New dieter’s alway asks “How long should I diet?” The usual answer is to stick with the diet until the ideal body weight is reached. However, this is simply not true.
Anyone who loses a few pounds by dieting seem to gain them all back (and more) after they go back to their eating habits, no matter how long they sustained the diet. Naturally, they’d like to know exactly how long it takes for a diet’s effects to stick for good.
If you’re wondering how long you should stick to your diet, I have good news and bad news. Here’s the bad news: there’s no diet duration. In other words, diets aren’t meant to be temporary. Diets are meant to be lifestyle changes. So how long should you stick to your diet? As long as you would like to stay at your ideal body weight.
Here’s the good news: it’s actually easy sticking to your diet. The primary reason why a lot of dieters fail after a short time is because they try to make all these drastic lifestyle changes all at once. Believe me, no one’s that strong. You should go through your diet slowly and steadily. Below are some tips that may help you stick to your diet more easily.
Small steps, but never stop growing.
Start your diet with a very doable sacrifice. A good way to start would be to swear off all forms of soda in favor of water, natural fruit juice, or low-fat milk for the first few weeks. (Did you know that a typical can of soda contains about ten teaspoons of sugar?) Sticking to your diet will be much easier when you’re in charge of it, instead of having to follow every single “diet rule.” Once you get used to one sacrifice, impose another manageable limit. Then another, and another. Lifestyle changes are much easier to deal with if they come in chunks!
Exercise it really does work.
Dieting on its own can help shed all those extra pounds eventually. But with exercise, weight loss will be exponentially faster. Exercising for at least an hour every day for five days a week can prevent you from gaining all those pounds back in case you’d revert to your old nasty eating habits. Go to your preferred gym and try incorporating cardiovascular exercises, strength training and flexibility routines throughout your workout. Also, incorporating fun exercises like dancing, kickboxing and Yoga can also encourage you to stick to your diet.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Always keep in mind that no matter ’sinful’ a kind of food may be, it can always fit into your diet as long as it’s taken occasionally. Just eat more healthy food than ‘junk’ foods to balance your intake.
Furthermore, you should keep in mind that no one can stick to a diet flawlessly - there are always temptations. Missing a workout session on a very hectic schedule and drinking a toast on a friend’s wedding day are just one of those days that you need to lay down those limits. Instead of feeling sorry and giving up, get up and get right back on track as fast as you could. If everything goes fine then your weight will drop continuously as if nothing happened!
