[tinkerbelll]

I been reading so much the past few days getting my plan together. This is coming off of a "eat whatever you want food free for all" the past 2 months. I have about 6 of the biggest loser books on top of the entire LA Weight Loss plan and TurboFire plan. Im reading over each one, becoming familiar with em all over again and deciding which one is best for me. But they are all extremely similar, especially the LAWL & TBL diet. Its all about calorie counting, exercising and burn off more then what you take in.

So i got myself a new diet journal, a countdown calender, kitchen stocked full of healthy stuff & ready rock!!!

SO how do you start your diet plan? & How do you make sure your successful this time as opposed to failing (like Iv done more then I'd like to admit to)

[spetty]

I think what worked best for me was a two prong strategy: the first was that I didn't try to do everything at once. I started calorie counting in July and at the beginning I only focused on logging accurately and staying under my daily limit. Now that I (usually) am eating the right amount of food/calories a day I'm working on slowing changing and improving what I eat (more veggies less crap). If I had tried to do everything at once it would have been even more overwhelming and difficult for me.

The other big thing that helped me was making a deal with myself that some days I'm going to mess up and go over my calories, either because I wasn't paying attention or I couldn't say no to a slice of cake, and that's ok. I don't beat myself up over it or even feel that bad about it because that would probably just start a downward spiral back into emotional eating. And some days I did go over, and I even just took a break for the holidays, and that's fine, because even though its a day by day struggle to eat healthy/right I know that its the long term goals that are the most important.

Good Luck!!

[audri8301]

For me, the only way I can consistently stay on track is to pre-plan my food intake for the day. Then I stick to the plan as much as I can.

Spetty is completely right: sometimes we mess up, even when we have a plan. The important thing is to get back on track and keep moving forward instead of trashing the entire day/week/month over it.

[elledh88]

My plan is similair to Spetty & Audri.

What was different from the other times is that I wrote myself a letter and I answered a some questions.

-Why do I want to lose weight?
-How will I do it?
-What is my goal?
-How will it make me feel
It was very emotional writing the letter but it speaks to me. Since I started a couple days ago I open the word document daily and its helped me to stay motivated. I started my lifestyle change in the summer and I lost 15llbs but school started in september & I was good for the first month but when October came everything went out the window. My excuse was that I had no time because of school. I realized I was just making excuses. It is tougher because my schedule is hectic but I know that if I put in the work to plan it will pay off. I just have prep & plan.

[flourless]

When I got ready to start losing weight I took two or three weeks to read and work through the exercises in several books about the mental side of weight loss. It was a lot of inventorying habits and thinking about when and why I got fat and why I stayed that way. I took the thoughts and tricks that resonated with me, or answered things that I'd struggled with.

I spent those two weeks also working on what diet choices worked best for me - how I'd felt on various eating plans, what was sustainable and fit my lifestyle...

I've been much more content (for lack of a better word) with this weight loss effort. I don't fuss when my scale weight bounces. I don't get upset if I eat something I "shouldn't". I just work the program, and when working the program gets hard - I do the best I can and try to be better than I used to be.

I took two weeks off over the holidays (I had company and was traveling) and I -missed- my usual way of eating. I couldn't make it fit my travel plans and that upset me, so getting home and diving into it again has been remarkably relaxing and reinvigorating.