Weight Loss Journal

All of us know that we need to start eating healthier and get more fruits and vegetables into our diets. The hard part is actually doing it. For many people, it's just hard to get past the taste. However, there are ways that you can easily add more servings of fruit or vegetables to your diet with little effort. We'll show you ways to cheat and still enjoy your food.

1. Start with salsa substitution.

If you eat a lot of dips, you're adding a whole bunch of useless calories into your daily rotation. Put away that dip and bring out the salsa. It contains numerous vegetables and fruit and the taste is terrific. Better yet, it's fat free and extremely low calorie. You can use salsa on just about anything to make it taste better and you're getting the benefit of adding more servings of these important foods to your diet with little effort.

You can use it with chips, or tortillas, on eggs or pretty much anything. If salsa is not really your thing, try experimenting with a couple of different brands or you can even try to make your own with vegetables you like. Fruit salsa is surprisingly good when combined with cottage cheese or other low fat dairy products. This is probably the easiest way to get more fruit and vegetables into your diet with little effort.

2. Add one more serving of vegetables or fruits with every meal.

At breakfast, have some low sodium tomato juice or a sliced apple. At lunch, you can add in some delicious corn or a pear. With dinner, try experimenting with a tossed salad with low fat dressing. This makes it easy to get at least three more servings of fruits or vegetables into your diet without any effort at all. What's more, these servings will help you fill up faster and avoid overeating other foods that are less healthy.

3. Retrain your palate.

Some of us simply just don't like fresh fruits or vegetables. The key here is to retrain your palate and make your brain think that you actually enjoy them. Start small and add low fat sauces or little things to make the vegetables taste better. For example, you can spread a little bit of peanut butter inside a stalk of celery. Suddenly, that tasteless stalk actually tastes good and you're getting the added benefit of more protein. This makes a great afternoon snack. Just don't overdo it on the peanut butter or you won't be getting any benefit.

Simple things can make vegetables and fruits a lot better. However, you can also try experimenting a little. Just because you don't like one fruit or vegetable doesn't mean you may not love another. Get creative and go outside your usual routine with new vegetables you've never tasted before. You can actually have a lot of fun by trying out all sorts of new foods and seeing which ones you enjoy.

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If you are focusing on losing weight and making lifestyle changes, the first two weeks are undoubtedly the hardest. Your body and your mind need time to adjust to your diet, and this initial period requires a lot of motivation and a desire to stick to your new plan. Anytime you make lifestyle changes, it is difficult to know which foods you should be eating, and what foods you may never be able to eat again. Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Remove all the food you can’t eat from your house.

This is the first step in picking the right foods. When you don’t have the temptation sitting within easy grasp, it is a lot easier to keep on the right track. If your family eats those foods, they will need to learn to adjust, at least for a few weeks, until you are safely on the road to your changes. It is so much easier to make that healthy choice when you don’t have the chocolate cake in the fridge whispering at you.

2. Learn about the harmful effects of the chemicals in processed foods.

This is one easy way to guarantee that those tasty processed foods will never appeal to you again. Start learning about the chemicals and additives in your food and chances are, you will want to avoid them at all costs. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can learn more about the food we eat, and the additives that are included.

3. Find ways to make good foods taste better.

It’s a sad fact that until your palate gets adjusted, healthy food can actually nasty pretty nasty. However, by learning more about how to prepare that food you can make it taste better. Avoid adding dressings and sauces, but learn about different seasonings and different preparation techniques that can make any food taste better.

4. Reward yourself for the good choices.

Since it can take a week or two to start seeing real results on the scale, it is important to set up small rewards that will keep you going until you do reach that point. Avoid food rewards, but set up a system where you either do something you enjoy, or indulge in a little pampering, as a way of telling yourself “good job.” It is a lot easier to keep motivated when you make it an enjoyable experience to pick the right foods.

5. Take every day at a time.

Looking at a week’s worth of healthy food choices can be intimidating for everyone. Focus on the food choices you are going to make today, not tomorrow and not next week. Break it down so that you are only focusing on the choices that have to be made right now, and let everything else fall into place.

It will get easier to make the right food choices, and you can look at this initial phase as a training period that will make everything that is to come easier to accomplish.

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When we think of weight loss success, we tend to think in inches and pounds, but there are actually many ways that you can measure success. When you make that commitment to get healthy, many things in your life and in your body will be changing. Don't get hung up on inches or pounds, as these may not be the right indicators for how well you are doing. Weight loss, when done properly, takes time, but you'll be getting several steps closer to success the longer you keep it up. Let's take a look at a few ways that you can measure your success.

1. The Way You Feel.

The first few days or even weeks of a diet can be tough, but pretty soon you should start to notice that you feel better. You'll be more energized thanks to your metabolism which is now speeding up. You'll feel less tired, thanks to the endorphins that are being released into your bloodstream. You'll also feel better knowing that you're sticking to your diet and that you will be a success!

2. Little Victories Mean a Lot.

The first time you walk up a flight of stairs and realize that you aren't gasping for breath. When you play with your kids for thirty minutes and you don't feel exhausted. It's these little things that make your diet worth the while. You're getting healthier, and it's starting to show. What used to make you gasp, now makes you smile. What you thought you couldn't do - you can!

