Stop Starving Yourself: Sane Ways to Ditch the Diets and Eat Better for Your Body

The fundamental problem with a restrictive dieting routine is that it is extremely hard to stay on track as your body and your mind tells you what it thinks about starving yourself.

A better approach is often to eat healthy and let that be the route to a great life and a more toned body. You can get tips and even take a health score through Yuri Elkaim, so that you can see where you are at right now.

Stop Starving Yourself: Sane Ways to Ditch the Diets and Eat Better for Your Body
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Say goodbye to the diet

The very mention of the word ‘diet’ is enough for some of us to immediately turn our thoughts to restrictive foods choices, unappealing meals and loads of calorie counting throughout the day.

Watching what you eat and making sensible choices is obviously a good thing to do to help stay in shape, but the plain facts for a good number of us is that traditional diets as we know them, don’t really work in the long run, as we are always too fixated on seeing rapid results, meaning we get discouraged and end up ditching the diet.

If you want to say goodbye to the endless dieting routine, followed by lapses, it requires a change of thinking so that you start making consistently positive food choices and even allow yourself some occasional treats.

The key is often to avoid the sort of negative feelings towards food that you can experience with diets and focus more on healthy eating.

Clear your mind to keep weight under control

There is a very clear correlation between stress and weight gain, and this means that many of us turn to food as a source of comfort when we are feeling stressed.

When you feel almost overwhelmed and your stress levels are on the rise, this can cause your body to release cortisol, which is a hormone that induces the desire to overeat as a form of comfort and to help cope with our feelings of stress.

It doesn’t take much working out that this scenario can soon create a downward spiral where you get down with yourself for overeating, feel stressed about it and then get more stressed as a result.

If you can get your stress levels under control, this will allow you to make more informed and healthier eating choices. Don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your stress levels in line, as this will make a big difference in your quest to keep your weight under control.

Think more about the food you are eating

If you stop to think about it, there may be quite a few times throughout the day where you are eating unconsciously, in other words, you are consuming food without really thinking about it.

Sitting in front of the TV with a bag of chips is a classic example. You get engrossed in the film and before you know it, the bag is empty and you have just sleepwalked into consuming some unintended calories.

Mindfulness is a popular concept these days and you can apply this to your eating habits. Try to practice mindful eating, which means stopping and thinking about all those little snacks and indulgences.

There is nothing wrong with a few treats along the way, rather than strict dieting, but just try to think more about how much food you might be unconsciously consuming.

Stop Starving Yourself: Sane Ways to Ditch the Diets and Eat Better for Your Body
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Sleep solution

A lack of sleep carries plenty of consequences and one of them is the fact that when you are feeling tired and exhausted and not well rested, this can set the junk food alarm ringing and you are far more likely to make some poor choices if you are not getting enough sleep.

Getting plenty of sleep and recharging your batteries is a good thing in so many ways, one of them being that you are far more likely to be able to banish cravings for the wrong type of food if you are not feeling so tired.

Get real

Many of us are simply not wired to be able to cope with depriving ourselves of some of our favorite foods for too long.

Avoiding some of your favorite foods simply won’t work in the long run and you are more likely to fall away from a healthy eating regime if you abstain altogether.

A good dose of realism is often the answer to eating more healthily overall. Grab the occasional slice of pizza or a wedge of your favorite cheesecake. These little indulgences will taste good and will almost certainly help you stay focused on eating more healthily all round.

Yuri Elkaim is a nutrition, fitness, and fat loss expert and the NYT bestselling author of The All-Day Energy Diet and The All-Day Fat Burning Diet. A former professional soccer player turned health crusader, he’s most famous for helping people who’ve tried everything to have more energy and lose weight little success finally achieve breakthrough results.

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