The Simplest Weight Loss Tips No One Follows

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The Simplest Weight Loss Tips No One Follows

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I have a Cheez-It problem. You're not listening, I really

have a Cheez-It problem! While I enjoy all foods on occasion,

Cheez-It's are the food equivalent of crack cocaine for me.

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Distribution Date and Time: Fri Feb 17 02:47:45 EST 2006

Written By: Will Brink

Copyright: 2006

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The Simplest Weight Loss Tips No One Follows

Copyright © 2006 Will Brink

Diet Supplements Revealed

http://aboutsupplements.com

I have a Cheez-It problem. You're not listening, I really have

a Cheez-It problem! I have never met a Cheez-It I didn't like.*

Some people can't resist chocolate or ice cream, some people it's

pizza or some other food or sweet. While I enjoy all of those

foods on occasion, Cheez-It's are the food equivalent of crack

cocaine for me.

It takes all my willpower to pass up the isle where the Cheez-

It's reside on the shelves at my local grocery store. My ever-

loving girl friend rolls her eyes at me in shear disgust

when she sees how weak I am to the power of these little

crackers, which draw me in like a cheese flavored black hole.

'But you have given advice on nutrition to millions of people

Will, how could you of all people be so weak willed about some

little cheese flavored cracker?!? she says. I hang my head in

shame and avoid eye contact with her for the rest of the day'.

The point of this introduction is to point out we all have our

weaknesses and we are all human'even me. I find Cheez-It's to be

cheese flavored morphine!

This small problem got me to thinking. If there is one thing I

have learned after all these years of doing nutritional research,

writing countless articles on the topic of nutrition, and working

directly with people on their diets, it's this: it's rarely one

single thing a person does that is sabotaging their efforts to

lose fat and or gain muscle, but a bunch of little things that

have an accumulated effect.

There are some amazingly simple behaviors and strategies we can

all add to our nutritional goals and workout plans that will have

a positive effect. Using my own addiction to Cheez-It's as the

primary example, I am going to cover a few of these surprisingly

simple yet effective strategies. A few issues to keep in mind:

(1) Taken alone, these simple tactics will have very little

effect. Used alone without any other dietary changes and an

exercise plan, these strategies wont amount to much. However, as

I mentioned, it's often many minor mistakes adding up to a lack

of results for people, and taken in that context, these are some

simple mistakes that can be avoided, hopefully resulting in an

accumulated effect in a positive direction.

(2) I didn't invent any of these tips. They are some of the

oldest and simplest tips you will ever read. I don't even know

who first came up with them, and I bet most people have seen

these strategies in other places, such as various diet books,

articles, or web sites. I do however think that they may be so

old and so simple that most people with the best of intentions

about their nutrition and exercise plan, don't follow these

simple concepts.

These tips are more about behavior changes and psychology then

nutritional science, study results, or research. I have written

many articles based on the later topics, but this is not one of

those. If you are looking for more in-depth science oriented

information about nutrition, supplements, and fat loss or gaining

muscle, I suggest reading my ebooks on the topic and the many

free article on my web site.

Tip #1: Never Ever Go Food Shopping Hungry

This is one of the most effective strategies I know of to avoid

unwanted junk and various snacks from finding their way into your

shopping cart, which ends up in your home, which ends up on your

butt!

Make sure to eat something before you go food shopping and you

will be able to resist the junk that often finds its way into

your cart. If I go food shopping without a good meal in my

stomach, I often come home with a family sized box of Cheez-It's

and feel like sh* & for days after eating the entire box!

Human hunger and appetite are regulated by a phenomenally

complicated set of overlapping feedback networks, involving a

long list of hormones, psychological factors, and others way

beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say, we often make

snap decisions and impulse purchases with certain foods due to

one or more of these feedback loops being activated due to an

empty stomach while we shop.

Translated, your 'willpower' to resist junk foods will be much

greater if you eat something healthy at least 20-30 minutes

before you go food shopping. You can either plan your meal

schedule so that one meal is eaten before you go shopping, or

have a snack (at least 20-30 minutes before shopping) which will

have the desired effects.

A yogurt with some flax oil mixed in is a good choice, as is a

half cup of cottage cheese and a handful of walnuts or some other

nut. A protein shake or MRP will suffice, but solid food tends to

be more satiating.

Tip # 2: Never Keep Snack Foods In The House

This tip is a logical extension of tip number one. If it does not

make it into your cart at the food store, it's not in your house.

However, many people use excuses like 'I have snack foods for the

kids' or 'my spouse keeps a box of Oreo cookies in the kitchen

cupboard' as reasons they can't avoid the snacks that sneak into

their diets and sabotage their efforts.

Many of the foods we eat that we know we should not be eating are

based on an impulse. Impulse control goes a long way here but no

one will deny it's far harder to resist that impulse if your

favorite junk food is under your nose. That's human nature. When

I have an impulse for some Cheez-it's, I wont resist it well if

it's only a few steps to the kitchen vs. having to get in the car

to go get a box.

The former I can't resist, the latter I can. Remember an impulse

is defined as 'a sudden desire, urge, inclination.' That means

it's short lived and will go away given sufficient time, so it's

a matter of not having foods in your house that allow you to act

on the impulse while it lasts.

As for the excuse of the spouse, kids, etc. That is more an issue

between your kids and or your spouse. Should the kids be eating

that stuff anyway' No! I had a client tell me one day 'I keep

eating hot dogs 'cause I keep them in the house fort the kids.' I

said 'so you're Ok with feeding your kids foods you know to be

unhealthy for you and them?' She stopped feeding her family hot

dogs shortly after'.

