Ease Into Your Diet

Posted April 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Donnell Peavy

Section: His Health, Lifestyle Health, His Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Diets

Something I see a lot of is people starting a diet, be it some new fad diet or just eating healthier foods. For as many people as I see start these diets, I also see about 80% of them stop in less than two months. I hear various complaints from “It was just too hard,” and “I could only eat lettuce and jell-o for two weeks!” to “That food tasted like cardboard.” By slowly making changes, you will get yourself used to the new tastes, rather than forcing yourself to cope with it all at once.

And three things I noticed that all of these people have in common are:

1. They are all complaining about taste. 2. They all made the change instantly; one drastic change. 3. Keeping the same diet, yet in more reasonable sized portions was never considered as an option.

Changing of the diet is not an easy task for most people – it’s like trying to quit smoking cold turkey. If you are used to shoveling burgers and kool-aid in your mouth, do you REALLY think that you will easily be able to completely stop eating them in favor of carrots and tofu? Unlikely. Ease your way into it, like a smoker eases himself out of the habit – if you eat three burgers per day, only eat one. Then switch to turkey burgers, etc. The taste buds have feelings too…well, okay, no they don’t, but you get my point. 

Another thing to consider is portion size. You don’t have to eliminate pizza from your diet, for example, but you don’t need to eat seven slices either. Keep it reasonable. This alone may be enough of a cutback to effect weight loss.

Be kind to your taste buds and consider gradual changes. By doing so, you will be able to still enjoy the foods that you love and lose weight at the same time. What could be better than that?

Research sources and for more information: [picture]