The Importance of a Lifestyle Change in Order to Achieve Goals
If you want to achieve your goals in the long term, then you have to do more than make short-term changes to your diet or activity level. Most people who lose weight in a short amount of time because of dieting and exercising will quickly gain it back if they don’t make those changes permanent. For that reason, you need to forget about dieting and change your lifestyle instead.
Gradual Weight Loss
Gradual weight loss is not only healthier for your body, but it’s also much more likely that your weight will stay off this way. This is defined as being a loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week, which is a great goal for anyone who wants to lose weight in a healthy way. Although this may not sound like much, you can lose between 50 and 100 pounds this way over the course of a year.
Gradual Lifestyle Changes
There’s no need to change your entire lifestyle in a day. It can be hard to break habits that you’ve had for years all in one day. Often, people who try to change too much in their lives at once end up feeling overwhelmed very quickly and then end up giving up. Instead, you can make a goal to gradually change your lifestyle until you are living healthily.
An example of this is starting with giving up just one sugary drink per day and replacing it with a glass of water or unsweetened tea. After a month, replace another drink, and another until you have switched all of your usual calorie-rich beverages with water or unsweetened tea. This change alone can help you avoid an extra 100 – 500 calories every day.
Right Way to Think About Food
One of the biggest ways you can change your lifestyle to achieve your weight loss goals is to change the way you think about food. There are many reasons to eat food, whether you’re actually hungry, or just bored or going out with friends. When you start to think of food as something that will change your body, you start to consider more carefully what you’re eating and why you’re eating it.
For example, if you normally eat a candy bar because it makes you happy, take some time to think about what that’s doing to your body. The sugar causes a spike in your blood sugar which will give you a short burst of energy followed by a crash which leaves you craving more sugar, starting the cycle over again. If you instead ate a handful of almonds, you would get ongoing energy without the crash or cravings.
Foods can do a lot more damage to your body than you may realize, depending on what you are eating. Processed foods and genetically-modified produce contain toxins which can damage your body in a number of ways. They can slow down your digestion, weaken your immune system, and even cause cancers. By making the simple decision to eat something because it’s healthy for you rather than because it’s easy can change your life.