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Many fad diets quickly gain a massive following because of the rapid weight-loss experience they claim. The Grapefruit Diet of years ago touted spectacular results from eating grapefruit before every meal. Advertising the health benefits and fat-burning potential of grapefruit had dieters scrambling for the produce section! This was truly a ‘one hit wonder’ to the over-weight individual. It restricted the type of food to be eaten and failed to include correct sized portions of the wide range of foods we need to eat to stay healthy.

The Grapefruit Diet is a 12-day diet plan that restricts caloric intake and requires eating a grapefruit prior to every meal. Although it talks about the weight-losing properties of grapefruit, the real weight loss comes from the restriction of calories. Its proponents say that you can lose 10 pounds in 12 days. Sound good? Sure it does, but imagine what happens once you go off the diet as you crave calories and when you ignore the size of your food portions? Rapid weight loss is not a long-term solution.

The Atkins Diet has weathered the diet storms for years and gained popularity in the late 90’s. Then in 2001, the ‘New’ Atkins Diet surfaced and promoted low-carb bars and food products from Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. Unfortunately, this diet still restricts the intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy foods instead of modifying the size of the food portions we eat. Carbohydrates are on the taboo list of The Atkins Diet.

This diet defies everything we have learned from nutritionists and scientists over the years about the importance of a healthy diet, including grain products, vegetables, fruit, dairy, and meat. No single food category provides everything the body needs and the Atkins Diet is no exception.

The South Beach Diet bans fruit, bread, potatoes, pasta, and baked goods during the first phase. You can supposedly lose 13-15 pounds in the first two weeks as you ‘detoxify’ your body. You then add ‘good’ carbs back to your diet and weight loss slows down but continues. And finally, during the last phase of this diet you can eat anything in moderation.

As you can see from the strategy, the first two weeks are really a teaser to get you motivated to diet, but that period of rapid weight loss is unhealthy and can cause serious health issues. The real success comes when you re-incorporate all food groups back into your dietary plan and exercise portion control.

The Zone is a very complex diet plan that requires weighing, measuring, and calculating percentages of food groups consumed each day. It is time consuming to manage and becomes frustrating and difficult to maintain. Although the recommended proportions of food groups consumed are healthy, the process is difficult to maintain. Modifying the size of your food portions from the beginning would be much healthier and far less complicated.

As unlikely as this may sound, dieting in an attempt to control weight is often associated with weight gain. Those people who diet, generally gain more weight than those who never restrict. Healthy weight management means following a healthy meal plan, not a restrictive one and can be achieved through portion control.

You can reach the same weight loss goal as each of these ‘diets’ just by controlling the size of the food portion you eat. Losing weight can happen naturally and healthily not unnaturally when you feel deprived and unhappy. Best of all it can include the right sized portions of the all the food types you should eat and like to enjoy.

Do you remember another Weight Loss journey that you embarked upon that just did not worked for you (or probably anyone else) over the long term? I’d love to hear from you about these as well as and any weight loss success of your own or by others.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For the Team @MightyDigitalDownloads.com

Rowena French uses responsible portion control to successfully manage her own weight and her family’s health. Tired of dieting without success? Read more about the benefits of portion control in my other blog posts. Sign up to my free magazine to learn more about how to modify your food portions for healthy, permanent weight loss. If you haven’t already subscribed to my free product sample, watch my preview video for more information about the whole portion control package.

Dieting is no fun for people who set themselves up to fail, when they start a new diet and then tumble right into one or more of the most common dieting pitfalls. Recognizing these pitfalls and learning how to avoid them can mean the difference between staying on track with your diet or falling back into your old, unhealthy eating patterns. So, avoid the traps below and start your calories loss diet the right way, enjoying a healthy weight loss that will be a welcome part of your lifestyle.

Making radical changes to your eating habits happens all the time on diets, especially fad diets. If you go on a diet where you can only eat fruit, or only eat protein, or you must cut out all of one of kind of food it will be very difficult for you to stay on that diet. When you make changes to the way you eat you should make them gradually. If you make an extreme change to the way you eat and you do it fast then you will deprived and you will start to crave foods, making it more likely that you will go off your diet.

Setting unrealistic goals is tempting especially as, when you first start dieting, you might lose anywhere from five to ten pounds in the first couple of weeks. When that happens, of course you feel like the diet is great and you want that kind of weight loss to continue but most of the time early weight loss is all water weight. Real weight loss does not happen that fast. Experts say a healthy rate of weight loss is one to two pounds per week. So if you tell yourself that you want to lose ten pounds a week every week you are setting yourself up for disappointment. If you begin to feel disappointed and believe you are failing on your calories loss diet, you are more likely to give up on it and go back to your unhealthy lifestyle.

