Make a Fresh Start in 2013!

How often have you made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, only to have given up by mid January? This is very common, so don’t beat yourself up! In fact New Year’s Resolutions actually set you up to fail. If you think about it, you have spent the last 2-3 weeks probably overeating and drinking, being bombarded with lots of rich food and more alcohol and yet you have been thinking “next year it will be different!” Yet how many of you find yourselves in the same position every January, year after year? Unfortunately, the turn of the year and the 1st of January are not magical events that can transform all our bad habits in one swift change of the calendar!

Many people fail with weight loss because they “go on a diet” in the New Year and although many diets promise the earth, they don’t usually deliver the long term results you are looking for.

Dieting can be a lonely, miserable pathway and it is easy to start with high expectations and motivation, and then in a very short time, to fall by the wayside, self-sabotage, binge on “forbidden” foods, give yourself a hard time, feel full or remorse and guilt and then give up completely.I have been there myself in the past and so have many of my weight loss clients.

Some of the problems with dieting are:

  • you lose motivation quickly
  • you get bored with deprivation
  • you find it hard to stick to the diet at celebrations
  • you find yourself constantly thinking about the foods that are forbidden eg chocolate, crisps, cakes, peanuts etc
  • you are struggling to “fi”t the diet in with your normal day to day life
  • you know that once you stop the diet you will revert to your old eating patterns and so put on weight again

It doesn’t have to be like this. In the next few weeks you will have the opportunity to learn a new way to lose weight without having to diet. I will be launching an “on-line”, very affordable solution to show you how to lose weight and keep the weight off, by altering your eating strategy permanently. More news will follow in the next few weeks, so watch this space if you are interested. Or if you would like to know a little more right now, email me at mfurtek@blueyonder.co.uk and I will send you more details.  However, in the meantime, you can make a fresh start by making some small tweaks now. So below are my 5 top tips for a fresh start to your weight loss in 2013!

My top 5 tips for a fresh start

  1. Weigh yourself right now and write down what you weigh. Ok so it may not be where you want to be, but you are now starting to take steps to change that. So instead of beating yourself up, accept that this is your starting point and take action!
  2. Remove the temptation – If you have lots of chocolate or Christmas food hanging around, then do one of the following either throw it away (yes I know you hate waste, but that’s no excuse to keep all that rich food hanging around!) or give the chocolates away, or check the sell by dates and put those party treats away for another time (and yes I mean away, somewhere where you wont see them every day!) or take the goodies to work and let everyone else eat them. But whatever you do get rid of them. You could even donate unopened goods to a hospice or charity shop!
  3. Go shoppingI know that sounds a bit weird, but check your cupboards for healthy food, get out your healthy cookbooks, make a list of healthy meals and write a shopping list. If you don’t have healthy foods in the cupboards then it is far easier to be tempted to munch your way through unhealthy foods or order takeaways instead!
  4. Ask yourself what is motivating you to lose weight? –is it how you look, how you feel, your health, wanting to be alive for your children, wanting more energy? Whatever it is write it down and carry this with you at all times. This will help to remind you of what you are working towards and why,if you get tempted to “pig out” in the future.
  5. Keep a diary –Buy yourself a lovely notebook and make notes of the food you have eaten and what you have found difficult to resist. Do this for a week and at the end of the week, review your notes and see what you discover about yourself. If, for example,  you are someone who notices that every time you have a cup of tea, you have a biscuit to dunk in it, then you need to think of a plan to stop you. Brainstorm all the options you can think of to help you change this habit eg switch to herbal tea, drink water instead, choose fruit, choose a low calorie option, cut down on how much tea you drink, try not having a biscuit and doing something else why you drink your tea – these are all possible options to help you change this habit. Then try a few of them to see what works best for you. This is giving you the opportunity to make conscious the habits that you may be running without realising them The first step is to notice what you are doing it, then you can change it.

These are just a few simple tips to get you started and back on track, but remember to watch this space as in a few weeks time you will be given the opportunity to try a different way to lose weight and keep it off without the pain of dieting. In my next blog, I will be sharing the formula for successful weight loss with you!