Baby steps

It seems to me that when I speak with people who are wanting to loose pounds or wanting to eat better for their health and their families health that there is a lot of rush and confusion. A rush to loose all the pounds fast and confusion on what the hell is "good food and "bad" food. I believe that so much of this mind set is from media and the fitness industry. Leading people to believe that there are magic pills, supplements and 12 week programs. If you believe that loosing weight and becoming healthy is going to happen over night, you are setting yourself up for a huge upset.

Yes you can loose a lot of weight quickly if you go balls out Biggest Looser style or if you shoot hormones (HGC) into your leg and only eat 500 calories but when all is said and done where does it leave you? Did you change your mind set? did you create new habits? are you going to go back to your old routines of eating and not exercising once you loose the weight? Are you going to give in to the marketing of the crap on grocery store shelves?

Baby step's will get you far better results in the long run. The weight might come off slower than you like but it will end up staying off for good. You will start noticing slowly in different ways that you feel healthier...maybe your headaches subside, you have a little more energy, you stop suffering from upset stomach etc... These changes you will notice in your kids as well.

For yourself you wont feel so deprived in the beginning. Taking everything away all at once is a real fast way to set yourself up to fail. As far as your kids go they might even welcome some new items in the fridge or may not even notice that there yogurt is now not filled with sugar and other unnecessary additives.

Someone asked me how I felt about the HGC diet, she was inquiring to know because she knew someone who was on his second go round with it...His second go round? So if it worked so well the first time why does he have to do it again? In my opinion its pretty clear, it's a quick fix. Sure it's great for a jump start but at the expense of not giving yourself the time to establish some good habits and change the way you think about your over all health and wellness. It all has to start in your head.

I had always bought white bread and when I started to change the way me and my family ate I switched to whole wheat. My kids refused for 2 months to eat it! That's a long time without sandwich's and toast. I didn't give in knowing that they weren't going to starve. Eventually they started to eat it...and liked it so much so that we even moved up to breads like Dave's Killer Bread www.daveskillerbread.com/ which has a ton of grains and seeds. So let the kids suffer temporarily, I promise the crap in the pantry will kill them a lot faster than suffering without it.

So go ahead start a new day with Baby steps...

1. Start with one thing that you know is not good for you and omit it from your diet. (your daily diet coke or morning doughnut)

2. Add to your diet lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.

3. Read labels, pay attention to what is really in your food. The less ingredients the better

4. Start doing most of your shopping around the perimeters of the grocery store (the aisle are where more of the processed foods are)

5.Eat real food more often (food that goes bad, food that doesn't have a list of ingredients)

6. Do some form a physical activity for 30 minutes a day.


You don't have to strive for all of these on the first day take Baby steps
Allow for some pleasures still, ya know the "crap" I speak of...like Oreo's and wine : or whatever your heart fancies.

80/20 (spot on clean eating 80% and the other 20% for not so clean) or a cheat day which ever works best for you.