Using food as a reward is a real pitfall to be avoided because one of the most common ways that we all reward ourselves is food. How many times have you told yourself ‘I stuck to my calories loss diet all week so one cheeseburger will not hurt me’? Well that cheeseburger will hurt you. In the long run, it will be just more calories that you need to burn off. Instead of rewarding yourself with food for a job well done, take the same amount of money that you would have spent on a food treat and spend it on a new blouse, a new lipstick, a book, a new CD, or something else that will motivate you to keep going on your weight loss journey.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads.com

Rowena French has lost weight and wants you to warn you of dieting pitfalls. Tired of falling into traps on your diet? Want to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!  

Sadly, emotional eating can interrupt your healthy eating and prevent you from losing weight on a consistent basis. Too often our efforts to lose weight come unstuck when we indulge in emotional eating. Using these tips and tricks can help you control your emotional eating, stay on your calories loss diet and enjoy long term weight loss.

Know if you are really hungry especially the difference between being physically hungry and just eating out of emotion. If you have been an emotional eater your whole life you might not understand the difference so learn to recognize that when you are really hungry your stomach will growl and you will feel a little weak and tired. That is your body’s way of saying that it needs fuel, so try letting yourself get really hungry before a meal just so that you can feel what it feels like when your body is hungry.

Recognize your emotional eating triggers by keeping a little notebook and a pen with you and write down when you feel like eating and what you want to eat and soon you will start to notice a pattern emerging. Do you always crave fried food after a meeting with your boss instead of meals you would eat on a calories loss diet? Do you want cake the minute you walk in the door after the evening commute or do you need a double cheeseburger at lunch just to get through the afternoon?

Identifying the situations and the times of the day that make you crave certain foods is the key to stopping emotional eating so if you know that you will crave something sweet when you get home to dull the stress of your trip, you can find another way to handle that stress that does not involve food. Maybe you need to listen to music for 15 minutes after you get home, or have a cup of tea with a calories loss snack like low fat cheese on a cracker as you read the newspaper, or maybe a hot shower will help.  Find another way to alleviate the stress that makes you want to eat something sweet because dealing with that stress in a healthier way will help you lose weight and manage your stress more effectively.

Do not buy comfort food because if it is not in the house, you will not eat it; it is just that simple. When you are feeling blue and you want something sweet or something fried as a comfort, if it is not in the house are you really going to take the time to drive to the store and buy this comfort food or go to the fast food restaurant to get something? Most people will not most of the time, so if you are craving something and you do not have it in the house you will look for a substitute rather than going out to buy whatever it is you are craving.

Do not use food as comfort and instead of reaching for the ice cream when you are depressed or lonely, find other ways to comfort yourself. Call a friend, take a hot bubble bath, treat yourself to a manicure, write in a journal to try and discover what is making you sad or lonely. There are hundreds of ways you can comfort yourself besides reaching for food so learn to use other things to get you through a tough day and this leaves room for you to continue to eat calories loss meals when you need to.

Keep healthy food in the house because if you have healthy snacks in the house you can use those as a substitute for comfort food when a craving hits. Instead of candy bars, keep granola bars in the cupboard and instead of chips, keep popcorn or sliced veggies or other calories loss foods around because making healthy substitutions for the foods you crave is a very practical way to deal with emotional eating. After all, cravings happen but eating healthy snacks in place of the high fat, high calorie comfort food is a practical and responsible way to deal with food cravings when they happen.

Wait 30 minutes and when a craving does hit, wait it out by setting a timer, looking at your watch, whatever you need to do. But wait a full 30 minutes before acting on that craving. If you still are craving that food after 30 minutes, allow yourself to have a half portion of it, but you will find that usually after 30 minutes that craving will disappear.

Get exercise because exercise is not just good for burning calories as when you exercise, your brain releases serotonin and endorphins, which make you feel good and make you happy. Twenty minutes or more of exercise can trigger the same feeling of peace and happiness and well-being that you get from food. Emotional eating is not responsible for your entire weight gain, but it can be a factor in why it is hard for you to make a consistent weight loss. Using these tips and tricks to control your emotional eating will help you stick with a calories loss diet and might be the way for you to start losing weight and keeping it off.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads

Rowena French recognizes how emotional eating can sabotage weight loss programs. Tired of dieting without success?  Need to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

A very common problem that stops people from successful weight loss is using food as a reward. For adults, almost all social activity revolves around food or drink so it is easy to associate food with celebration. Generally the cake, cookies and ice cream we eat at celebrations and wash down with equally celebratory champagne is not the type of food that we would include on a calories loss diet in a serious effort to regain our healthy body.

Did you win a big contract at work that the boss will probably take you out to lunch to celebrate? Do you have an important anniversary coming up when your spouse will probably make reservations at a nice restaurant? As there always seems to be a reason to celebrate in our lives, it is not surprising then that people use food to reward themselves for accomplishments.