....Bottom line here is, those foods should be occasional treats

for both kids and adults, not staple foods that can be found in

your kitchen. It's more an issue of teaching the kids good

dietary habits young so they don't end up overweight unhealthy

adults.

As for the spouse, I like to have some chips in the house, which

I can resist without a problem. That is, unlike the Cheez-it's, I

can walk past the chips without having to eat them all. I can

regulate myself with them. However, can't. Chips are to

her what Cheez-it's are to me, so I make it a rule not to keep

chips in the house.

Point being, your spouse needs to support your efforts by making

some small sacrifices. If you were an alcoholic trying to avoid

alcohol, you would (or at least should!) expect your significant

other to not keep booze in the house. If they wont support your

efforts here, then relationship counseling is in order or a long

talk, and I can't help you there; sorry!

Tip # 3: Eat Off Of Smaller Plates

The first two tips are common sense, this one is less so.

However, I find it helps, albeit not to a great extent. Again,

how much we eat is based on many variables. One of them is the

visual cues we get looking at the food we are about to eat. We

are extremely visually oriented creatures and part of deciding

how large an object is must be compared to other objects, in this

case, the food we put on the plate in comparison to the size of

the plate we put the food on. Some of you may remember this

little visual test from grade school.

Looking at these two horizontal lines below, which one is longer?

[image]

http://thephantomwriters.com/client-img/Brink-OpticalTest.png

Answer: both lines are identical in length. As you can see, the

bottom " plate " looks longer then top " plate " , yet they are the

same length. It's a visual illusion that shows how our brains are

set up to interpret certain visual cues. It is my experience that

people will put less food on their plate if they eat from smaller

plates as a smaller plate full of food looks like much more to

eat then a large plate with the same amount of food on it.

I know for myself I tend to put 2 slices of pizza on a small

plate and three on a large plate! Now this is only one minor cue

we have to self regulating how much food we eat, and other

feedback loops (i.e., hormonal, psychological, etc.) can kick in

and easily offset this strategy.

For example, you could simply come back for a second helping

using the smaller plates. However, it's my hunch (and it's only a

hunch as research is lacking here) that over the course of say a

month, a person may end up taking in fewer total calories using

this strategy as has been my (admittedly anecdotal) experience

with both myself and the many people I have given advice to over

the years.

Again, as already mentioned, taken alone, this strategy will

probably have no effects on your efforts to lose fat if there is

not a specific diet and exercise plan involved in the overall

equation. It is however one simple small change that may improve

compliancy to your efforts. It would be interesting to see a

study on this, but whatever effects it may have, would be subtle

and fairly small I suspect. Even so, over the course of a year

say, it may help.

Tip #4: Know Thy Self

Lesson here is, we are all human and we all have our weaknesses.

Trick is to know your weakness and develop strategies for coping

with them. How well do you know yourself' That is, do you know

what cues/triggers tend to set you off' Have you examined that

issue for yourself' It's essential to recognized the cues that

sabotage your efforts. We all have them. Find yours and take

steps to avoid them where possible.

For example, try making a list outlining the things you know tend

to set you off and how you react to the, then add a column for

how you could deal with it. For example you might write 'talking

to my crazy mother makes me anxious and I eat things I shouldn't

immediately after the phone conversation' which would be followed

by a suggestion of steps to change it, such as 'always eat a meal

right before talking to mom' and 'only take calls from mom when I

am ready and able to deal with her' and 'go for a walk

immediately after talking to mom to distress and give me time to

get over impulse to eat junk' and so on.

Develop coping strategies to your known triggers. I know for

example going food shopping on an empty stomach means I will most

probably end up with a large box of Cheez-it's in my house. I

have also found if I go shopping irritated over something I will

buy more foods I don't need as food is one of many ways we self

medicate looking for some comfort. Hence the term 'comfort foods'

which is commonly chocolate, ice cream, and so on.

Bottom line:

* Learn what your hot buttons are that lead to a negative

behavior

* Learn to identify when it's happening

* Develop strategies for coping with it.

How do you go about doing that' As entire books have been written

on that topic, my advice will fall short here. That journey is

also highly individual. For some it's working with a therapist or

behavioral specialist, for some it's reading a few good self-help

type books, and for some it's activities such as meditation,

joining support groups, and others. It's also a life long

journey.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is not as much to supply tips for

success in your fat loss endeavors but to actually remind people

of what is stated in the intro to this article: most people fail

in their fat loss/diet goals not due to a single mistake they are

making (with exceptions) but many small events that have an

accumulated effect that sabotages their efforts. If the tips in

this article help, all the better.

Some people are amazed how many extra calories slip into their

diet from snack foods that they are not accounting for, or the

fact they tend to take the elevator when they could take the

stairs, and so on. 99 out of 100 times the person that says 'I

have tried everything and nothing works' actually translates into

'I have not stayed on any one plan long enough for it to have an

effect and sabotaged it with small unaccounted for negative

habits and behaviors.' Now, if I can just get the funding for

that adult Cheez-it rehab center I want to have built'.

* Cheez-It's are a cheese flavored cracker made by Sunshine

foods and can be found on the shelves of any major food

store in the US.

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Will Brink writes for numerous health, fitness, medical, and

bodybuilding publications. His articles can be found in Life

Extension Magazine, Muscle n Fitness, Inside Karate, Exercise

For Men Only, Oxygen, Women's World, The Townsend Letter For

Doctors and many more. His website is http://www.brinkzone.com

Muscle Building Nutrition

http://musclebuildingnutrition.com

A complete guide bodybuilding supplements and eating to gain

lean muscle

Diet Supplements Revealed

http://aboutsupplements.com

A review of diet supplements and guide to eating for maximum

fat loss