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Dieters : When Moderation doesn't Work
By Janice Elizabeth Small
If there's one habit which will make you lose weight more than
any other it's reducing the amount you eat by eating only when
you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied rather than
stuffed.
You can usually lose weight with this habit no matter what type
of foods you eat - because we are generally eating far too much
of everything these days.
The temptation to eat too much is everywhere. Standard portion
sizes have grown out of all proportion to our needs so that the
mini muffins of today were the standard size of a few years ago.
A "tall" coffee is the smallest size you can get. Snack foods come
in multi-packs and jumbo bars. We get mounds of food served
up to us in restaurants and we are generally serving bigger
portions at home too. You simply get used to indulging in an
amount of food you can do without.
Most people can pick up on the portion size idea and reduce
their normal intake when they want to lose weight. They relish
being able to eat the foods they like, even if they are not eating
so much of it. They use a bowl, take a handful of tortilla chips
out of the bag and put the rest away. They leave half a muffin
on the plate (better in the trash than on their hips) and they
reduce the pile of food on their plate. They order less in
restaurants and leave what they don't need without a qualm.
This is great to avoid a feeling of deprivation that dieting so
often brings about. Reduce portion sizes by just a third and you
drop 500 calories or more from your daily intake losing about a
pound of fat (3500 calories worth) a week without making any
other changes. Although this is not the best way to eat healthily
- for that you'd be better switching foods to include more
nutrient-rich items, it does bring results without having to
change too much at once.
While this is all very well for many people, there are some who
struggle with this whole way of losing weight. That's the group
who crave a particular item or food group.
In this group, eating just small amount of the food they crave
leads to eating a packetful no matter how much they want to
eat in moderation. It may be the case with chocolate or other
high-sugar foods and sometimes with salty snack type foods.
In this case it's better to stay away from the food entirely for a
short time while you learn to control portion sizes using other
foods. Then, when you have a sense that you can control how
much you eat with other foods, you're losing weight and feeling
good, reintroduce a small portion of the food you used to crave
and see how you get on.
It can be a case of trial and error to get this right for your
circumstances. We are all different and have different emotional
and physical reactions to food. It takes longer for some than for
others to be able to cope with a particular craving. Experiment
with reintroducing the food after 3 or 4 weeks to start with -
that's generally enough to have seen good results from portion
control with the rest of your meals and snacks. If it leads to
eating too much then leave it for double that time before
retrying. Some people have given up eating chocolate or ice
cream forever because it's almost like an addiction but this is
unnecessary for most people once they get the moderation
habit.
Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small
About the Author
Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!
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| Some other articles by Janice Elizabeth Small | |
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