Maybe you reward yourself for working out every day with a milkshake or a beer at the end of the week or you think that since you have been really good about watching what you eat all week you can have cake on Saturday. The trouble is, all these extra calories and small treats add up fast, and you can sabotage your calories loss diet by using food as a reward. If you really want to change these associations and behaviors, you need to acknowledge your natural disposition to reward your self with food and re-program yourself to celebrate in other ways.

Decide why you use food as a reward, whether it is a habit you have developed or if it comes from one of your family traditions. As soon as you understand why you reward yourself with food, you can take steps to modify your behavior, either alone or with the assistance of a therapist.  Many of the attitudes we have towards food come from childhood when parents offered candy to kids to stop crying or to eat their vegetables.

Make a point of not rewarding yourself with food the next time you have cause to celebrate.   Instead of celebrating an achievement at work, or a special event at home, instead of going for dinner, drinks or even coffee and cake, go shopping instead, pamper yourself with a spa treatment spa or even go to a movie or a play. Rewarding yourself with treats like these will help you feel pleased with yourself and you will have the added bonus of sticking with your calories loss diet and continuing to lose weight.

Take some time to select rewards that are long lasting because when food is your reward, the good feelings associated with this generally cease at the conclusion of your meal. Instead, of short term food rewards that will sabotage your efforts to lose weight through your calories loss eating, buy yourself something nice that you can use for a long time and that will remind you of your success every time you see it. Clothes are a great long term reward or you can get a manicure or pedicure, a facial, buy yourself a new book or a new CD or buy all the magazines you want and curl up in bed for a whole morning reading them.

Find places for celebrations near you that are not restaurants even if this requires some changes in your thinking because most of our lives revolve largely around eating and drinking. Instead of restaurants find places where the focus is more on what you do rather than what you eat and play golf, go bowling, take in a play, go to a movie or take part in any entertainment that do not focus on food. You will be surprised about how others you know will enjoy the prospect of fun without wall to wall food and drink.

Avoid situations in which food is made the center of the celebration as much as you can and remember that your long term goal is long term weight loss. If you have no choice, on occasions like office parties or weddings, join in the celebrations by interacting with the people around you or enjoying the music, rather than concentrating on the meal itself. Look for food items that can be part of your calories loss diet and enjoy the ‘win win’ outcome of being part of the celebration without compromising your journey to a healthier body and life.

Warm regards

Rowena French

For The Team

mightydigitaldownloads.com

Rowena French avoids food rewards in her weight loss and exercise programs. Tired of dieting without success?  Need to reach your weight loss goals? My free gifts show you how calories loss is the simple answer. Read my guide, listen to my audio book!

Our cute-as-a button niece Ally came to live with us this year. She is 18, has just started College and is living away from home for the first time.

She is trim, outgoing and lots of fun.  Her boyfriend is devoted to her. She’s smart, has a great sense of fashion and she’s very conscious of her appearance.  At first glance you think she didn’t have a problem in the world!

We’re discovering more about each other every day. We respect her privacy and want her to enjoy living with us. But we’ve discovered some things she’d rather not discuss have needed airing.

Not long ago her bathroom washing revealed an aspect of her life new to us.  All her towels were covered with white stains. They were ruined and needed replacing.

I asked her what might have caused the discoloring.  She looked embarrassed and vague, had no answer but said ‘I always used white bath towels at home’.  The towels were replaced with the requested white. As I was arranging this, the penny ‘dropped’. Peroxide was the culprit.

Ally was using skin care products containing peroxide to treat her acne.  No wonder she spent more time in her bathroom than any other room in the house! No wonder the towels needed replacing and no wonder white was the only colored towel she had used at home.

At first I was surprised at how hard she’d tried to hide this from us. Then I recalled how outbreaks of acne leave adolescents so exposed and vulnerable. Ally’s response to my question mirrored the deep embarrassment that most kids feel as they try to cover up or control their skin blemishes.  Just when they’re feeling most self conscious about their appearance and trying to fit in with others, acne can appear and ruin everything!

It is generally believed that our genes and hormones impact on our chances of developing acne.  Sometimes skin care products can impact on acne along with stress.  According to the American Academy of Dermatology, an estimated 80 percent of all people between the ages of 11 and 30 have acne outbreaks at some point.

We’re pleased that Ally has found a reliable guide to help control her acne.  Thankfully she didn’t follow the myriad of myths about remedies for skin blemishes.

We notice that even though she is well informed, Ally chooses not to discuss the prevention of her acne with us.  We’re OK with this. Our task is to ask no further questions, provide white towels, and allow her to keep doing what she seems to be managing well.

Warm regards

Rowena 

From The Team

http://mightydigitaldownloads.com 

To discover more about ways to prevent and treat acne and blemishes you will find help in The Complete Guide to Acne: Prevention, Treatment and Remedies.

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