Mental: How to Combat Eating Disorders
It is estimated forty-five million Americans go on a diet in a year. However, given the current rates of obesity presently, it’s obvious that the success rate is relatively low.
So, the first thing that you should do is to ditch the word ‘diet’ completely out of your life. Not only does the word have relations with negativity, but it also usually means that you are only doing it for a short amount of time, mostly cutting the calories of your meals as much as possible.
This type of thought process really wants to make dietitians upset, as this is not the answer to losing weight. Cutting calories leads to weight loss, plenty of diets cut calories concerningly low, and they get first, at least in the beginning. You cannot expect to get healthy results in the long term.
Once you no longer get those short-term results, continuing to under-eat is a terrible idea that will eventually leave you feeling awful, make you feel drained, and would ultimately set you up for disappointment.
Therefore, try to opt for a more strategic approach to this than just simply eating less. This process starts with how you think. So instead of thinking of food as something that you should start limiting, think of food as the fuel for the healthy lifestyle you’re building. This means taking extra time to study the nutritional facts of the food that you currently consume and the food that you should consume. Understanding the difference is also the key to creating your own personalized diet plans that will surely work in your favor.
As a general rule of thumb, you lose motivation when you lack a direction to follow on your day-to-day basis. The changes needed to make to get the results aren’t needed to be that big at all. You might just end up with great results with just replacing your usual high-calorie drink with zero-calorie ones and cutting back on the amount you usually drink, and or you create a plan for your one most problematic meal of the day where you are most likely to eat unhealthily.
Each day, most people likely have one problem meal. Maybe it’s lunch that is your weak spot since you leave the house in a sudden rush which enables you to pack one or your workmates like to eat out. It might be dinner, as you come home exhausted and haven’t eaten all day, or perhaps breakfast is the obvious sugar loader for you and has been since you were young. It doesn’t matter which meal is the biggest problem for you. Focus on one problem at a time and set daily goals to eliminate this.
It takes less effort than trying to fix every meal of the day each day. In multiple cases, it’s like setting up the protein in a meal that would have been otherwise filled with empty calories. You can also replace the unhealthy snacks at home with healthier ones so you have no excuse to binge eat that large cheesy pizza sitting on your countertop right now.
This way, you get to make your weight loss journey fun and see results that resonate with your mind shifts. Most people have also seen drastic improvement by simply making minor healthy changes that may amplify over time and create a routine that you’ve been craving all along.