Common question, present situation, a dilemma huh! you are not alone. Most of us trying to lose weight have faced this situation multiple times whereby we stick rigidly to our diet and then suddenly give-in to a temptation of having a chocolate pastry or a burger or a pizza or just a bag of our favourite chips.

The feeling of guilt and remorse is just too much and I honestly can identify with that. Most of the times when such a lapse happens on our part, we just sub consciously accept this as a predicament and stop following our diet.
Hey, it’s ok. We are human beings. A mistake is a mistake, treat it like one and move on. Our bodies cannot and will not convert everything we eat into fat. Nothing is lost forever so don’t worry and resume your diet.
To avoid further lapses, just follow a few ground rules that we are enumerating below. If you consciously incorporate the same in your lifestyle, shedding those stubborn kilos/pounds would become natural and effortless to you.

Manage your external influencers:
This is easier said than done, by external influencers we mean anything and everything which makes you overeat or eat when you aren’t hungry. This can be the list of restaurants that you pass on your way to the office/workplace, the advertising that you see on television, the supermarket aisles that you are exposed to while grocery shopping, the cookie /candy jars on your mantle so on and so forth. So largely we think that you have gotten a general idea.
Now tell us what is going on in your mind? I can’t stop advertising, I can’t stop shopping, this article is meaningless 🙂 right.
Wrong, think again, there may be an alternate route to the office, you may keep the cookie/candy jar in the kids cupboard, you may switch a channel instead on drooling over food, you may stick to veggies and fruit aisles in the supermarket. It is not as difficult as it sounds.
Okay, let us explain a very interesting scientific fact to you. Say you are looking at a delicious piece of cheese filled extra topping chicken pizza, now you are longing to eat it but you are resisting. In the meantime what is your body upto? your mouth has started salivating in anticipation of eating, your blood glucose levels are being decreased so as to make room for the additional food and interestingly these physiological changes have made you hungry which you weren’t before ogling over the pizza.
So, even the thought of consuming fatty foods will make you hungry and induce eating thereby augmenting weight gain.
So till the time we develop our defenses it is better to well avoid such places…….

Remove the options
Yes simple isn’t it, what is not there cannot be consumed. So if there are no chips, cheese, butter, soft drinks , cakes, pastries etc.. at home, how will you consume them?
This is actually a very important step. Think why you eat and when you eat. Chances are that whenever you open the refrigerator and there is a chocolate pastry right in front of you, you may take a little piece since well you a trying to lose weight 🙂 but a little piece is enough to throw your diet haywire. Hence cleanse your house and remove unhealthy, zero nutrition food stuffs as soon as possible.
If you have children and they want to consume the candies, the chips, the colas let them, but then you please ensure that the food stuffs are not within your reach and you actually have to make an effort to get them.
This small step will go a long way for you to stick to your diet and not give-in to your temptations.

Avoid snacking on processed foods in office
Workplace pressures and even boredom prompts us to pick on munchies. Vending machine snacks, cold cuts, biscuits etc are all fattening and just are feel good foods. We are not asking you to stop snacking but then lesser fat or fat free options can do the trick. Chips can be replaced with fruits, biscuits with sprouted salad. See, if you are serious about losing weight, you need to make a little effort that is for sure, without effort you would remain the way you are.

No go-back road
No go-back road means that you are consciously removing the option of going to your earlier size. Get the bigger size clothes away from you, no clothes no options and therefore your sub conscious mind absorbs the thought that sticking to the diet is the only way.
Start making a healthy choice.
Losing weight honestly is not sticking to a diet. Following a specific diet and craving for food is not going to work for you. What is important is to change your thought process, initially though it is going to be a conscious decision that everytime you want to snack, you would consciously pick an apple/orange as against biscuits or chips but then post some time it would become a habit and consuming high fibre, high on nutrition food will not only improve your health but would inculcate these habits in your children and near & dear ones too.

But take the first step and make a healthy choice.