If you are overweight, you may be wondering how to get started in becoming a healthier version of you. Many people get stuck even before they start, and quickly lose the motivation and goals to follow through.
The first key thing to remember is that diets do not work. While they might help you to lose weight at first, they are only a temporary solution. Once your finish your diet and go back to your old habits, the pounds will start to return again.
But where do you start? There are so many weight loss options available – Jenny Craig, Atkins, Weight Watchers, etc. While these programs do help people to lose weight, I think that they focus too much on selling their prepackaged foods. The programs can be quite expensive, and they miss out on an important part of developing a healthier lifestyle – learning about how much you should eat for your size.
If you are a mother, eating these prepackaged foods while cooking other meals for the rest of your family is difficult. Why not develop meals for the whole family that are nutritious? If you are going to eat healthy, shouldn’t the rest of your family also eat healthier meals? Make it a family experience – develop healthier eating habits for everyone in the family. (I know that it can be difficult to get children to change old eating habits, but with some perseverance, even the kids can grow to develop better habits.)
Once you have decided to change your lifestyle, you will need to create a plan. Go through your pantry and get rid of foods high in sugar and saturated fats. Then go shopping and stock your pantry and fridge with lots of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
When planning your foods, you need to know exactly how many calories you should be eating. You can use the Calorie Calculator on this site to determine the right amount of calories for your height and weight.
It is essential that at first you keep track of your food intake. While it may seem to be a lot of trouble, the time commitment is small. You can use a program such as SparkPeople to track your intake. You don’t need to keep tracking forever, but even if you do it for about a month or so, you will learn a lot. You will probably find lots of hidden calories that you didn’t realize you were eating! I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this step. Numerous studies have proven that people who track their food lose more weight than people who do not.
Adopting healthier eating habits is not only good for you, but it is good for your whole family!