Portion Control.

I made this article as informative as I could for you, women, out there who are struggling with weight control.

There are many types of fad diets out there. But there are key ideas you can use to help you achieve a healthy, idea weight that lasts without so much trouble. Keep in mind that this article is not for a weight that is unrealistic or incompatible to your body height and gender. I will just mention ten key points and suggestions that I mainly used, when I lost 20 pounds in six weeks. This type of weight loss plan is for those who want to lose a bigger sum of weight faster. It can be easy, IF and only if you adapt some new healthy, idealistic habits and stick to them with discipline during the regimen, while running at your own pace. Keep in mind you may experience some dizziness, and, or feelings of being lightheaded during dieting.

1) Portion Control: Yes, you heard it all too often women, but this is at the top of the list. You can eat whatever you want for the most part, if you know your limit. Taking small portions out of the food at the dinner table or say at the snack area in your office will certainly be a plus and a winner both for you and your mid-waist. You don’t have to necessarily neglect your favorites. You just have to have a set picture in your mind of how big of a portion you can take with each serving. And how do you know how much this is? Just take out 30% of what you normally would eat and sometimes 70% if it is "hell-bound".

(Above, is me after eight weeks into the diet.)

2) Thinking Variety to Trick the Rabbit: Have you ever heard that story of the rabbit and the turtle? Well, take that into account here. You can trick the body, by not giving it exactly what it wants. This boosts up the metabolism and boosts up weight loss much quicker. Don’t necessarily eat all the amount of that beef at the table. Switch it with some ice cream. Even if ice cream adds more weight than beef. The fact that you tricked your body into not getting the full amount of the serving of meat it wanted, makes it go on "alert mode" and confuses it to say “No, Honey. We aren’t sleeping in this morning.” It is sort of like using a p90x style and fad to your food regimen. It works. Trust me. Just remember to think variety.

3) You can eat what you want: When I was losing weight I always ate what I wanted, as long as I kept my portions in tact. The key idea in any weight loss is not to have an obsession with a certain food that breaks the diet or makes the body tired. The metabolism speaks for itself when it isn’t being challenged or fed correctly. Well, what are the foods not to obsess with exactly? Mainly, foods that are the color, white. Yes, that is carbs I am speaking of, and also sweets. You can have some, but only a small amount. Stay away from eating rice to the full amount or too much bread. You want to have a diet, not settle for the “cage”.

4) Eat on Time: This is the only so called hard work in dieting. It is like a job. You have to sleep on time and eat on time, while trying to lose weight. I knew this was the most important and essential part to weight loss, when I was losing weight, so I kept to this regimen like a religion and a saint. Always eat four to five times a day (and not after 6 PM). And EAT! Even if you are not hungry! Do not, please do not, skip a meal, and if you do skip a meal, do not overcompensate, by eating more at the next meal. That is an order!

Eating on time is a must so we do not eat too much later in the day or in one sitting and therefore, have no time to burn off the calories with each meal that passes. It also keeps our metabolism in check and alert. It tells our metabolism to always be running properly and in a healthy manner.

5) Sleep 6 hours: Sleeping six to eight hours is the clock schedule I had while losing weight, and trying to make sure I kept busy during the day helped (to keep my body moving). If you don't get the full amount of rest during night, which you should try your best to, then take a two hour nap in the afternoon, and if it was a hell week at work, take a power nap of 4 hours right after you get home from your work on a Saturday or Friday. Try to have as little stress as possible. Listening to music may help. The reason why sleep is so important is because you may stress your body out from lack of rest, when it is already stressed out a little from the diet. This may cause you to stress-eat later in the day, or even, following morning.

6) Breakfast: Breakfast should be listed as second after portion control, but we can talk about it here, right before the next topic of proteins as both serve in making dieting much easier. Breakfast is one of the only meals you can sort of call a "cheat meal" in dieting rather than the rest of the other meals eaten throughout the day, as you should eat a full serving at this time. At the start of the day, you should eat a full, balanced and healthy meal, compared to your portion controlled meals all throughout dieting. By a full meal, we mean portions served in a regular full-sized portion, not a big birthday "blow-out", just because we are calling it a cheat. You should eat a full, nutritious meal at the start of the day, because with every meal following, as the day goes by, you will need energy installed to cut out portions, and the "machine", we call our body, needs to be ready and going always. Our metabolism always needs to be alert.

7) Proteins: If you want to lose weight even quicker add more healthy proteins to each meal and make sure it is a bigger serving then the rest on your plate. Proteins help you feel full and satisfied.

8) Give yourself a break: For example, every Friday have a dinner where you eat a full course meal. Eat a dohnut or eat that brownie on Wednesday. Set a day or two in the week where you can cheat on a small snack you always wanted, after dieting for a while. Even, if you don’t want to cheat, you must, because too much dieting, is like too much running. Your body will get burnt out. It needs to rest, so it can run at the same pace again. *Ice cream was my cheat.

9) What about Exercise? As you have noticed, I listed down exercise almost last, because dieting throughout this certain plan may be already tiring and you should only be so hard on yourself to a certain point. Studies have shown that when you exercise for 20 minutes a day or more, you tend to sit down for the rest of the day and not move, as much. There should be balance in energy given in and given out throughout the day, so you can burn off with each meal. With that in mind, we should also mention that for replacement of exercise, instead just move more throughout the day, between meals, without sitting down for too long. You can do this by going places or walking. This is actually encouraged and better, but don't tire yourself out too much, that you get stressed from the whole plan of dieting, as we all know dieting is accompanied by lower energy sometimes and feelings of being light-headed.

10) Coffee Anyone? I don’t know about you, but coffee is my favorite. Drink black coffee or any coffee with creamer and perhaps sugar if you want, just not the ones at the mall in Starbucks that are overly-sized, and are considered as a frappe. The right coffee helps you not to crave for certain foods, gives you energy, and lifts up your mood in general. It makes you forget about eating, curving and distracting your hunger. The energy cells it gives is like a trick hormone, that imitates happy cells of serotonin. In other words, caffeine is good for you here. Turning on your happy cells is a plus, so you will forget about eating and the energy the caffeine gives you is good for the stress of your diet as well. It relaxes the mind. It helps to motivate you better on the jobs needed to be done throughout the week, i.e weight loss.

Before the diet:

* If you don't like coffee, you can replace it with some soothing tea, too. It lightens up your mood and curves cravings also. And for more information on good nutrition during dieting, read my next article on Power Foods.

I was 146 pounds here, and went down to 120 after six weeks.

#weightloss #losingpounds #proteins #coffee #regimen #diet #mindtricks #trickingtherabbit