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Whenever you start a new diet, you are usually very upbeat, focused, positive and eager to get on track, lose weight, and get fit. But as the months go by and weight loss week after week becomes more challenging, it can be very difficult to stay motivated, continue exercising and making healthy eating choices. Here are some tried and true ways that you can use to stay on track with your weight loss.

Sort through old photos of you and tape one on the refrigerator after finding a picture of yourself that you absolutely hate; a picture taken when you were at your heaviest weight. Tape it on the refrigerator or the cupboard where you will see it every time you go looking for a snack. Every time you see the picture tell yourself that you will never look like that again and this will help motivate you to not have that extra snack.

Set weight loss goals and rewards for yourself and write down these goals and rewards. Things like ‘When I lose five pounds I will buy that fabulous red dress’ or ‘When I can fit back into my skinny jeans I’ll treat myself to those boots that will look great with my skinny jeans’ or ‘When I lose thirty pounds I’m going to Florida for a vacation and I’m actually going to buy a swimsuit and go in the water.’

Work towards you goals! Keep track of your progress and reward yourself well when you accomplish another goal that you have set for yourself. Setting goals and rewarding yourself is a powerful way to stay motivated to diet because you will start to really see the positive results of all of your hard work.

Start a blog, name it My Weight Loss Week, and get a little digital support. Starting a blog will help you stay motivated to keep going because now you are accountable to your readers to stay on your diet and keep losing weight. Having a blog will also get you a lot of support from your readers in the form of helpful comments and emails to keep you motivated to stay on track.

A picture is worth 1000 words so flip through some of your favorite clothing catalogs and cut out photos of the clothes that you want to be able to wear when you are at your ideal weight. Pin them up on your closet doors, on your mirror, anywhere where you will see them. Stay focused on how you want to look when you are at your ideal weight, the time when your weight loss week in week out won’t be needed, then visualize this and it will help you make it happen.

Read by going online or read books that detail the stories and successes of other people who have lost weight successfully. Reading about the success of others will help inspire you to keep going. After all, someday someone might be reading about your struggle with weight loss as a way to stay motivated and to stay on their diet!

Try new things and do not get stuck in a food or exercise rut. Try new ways to exercise, considering a martial arts class, belly dancing, or take some friends to a roller rink or ice rink to skate for the afternoon or even go sledding or skiing. No matter what the season, there is sure to be some new outdoor or physical activity you can try to change your routine a little and take the focus off your weight loss week by week.

Avoid people who are unsupportive or that sabotage your weight loss efforts.  If you have a friend who always want to eat fast food or go get ice cream and tells you that it is OK to cheat on your diet ‘just this once’ or says other things that dampen your efforts, do not hang out with that person anymore. Do not let anyone hold you back from doing what you know is best for you – making healthy choices and enjoying your weight loss week in week out!

Warm regards

Rowena French

For the Team

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Rowena French loves healthy living through weight loss and exercise. Are you tired of fad diets and their useless promises?  There is only one formula for success. My free gift reveals how you can enjoy weight loss week after week. Read my guide.  

Over recent years, the focus in weight loss programs has been largely low carb or low fat diets.  In order to lose weight, you need to eat less calories than you need to use across each day. So regardless of what your diet or eating program is called, the bottom line about all successful weight loss is calories loss. 

Are you ready to figure out how many calories that you should take in each day? There are several ways to decide what your ideal calorie intake should be. Some are complicated and involve calculating your Base Metabolic Rate and then adding the amount of energy you normally put into physical activity and adding in how efficiently your body processes food.

You can go to a nutritionist who has tools to measure those values and get a very precise figure of how many calories you should be eating each day. But if you want a simpler formula to figure out how many calories you should be taking in each day to keep your body functioning, there is an easier way. First, you need to assess your activity level.

You are sedentary if you sit at a computer all day and do no more physical activity than walking around the grocery store. The best way to figure out how many calories you need to take in on a daily basis is to take your weight and multiply it by 14, so if you weigh 150 pounds, you would multiply 150 x 14 and get 2100, and need to take in 2,100 calories each day to maintain your weight. To lose weight through calories loss your intake will need to be less than this.

If you are moderately active, you don’t work out every day, but you might hit the gym two or three times a week or walk or bike ride around the neighborhood at night. To figure out how many calories you need each day, take your weight and multiply it by 17 so the total will give you the number of calories you should take in to maintain your weight. To lose weight through calories loss your intake will need to be less than this.

If you bike to work, go to the gym every day, or run five miles at night, you are active. In order to figure out your ideal calorie intake, multiply your weight by 20 and that is how many calories your body needs to keep working efficiently. To lose weight through calories loss your intake will need to be less than this.

A food diary is a great way to get an accurate idea of how many calories you consume in a day and figure out how many calories are in each of the things that you ate that day. There are lots of commercially available calorie counting books that give the total number of calories for a lot of common foods and even fast foods. Using a food diary you can accurately count the calories in a fast food meal and determine what and how much you can eat in order to lose weight through calories loss.

There are also many calorie counting websites that have the same information for free and will help you manage your calories loss and the impact of this on your overall weight loss. Counting calories may take a little time at the outset but you it becomes a lot easier and will help you control what you eat so you can lose weight and keep it off forever.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads.com

Rowena French loves healthy living through weight loss and exercise. Do you need the formula for lasting weight loss? There is only one answer. My free gift shows you how calories loss through healthy eating is just common sense! Read my guide.

