Janderson99 asked:


There are many diets to choose from. Many people try them but fail to lose weight using them for the following reasons:

=> The diet leaves you tired, hungry and cranky

=> The food is unsatisfying and weird compared with what you normally eat

=> The diet bears no relation to what you should eat after you lose weight

=> The diet is very hard to follow when you eat out, or socialise with your friends

In most cases you are overweight because you have been eating too much, eating the wrong foods, AND you do not exercise enough. What is required is a change in lifestyle and a shift to better eating practices. It is important that what you do to lose weight, coincides with what you need to do to keep the fat off LONG TERM. Many people diet for a while, lose a few pounds, but then slip back because the diet is too weird and hard to follow. Or they diet some of the time, but slip up when they go out for a meal or eat with friends.

The Better Half – Diet is a simple, practical approach that aims for a permanent lifestyle change that includes better eating and a more active lifestyle.

Step 1. Cut out the fatty foods, junk foods and high sugar foods. Eat Better Foods.

Step 2. Downsize you meals and portions to about half what you normally eat. Eat this food slowly and savour it. It’s not weird diet food. It’s simply less of what you normally eat – The Better Half.

Step 3. Change your lifestyle to include more exercise – not weird things that you do not like, but simply increase the duration and vigour of the activities you enjoy. Or start a new exercise that you will like doing permanently.

Step 4. Sign up for one of the Online Weight Loss Tools that have been developed such as Desizeme.com, Fitday.com, etc. These tools make it easy to record your weight and compare it with your target, and record your calories eaten and burnt through exercise. The tool should be online and easy to use. Choose one that shows you whether you are on track to lose weight and your Calorie Deficit – this is the difference between the calories eaten in food and calories burnt through exercise. You aim to burn more calories than you eat so you will lose weight. You need to maintain a moderate calorie deficit. If you halve what you eat, focus on the better foods and exercise more you will lose weight because your body will burn fat to make up the difference. Choose a tool that graphs your weight compared with your target, and calculates your calorie deficit. If you are not losing weight then the answer is simple – eat less, reduce the fat and high sugar foods, exercise more to increase your deficit so you do lose weight at the rate you want. The tool should show your weight diary, weight target and calorie deficit on the same graph so you can track your progress and make the right adjustments on a weekly basis.

Step 5. Stick to the Better Half approach when you eat out – choose low fat foods and eat smaller portions. Aim to eat Half what you did before, the Better Half!

Step 6. When you have lost weight you will be able to keep the fat off by continuing with the Better Half approach – because it is a pathway to permanent lifestyle changes. You may be able to eat more, but use the online tools such as Desizeme.com to keep on track to maintain your weight.

The Better Half – Diet is the right way to go for a permanent life style change towards the Smaller, Fitter and Healthier You.

Lyla Feldman asked:


Do you have weird eating habits or do you know someone who does?  What’s strange for one person might be perfectly normal for the next.  For example, one of my friends is a health nut when it comes to food.  That is fine, but she indulges in other things such as alcohol on a daily basis.  Too much of anything is never a good thing.  I have never seen her deviate from healthy food even when we were out late at night and everyone else is indulging haphazardly in fried foods or big breakfasts.  She would always get egg whites on wheat toast with ketchup.  It never failed.  Maybe she’s just a creature of habit.

 

I have another friend who douses her meals with salt and pepper when she wants to force herself to stop eating.  She’s also a very picky eater to boot.  I have little tolerance for people who don’t like to try new foods as they aren’t very exciting dining out companions.  I also tend to like ethnic food rather than American, but that is just my preference.  I have tried all kinds – my favorites include Persian, Indian, Ethiopian, Japanese, and Mexican.

 

Eating in bed or on the floor is not as uncommon as you may think.  When a good friend of mine didn’t have a kitchen table we just imagined that we were having a picnic in the park during meals.  In some cultures, sitting on the floor is completely normal.  My father puts ketchup on his eggs and macaroni and cheese which I always found repulsive.  One of my friends in college used to eat about a ½ dozen eggs every day.  She never gained the freshmen 15 so I guess she must have done something right.  

 

Some people smell their food before taking a bite, lick foil wrappers off yogurt lids, or cut the ends off sausages or hot dogs.  I must confess; as a kid growing up I indulged in grape jelly and cream cheese sandwiches.   Later on, I realized it was weird because none of my friends had ever eaten one.  Everyone has some sort of weird eating habit; some are more bizarre than others.  There are plenty of online forums to discuss the topic anonymously to check if anyone else shares the same weird eating habits with you.