How to Ensure Your Diet Works

March 17th, 2010 | Posted in Diet tips | 6 Comments » | Share this article

How to ensure your diet works!

There are numerous diets around, and it can be hard to know which diet will suit you the best. Yet, choosing the right diet for your needs is the only way to ensure that you will succeed at sticking to it, so do some research before deciding which one you are going to do.

They all promise the same results: weight loss. Yet making sure you stick to the diet you choose is made up from a few simple steps that you can take with relative ease:

Step 1: Cook your own food

When you have chosen your diet you should eat home cooked/prepared meals on a regular basis as restaurants often add salt and sugar to food and you will have no way of knowing how much oil they use either. Only you will know what ingredients went into your meals this way and there will be no chance of sneaky calories being added in by a chef aiming to please his customers…

Step 2: Drink water

Cutting down on calories can be done by consuming water instead of sodas, juices, squashes and teas. Water is calorie-free and is a great way to start detoxing the body and will help you to look and feel better.

Step 3: Don’t be afraid to snack

There is this big myth in the dieting world that snacking is forbidden whereas in fact snacking is a great way to abstain the hunger pangs. Eating little and often is far better for you than only eating one huge meal a day, and you simply ensure that the foods you are snacking on are healthy and part of your recommended diet.

Step 4: Calorie counting

Cue the groans with this one! I know counting calories is a dull task and it can get obsessive — and while fixating on every calorie is not necessary it is important to ensure that you are not exceeding the recommended number of calories for the day. Unfortunately the only way to do this is to count, so get the calculator out and start the mathematics, if you can handle it!

Step 5: Take to the diet slowly

If you attempt to go from burgers and fries followed by pizza and fried chicken washed down with five cans of coke a day you are never going to suddenly change to muesli followed by salads, fish and steamed vegetables — so don’t try it! Don’t overwhelm your body and brain with new foods and routines.

Start cutting out your old habits and replace them with your new diet and give yourself one month to get started fully, all the while slowly cutting down on your old and bringing in the new.

Following these steps will make sticking to a diet easier, but you will still need to put in the hard work. There is no magic wand to wave in order to make a diet work for you, just your own effort and dedication!

6 Responses to “How to Ensure Your Diet Works”

1. kristin stout says:

   April 12, 2010 at 10:42 pm

   Jennifer
   i;m wondering how to get abs to show more with diet. I eat pretty clean, chicken, fish, salads, fruit/veggies water. i snack once in awhile with yogurt, string cheese, almonds, . Any ideas???

   Reply
   • jnltv says:

     April 13, 2010 at 2:46 am

     Hi there Kristin, great question. We can eat as good as we want, but we must also do the adequate amount of cardio, to get that lil layer of fat off of our belly area. Also, check your stress levels, as we release cortisol, which then keeps that layer of flab on our abs. Also, try natural detoxing foods, such as asparagus to help also shed that last layer of fat, so your abs will show. This will also help in releasing of water weight as well.
     Believe,
     JNL

     Reply
2. Jaana Flaherty says:

   April 13, 2010 at 4:50 pm

   Hi JNL,

   I just took a Metabolic Breathing Test that measures how many calories I should consume in a day to lose weight and maintain. It calculated that my metabolism is very slow and I need 1000 to 1195 calories for weight loss. I am 35, and 3 kids later….I eat clean and stay away from alcohol and I consume around 1450 cal a day but have not gotten the results that want. Any suggestions or opinons on this?

   Thanks so much for your help,

   Jaana Flaherty

   Reply
3. Rueben Micheals says:

   May 4, 2010 at 10:13 pm

   My friend is going to do one too. I think she’s going to do a treatment because I actually lost 6 lbs doing it!

   Reply
4. Exercise Balls says:

   May 14, 2010 at 8:30 am

   Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article

   Reply
5. how to get rock hard abs says:

   May 14, 2010 at 8:11 pm

   I like your writing style. I’ll definitely check out more of your posts later. guess I’m about to get back in the gym

   Reply