3. Your tastes start to change.

Steamed veggies and fish tasting good? You bet - after a few weeks of eating healthy, your taste buds are going to start to change. The old standbys may even become quite nasty if you happen to fall off the diet wagon. The more you stay away from processed and sugary foods, the better your chances are of developing a new palate that is much healthier. It may take a bit, and you may be tempted to cheat along the way, but if you can stick it out, you'll find that healthy foods actually taste better than junk foods.

4. You'll look better.

This is an obvious one, but it really does help measure your progress. The first time someone says, "Have you lost weight?" or the first time you catch a glimpse of yourself in a window and think "Gee, I have lost weight." These moments are priceless and make the effort you're going through worthwhile. When you reach the point of having to get a whole new wardrobe, or your old friends may not recognize you right off the bet, you'll know you've made big progress.

We're not saying burn the measuring tape and throw out the scale. These are useful tools. However, they should not be your only method of measuring success. The small victories lead to bigger victories and weight loss is really about getting healthier and feeling better.

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When you first start a diet, it's easy to get all excited about the amount of weight you're losing and how great you look. Unfortunately, most of us reach our goals and then go off of our diets. Within a few months, we may be back where we started, or in many cases, worse off. If you want to lose weight over the long term, you're going to have to make some total lifestyle changes that will ensure that you not only lose weight, but manage to keep it off for years to come. Here are some helpful tips to help you lose that weight and keep it off.

1. Identify your danger foods.

These are the foods that will consistently cause you to go off your diet. The foods that you simply cannot eat one of. In essence, these foods hold a sort of control over you and their siren call is simply too much to resist once you take that first bite. You're going to need to figure out what your danger foods are and then you're going to have to completely remove them from your life. This isn't easy and there may be times when you slip. However, if you can successfully stop eating these target foods, you're going to see a huge difference in your weight loss. You may never be able to eat them again, but then again, what is really more important? A few minutes of food bliss or a lifetime of looking great?

2. Start making healthy substitutions.

You don't have to eat like a rabbit for the rest of your life to lose weight, but you do need to start making healthy substitutions to keep your weight off over the long term. This may take some time since your palate is probably used to the food's you like. However, food substitution doesn't have to be painful. For example, if you can't live without pizza, try it without cheese or use a cheese substitute. It will take a little getting used to, but over time, you'll develop a taste for that food and you'll find that those old favorites are pretty disgusting if you try to go back to them.

3. Make an exercise plan that you can stick with.

The key to healthy weight loss and a healthy lifestyle is getting plenty of exercise. Don't pick something that you can't stand, it will be all too easy to give up. Even if it is something as simple as walking a few miles every day, you need to get out there and get active. The longer you do, the easier it will be to keep going. You won't need to exercise at the same level for the rest of your life, but you will need to get active if you want to stay slim and healthy.

Lifestyle changes do take time and it won't happen overnight. However, these tips will help get you on the road to health and you'll be able to enjoy the process once you get there.

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One of the biggest problems for many people on diets is that the food simply doesn't taste good. It's very hard to stay motivated on your diet when you feel like you're eating cardboard and bad cardboard at that. After years of indulging in your favorite fatty foods, your palate and taste buds have been trained that these tastes are good and non-fat foods are bad. However, you can change this around with a little persistence and it will become a lot easier to start eating healthy. In fact, the vast majority of those who retrain their taste buds find that if they cheat with one of their old favorites, it suddenly tastes pretty awful.

Here's how to get started on the path towards training those taste buds to like good for you food instead of just food that tastes good. You'll need to start small, and take your cues from the foods you already like. There are a few techniques that you can employ to gradually start replacing fatty foods with good foods and still enjoy the process.  As a bonus all of these tips are both low fat AND low carb.

Let's start with the simple stalk of celery. On its own, bleh - it's pretty tasteless. It's real hard to get jazzed about eating yet another stalk of the stuff. Blow the lid off of your taste buds by adding a low fat flavor to them. For example, one great technique is to fill that stalk with some great low-fat salsa. This really packs a punch and you won't even notice the lack of flavor from the celery. You can also add low fat peanut butter, at least in moderation. Soon, your taste buds will begin associating celery with these wonderful flavors and it will be a lot easier to eat it.

Next, let's move onto the grilled chicken breast. Once again, on it's own - yuck. With the right seasoning? Your taste buds will be hollering for more. Try to play around with different spices. They'll add lots of flavor without any calories. For example, you can add a bit of lemon zest to make that chicken stand out, or if you're feeling spicy, try some white pepper or curry powder. That will give that bland meat a real personality and you'll even start craving it if you like it.

Another food that is pretty hard to stomach on its own is lettuce. Not many people enjoy lettuce by itself, which is why we fall into the trap of drenching it with high calorie and high fat dressings. Instead of this, try to experiment with some tasty vinaigrettes. They're very low fat and low calorie and there are so many varieties out there that you can really make humble lettuce taste very good. You can also try some other techniques, like adding a fruit salsa to your lettuce. This gives it a very unique taste that your taste buds will want to try again.

These are just a few suggestions - open up your cabinets and see what you can do!

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