Eat Your Favorite Foods While Losing Weight

Did your diet stop working for you, or did you stop working on your diet? Most of us start a diet of proper eating to lose weight but something happens along the way. A few weeks (days?) down the road our good intentions are gone and we are back in the same old rut.

Eat Your Dessert And Still Lose Weight

Why? Do we just become frustrated with our level of success? Do we lack the discipline to continue?  According to Jon Benson, fitness and nutrition author, it is all about that magic word:  “Love.”

Loving any diet or workout plan is key to sticking with it. If you try to change your lifestyle to a routine that you simply don’t “love”, how long do you suppose you will stay with it in the long run? According to Benson, “All diets require a change in how you look at food, how you consume food, and even how you think about food.”

Most diets start right out telling us what we can’t eat. And guess what? All of our favorite foods that got us where we are now are at the top of the “DO NOT EAT” list. That immediately bring out our hate response. Sure, we can sneak a favorite food once a week or so but that isn’t often enough to make us fall in love with our new diet.

In fact, this is a recipe for disaster. But there is a better, more fool proof way to diet which permits you to enjoy your favorite foods while losing weight.

By the time the typical American reaches middle age they are over-stressed by the demands of work and the responsibility of raising a family. And what do we normally do to relieve stress? That’s right. We grab a cup of coffee, which adds more stress, and a favorite treat. The treats more often than not are high in sugar and fats and are the worst thing we could put in our body. But they satisfy the cravings and for a few moments give us a “good feeling”.

Of course, those treats lead to high cholesterol and high blood pressure and pack on more fat from stress and eventually lead to obesity which is the fastest growing disease in America today. It’s a never ending circle that we have to take charge of and change.

When we honestly try to change our unhealthy lifestyle and lose some of the fat burden we are packing around, we tend to go a little extreme. We tell ourselves that we really can eat all of that tasteless food because it’s good for us. And we try. We start eating more chicken (not KFC, mind you), bland rice dishes and tons of salads minus our favorite fat laden dressings. Not a food that we love among them…and we lose a few pounds.

Our cravings for foods we love eventually get the best of us. We just have to have our favorite meal or snack to break the monotony and it gives us such pleasure that we feel guilty for awhile and begin to think that we can never stay on our diet. It is just to hard! We need the foods we love and can’t lose weight and eat our favorite foods too so we give up!

Jon Benson was not much different in that respect than any of us but he had something going for him. He had a terrific knowledge of nutrition and its effect on shaping the body. He asked himself “Why not stop looking for perfection and start thinking about progress?”.

This is akin to the question of how to eat an elephant and is just common sense. But what dieter, at least in the beginning,  goes about it with any common sense?

Benson started to add a few body sculpting tricks to his dietary plan. As an example, he began consuming more calories one day and fewer the next. This helps your body overcome the plateau effect of weight loss by keeping your metabolism at a higher rate.

After experimenting a little, Benson started to include some of his favorite foods on his high calorie days. He didn’t overdo it but did include foods like pasta, pizza and deserts. Not surprisingly it didn’t work out too well…at first. Then he started using what he calls his  “Caveman Principle”. Along with occasionally enjoying his favorite foods he starting consuming his proteins at specific times and in lesser quantities. He found that timing was critical for weight loss success.

He also found that specific exercise for only short periods helped to keep his metabolism at the proper level. Knowing how much and when was important in both his diet and exercise routine. By following his routine he was able to record a loss of more than 70 lbs of fat…and still eat his favorite foods a minimum of 3 times each week.

I personally followed a similar routine even before I read Benson’s The Every Other Day Diet but the book did add to my understanding of why what I was doing worked. I don’t do strenuous exercises any more and I don’t deprive myself of anything that I really want to eat. And at 155 pounds I am 30 pounds under my maximum and still losing weight – not fast, but steady. My doctor does a double take every time he looks at my chart and sees my age. He says I am in better health than most of his patients that are years younger.

So why does this approach work? A University of Phoenix study sheds a little light on why counting calories or trying to follow strict diet plan doesn’t work as well. They found that eating more frequently than three times a day and mixing “healthy” days with some junk food on off days helped keep the metabolic rate up and burn fat calories over an extended period of time. The more frequent meals, of course, need to consist of smaller portions and be healthy foods. Frequent Big Macs throughout the day don’t work.

You can enjoy your favorite foods while losing weight if you have the right plan to follow. If you would like to actually fall in love with your diet for a change and burn off a little fat while still enjoying the occasional treat – without a moment of guilty feelings, I can recommend The Every Other Day Diet without reservation.

It is not written in stone that you have to gain a pound for every year over 20! If you have found yourself in that position, start today to turn your weight clock backwards. You’ll feel better, look better, be healthier and enjoy life more with the better diet plan:

The Every Other Day Diet