My friend Bianca and her parents moved to live near us after leaving Italy nearly twenty years ago.  We are the ‘sisters’ that our parents failed to provide and we have always shared our ups and downs. Recently, Bianca has been the happiest I can remember as an adult when she solved her long term ‘weight worry’ by learning about portion control – how to manage the intake of her food portions on a daily basis.

Her battle of the bulge came as something of a surprise to both her parents as neither of them has been overweight.  Bianca’s weight was within the normal range until she left home and took a teaching job interstate.  Then she started to eat out with new friends and found that larger portions of the food she loved the most like pasta, cheeses and good wine gradually added pound after dangerous pound.

She married Joe and between her job and her family was never able to lose weight for long, despite following every diet that came her way. In her unsuccessful pursuit of better health and the body shape she craved, she cut out fats, carbs, fiber and sugar at different times. Her focus was always on what she ate (or did not eat), never the size of her food portions.

Bianca says that she stumbled across how to eat smart and gain control of her weight. Previous diets had failed because each was too complex and they all left her feeling exhausted. To avoid this and extra shopping and cooking, she decided to eat the same nutritious food she prepared for her family every day just less of it.

But what food portions should she eat? Bianca knew that a balanced diet provides us with the nutrients essential for a healthy body. She knew that health authorities like the American Diabetes Association, The American Heart Association and the American Medical Association all agree that the best approach to weight loss is a balanced diet and she knew she provided food from the four major food groups for her family.

And what of the size food portions on her menu?  The answer was surprisingly simple for Bianca because she decided that her Italian dinner plates decorated with flowers on the lip and a blue circle inside this would determine the size of her food portions for lunch and dinner.  Unwittingly, the blue circle became the boundary for her portion control.

Joe and the boys had their regular meals at dinner and Bianca joined them but only ate the food portions she could fit inside the blue circle. She ate a healthy breakfast and she kept a stash of almonds, carrots and fruit for her mid morning and afternoon snacks but limited the size of these too. 

Bianca started to lose weight and kept doing this across most of last year until she finally discovered the healthy, trim body that had left home all those years ago.  As a result, she has altered her eating habits by taking control of her life and eating the European Way like her parents. She eats smaller food portions, indulges periodically, savors the taste of her food and enjoys meal times.

Bianca says this has been the most natural way she has ever lost weight and she is confident that she will keep it off forever. The benefits of portion control have her back in charge of her body again and her food portions can even include an occasional serving of tiramisu – her favorite dessert.  Now she has established healthy, life-long eating habits, Bianca can have her cake and eat it too!

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads.com

Rowena French loves healthy living through weight loss and exercise. Is your weight out of control? Food Portions are the answer. My free gift helps you discover portion control so you can have your cake and eat it too! ‘Portion for Life’ tells you how.

Have you embarked upon every new fad diet known to mankind but still don’t really understand about ways to lose weight and keep it off?  Have you followed exercise routines to lose weight without success?  You’re not alone, but if this rings a bell for you, as it did for me, formally Queen of the Biggest Losers/Biggest Gainers, you are definitely in need of a different approach as I was.

My body looked pretty much the same before and after all my weight loss and exercise programs because I did not have the secret that many others need too. This stopped me from being able to shed my excess pounds permanently and look healthy. The solution has helped me keep a constant weight for many years and it really is very straight forward.

Obese bodies generally get that way over time from the small things we do on a daily basis.  Weight just slowly creeps on until we look fat and have way less energy than we need.  To reverse this unhealthy look and feel, to find reliable ways to lose weight and to reclaim our healthy body we need to change the behavior that brought this on.

How do we start to identify these ways to lose weight?  Slowly, just as we gained this weight, by making small, healthy changes over time.  Some are related to the nutrition in our diet, others to our exercise and lifestyle.

Introduce gradual changes into your day-to-day living.   Don’t survive the ‘pain’ of weight loss, then throw out any changes that brought this about when you reach your goal weight.  Don’t ignore the pounds that gradually slip back on.  Eating healthy foods, by cutting out just some of those that you know you should avoid and replacing these with healthier alternatives is just one of the ways to lose weight without feeling overwhelmed.

To avoid obesity and maintain the right body fat, balance the amount and type of food you eat with your daily exercise.  It is not a case of ‘Once past the lips forever on the hips’, but ‘Once past the lips without exercise’ will see this happen.

Exercise is one of the effective ways to lose weight and can start as small as walking to collect the Sunday paper from the store.  Whatever you decide to do to speed up your metabolism, start slowly and set achievable goals.  It is the ‘Hare and Tortoise’ story again and we know who won that race!

Always have a starting point against which you can measure your weight loss and changes to your body shape.  Check and record this when you begin your program.  Measuring body parts like your chest or hips provides other ways to see changes in your body shape even when your weight loss slows for a time.

Reward yourself for losing pounds and your ability to keep weight off with a treat containing fewer calories than eating chocolate or ice cream.  Treat yourself to a new pair of shoes or CD instead. It is amazing how shopping expeditions can become important ways to lose weight.

So, the good news is that if you review what you eat and how you exercise now then start to gradually tweak these, you will be able to lose those pounds that need shedding. The best news is; the changes you make to your behavior are key ways to lose weight and keep it off for the long haul in your new and healthy lifestyle. 

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads.com

Rowena French loves sharing the permanent solution to her own weight loss problem.  Ready to drop your extra 10 pounds?  My free gift includes ways to lose weight and keep it off.  101 'Everyday' Tips for Losing 10 Pounds is your guide.