Basic Pursuits

We know this to be true: we are overweight because of bad eating habits. Therefore the solution is to change the habits.

NOT go on a diet. Change the eating habits.

Here's a strategy for doing it.

Start over. That's right. Start over. Start over by figuring out how to eat nutritiously, how to get all your essential vitamins and minerals from your food. The easiest way to do that is to grab a free program like Cron-O-Meter or a website like Nutrition Data and start logging what you eat. When you learn the program, you'll be able to enter your food in minutes. In a few days you'll see patterns emerge. You'll notice a common deficiencies. For example, you might not be getting enough Vitamin E. You decide to fix it by eating an ounce (about a hand full) of almonds everyday.

Work on making the adjustments in your eating that enable you to get all your vitamins and minerals from food. This takes time so be patient. Then start working on calories. Scheme what foods you might cut back on. In the above example you might decide to give up the bagel for the almonds. You get less calories, but a lot more nutrition with the almonds.

As a matter of fact, many empty calories comes from the white stuff, calories empty of nutrition besides energy. White flour and sugar are particularly empty. Many people will solve their calorie overindulging by laying off the refined white stuff.

If you know what you are eating, you can make the choices that you need to make. If you are eating 2500 calories a day and gaining weight, cut back. But cut back slowly. Cut back to 2400 calories. Give it 10 days. Then cut back to 2300. Go slowly. Avoid hunger.

Everyone is hungry before a meal. That's normal. But constant unremitting hunger in the service of a diet is counter productive and leads to binging after you finish dieting. Hence, 90+ percent of dieters gain it back.

You'll find that you can gradually eat less when you eat nutritiously and you can do it without being uncomfortably hungry. Then one day, you or someone else will remark, "you look thinner," or "have you been losing weight?" And you are on your way.

You are not on your way to gaining the weight back like most dieters. You are not the same person. You know what they say, "you are what you eat." And you have changed what you eat.

Your new eating habits are the tools that will keep your weight at a healthy level.