Dieting Myths Demystified

Dieting Myths Demystified

If you have resolved to lose weight this year, you need to know what dieting strategies work. Many people will tell you not to eat late at night, or never eat between meals. This advice, is just plain wrong. Here are ten common myths dieting:

Eating late packs on the pounds: The kinds of foods you’re eating put on the weight, not the clock. Your body doesn’t process calories differently after dark. However, the foods that people tend to go for in front of the TV after dinner — chips, ice cream, chocolate treats, and the like — are usually high in fat and calories.

Consume fewer calories to achieve a breakthrough: You may share the common misconception that eating fewer calories can help you break through a weight-loss plateau. However, if you eat fewer than 800 to 1,000 calories a day, your body will conserve every calorie it can get. The only way to keep your metabolism purring is to exercise. When weight loss slows, walk a little longer, work out more frequently or more intensely, and don’t forget to eat.

Never have seconds: Instead of using a plate of food or a predetermined serving size as a yardstick for how much you should eat, try taking hunger and fullness cues from your body. Eating according to your appetite is much healthier. And when you eat slowly, recognizing when you’ve had enough is much easier.

Deny your cravings: Sometimes, the faster you give in and have a small portion of the food that you’re craving, the better off you are. Have a small serving of the food you crave and get over it.

Don’t eat between meals: Most people need to eat every three to four hours to avoid getting too hungry, which often leads to overeating. Dividing your calories into three meals and two or three snacks, instead of only three meals, can keep you well fueled for the day.

Eating breakfast makes you hungry all day: Many typical breakfast foods, while initially satisfying, are out of your system in about 30 minutes, and you need (and want) to eat again. Breakfast foods that have some protein and a little fat, in addition to complex carbohydrates and sugars, stay with you longer and give you the energy you need to make it through the morning. Whole-grain cereal with low fat or fat-free milk, an egg on toast, and even a fruity breakfast shake made with low fat or fat-free milk are good choices.

To lose weight, become a vegetarian: A vegetarian diet can be high in fat and cholesterol, low in fiber, or both. Many vegetarian foods, including cheese and nuts, are high in fat and calories. So cutting out meat and replacing it with other equally fatty vegetarian foods isn’t only a bad diet move, but it may also increase your chances for nutritional.

Fasting drops the pounds: Some dieters will tell you that fasting for a few days drops the pounds quickly and shrinks your stomach. You may drop pounds if you fast, but some of that weight is muscle and most of it is water. You need to eat protein foods, such as lean meat, eggs, low fat or fat-free milk, or legumes (beans and peas), or you’ll be thin and flabby, not thin and shapely.

You can eat everything that’s fat free: Fat-free foods aren’t calorie-free foods; check the Nutrition Facts panel on the food label. Many have just as many calories as the original versions, and a few have even more.

Some foods burn more calories than they contain: You may have heard this myth in regard to apples, grapefruit, and other fruits. Unfortunately that’s like returning from a trip before you left. Your body burns calories as it digests and metabolizes foods, but it’s only about 10 percent of the calories you need each day.

Learn to Understand Your Self Talk and Lose Weight

Learn to Understand Your Self Talk and Lose Weight

During this article I am going to be explaining why your self talk will actually help you to lose weight. Your self talk is your very own internal chatter box and is the voice that you use when you talk to yourself, that's right the one that's saying, 'I don't talk to myself'.

Now it's really important that you pay attention to the things that you do say to yourself because these statements that you give yourself will manifest into your life, for good or bad.

Think about it - Do you tell yourself that losing weight is easy or hard? Do you tell yourself that you have a sweet tooth and then wonder why you cannot resist chocolate? Note-thinking makes it so!

If you want to lose weight then the statements that you make to yourself must match that outcome. So over this next week, monitor the things that you do say to yourself and then write them onto a sheet of paper. That way at the end of the week you can then review this list and gain a clearer picture of the things which are currently stopping you from reaching your weight goal.

Your self talk is very similar to planting seeds into some very rich fertile. So just imagine now that in front of you was a plant pot which had inside it the richest fertile soil ever. Next imagine that this pot just grow whatever you planted into it, whether it was a beautiful rose or a dandelion weed. Now in a way your mind is very similar to this plant pot because your mind will act upon anything which is planted into it.

 

Now if you had some tomato seeds and you planted those seeds into that pot, what would grow? Yes tomatoes. Now if you picked one of those tomatoes, bit into it and came out in a rash, would the pot care? (Presuming the pot did think). Well no, it would probably think well you give me a tomato seed so I've just given you a tomato plant.

This scenario is very similar to what happens when you say a negative statement to yourself. Your mind plants this seed and then carries out the action. So if you say to yourself that you find it difficult to lose weight then your mind will just act upon that statement and make it difficult for you to lose weight.


So what would happen if you planted another tomato seed into that pot? Well yes you would get another tomato plant. The pot wouldn't think, 'I know you don't like tomatoes so I'm going to give you cucumbers'. No the pot will only grow what you plant into it and in a sense this is how your mind works.

So would wishing for Cumbers help even though you planted a tomato seed? Well no you will still only get tomatoes regardless of hard you wished for cucumbers.

This is a very common and is something that people who struggle with their weight very often do. They tell themselves that they find it difficult to lose weight (seed), wish they were slim and moan when the outcome does not match that wish.

So one of the keys to losing weight is first to understand what you are planting into your mind. Then once you are aware of what seeds you are planting in your mind you can then replace these thought patterns into something which matches the outcome that you want.

If we took this same approach with our plant pot we would in order to get cucumbers have to stop planting tomatoes seeds and start planting cucumber seeds instead. If we did this then we wouldn't have to wish for cucumbers because cucumbers is what we would get.

So over this next week really begin to monitor your self talk and discover if you're planting the correct seeds in your life.


------

Many more of these weight loss tips can be delievered to your email inbox by visting The Inside Out Approach and signing up to my free weekly newsletter.