do not have many calories. For example, one cup of cantaloupe or ‘melon’ weighs 5.5 ounces but only has 56 calories. A cup of cooked spinach weighs six ounces but only has 42 calories.

Now, compare that to six cups of buttered popcorn that only weighs three ounces and contains 420 calories or, even worse, one ounce of potato chips that has 152 calories (if you ate four ounces, you would be inviting 608 calories to feel at home in your fat cells). That’s what I call “small but terrible”.

Most snack food doesn’t weigh much but sure have a lot of calories. This means you can eat a lot of them without feeling full and without realizing it take in many excess calories that you don’t need.

Most cookies weigh ½ ounce and contain 50 calories. Eat six cookies and you only have three ounces of weight but you’ve racked up 300 calories. 1.5 ounces of a chocolate bar contain 220 calories. A small croissant only weighs two ounces but has 230 calories.

According to the New Zealand University study, food that is light in weight but high in calories is probably the worse kind of food to eat if you are trying to lose weight. It’s sort of like ‘double jeopardy’ – you are still hungry but you have already eaten many calories.

Choose lower-fat choices of the same weight food. There can be a world of difference between the caloric consumption of two people eating the same weight and type of food. How is this possible?  Easy, if you consider the way the food is cooked or prepared.

Here are some examples (all of them weigh 3.5 ounces). Boiled potatoes have 62 calories compared to french fried potatoes with 328 calories.  Sardines in tomato sauce contain 127 calories while sardines in oil have 372. Tuna flakes in water have 95 calories while tuna flakes in oil have 309. You get the picture.

Avoid the “light weight-high calorie” way of dieting.  I know many people who don’t want to eat regular sized meals because they think that if their stomach feels heavy, they are eating a lot of calories. Therefore, they think that by eating something light like crackers, they will lose weight.

What they don’t realize is that just because a food is light doesn’t automatically mean it contains few calories. One could easily eat nine crackers (420 calories) and still not feel full because nine crackers only weigh three ounces. Believe it or not but you could have a satisfying meal of ½ cup steamed rice, a cup of cooked spinach, a small piece of fish, and a cup of cantaloupe for less calories.

This complete meal would weigh a satisfying 18.5 ounces and only “cost” you 378 calories. By making the right food choices, you can cut down on unnecessary calories without starving yourself and feeling deprived.

You should also cut down somewhat on your carbs, but don’t cut them out completely!  Because effective weight loss depends on exercise and activity, without some carbs in your diet, you won’t have the energy you’ll need to effectively burn off calories.

What you do need to do is begin with a “baseline diet” that dictates at least half of your calories come from vegetables, fruits, natural starches, and whole grains.  The rest of your diet should consist of low-fat proteins like fish, chicken, and lean beef.

You need to balance out your carbs with your protein stay away from those carbs at night.  Periodically, you want to take “carb-up” days to get your energy levels up.

When we talk about protein, many people wonder just how much is enough or how much is too much.  In general, experts say you should eat 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight per meal.

That might seem like a ridiculously large amount of protein, but remember, we’re talking about LEAN proteins.  Plus, eating protein speeds up your metabolism and accelerates weight loss.

This might be a good time to talk about portion sizes.  As a general rule of thumb, you should never eat a serving that is larger than your clenched fist.  The good news about this is that you’ll be able to eat enough to get full without overdoing it.

Cravings might be the worst part about weight loss.  Let’s say you love chocolate chip cookies like I do.  If you’re craving a chocolate chip cookie, denying that craving will only make it stronger.

Instead of not having the cookie, go ahead, just don’t overdo it.  Simply have one instead of three.  You can indulge in your favorite foods as long as you keep it within reason.

Most experts agree that the traditional three square meals a day shouldn’t be part of a healthy diet.  In fact, you should eat more meals every day.  Doesn’t that sound like great news?!

The idea here is that you overeat when you are overly hungry.  To combat that hunger, you should eat more meals with smaller portions rather than fewer meals with larger portions.

For women, it is recommended you eat five meals a day and for men, you should eat six.  Try to make these meals a minimum of 2 hours apart to insure you don’t get too hungry.

The benefits will reveal themselves.  By doing this, you are accomplishing the following benefits:

• Faster metabolic rate
• Higher energy
• Less storage of body fat due to the smaller portions
• Reduced hunger and cravings
• Steadier blood sugar and insulin levels
• More calories available for muscle growth
• Better absorption and utilization of the nutrients in your food

But you need to make sure you eat the right kinds of foods.

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