33 Tips For Successful Dieting

SECTION A

1. Check with your doctor before starting any diet.
2. Pick a reasonable ideal weight for yourself.
3. Examine your thinking about food.
4. Change your eating behavior.
5. Formulate a good exercise routine to be followed at the same time as you are dieting.
6. Record your weight once a week.
7. Keep a chart of your weight and measurements.
8. Put a photograph of yourself at your fattest on the fridge door and look at it as you reach in for a tempting smack.

SECTION B

1. Educate yourself about food.
2. Make a list of low calorie foods and carry this list when you are shopping.
3. Keep plenty of low calorie foods on hand.

SECTION C

1. Pinpoint the specific emotional state which usually brings on an eating binge. Feelings of discouragement, anxiety and boredom are some of the many causes of compulsive eating patterns. Break your habit pattern by finding something else to do instead of eating whenever you feel that familiar emotion overcoming you. Any activity, whether writing a letter or calling friend, will do the trick.
2. Practice overcoming your urge to eat: Open the refrigerator saying out loud, "I just can't stop myself from eating this food", and then close the door and walk away. Thus you will prove to yourself that you can break your snacking habit, and the more you practice this little exercise, the more automatic will become the action of closing the fridge door.
3. Be more sensitive to your stomach. If your stomach tells you that your appetite has been satisfied, then stop eating at once.
4. When confronted with your favorite food, compare it with a mental image of yourself as slim as you want to be. You will have no trouble deciding which is most important to you.
5. Change the emphasis of a meal from the food to a social occasion. Make a point of eating with another person, eating slowly and stopping when you feel comfortably satisfied. The other person can remove the food if you overeat. Then start practicing this alone until you are completely in control of yourself.
6. Rate your food on a 5 point scale, according to how important it is to you, making 5 the most important. Then allow yourself only the food highest up on your scale. This will save you many calories.
7. Break your habit of eating as soon as you get home by changing your usual routine. Park differently, use a different door, and immediately involve yourself in another activity rather than entering the kitchen.

SECTION D

1. Don't eat more than four meals per day.
2. Don't snack between meals.
3. Don't eat after 7 p.m.
4. Don't eat while watching T.V.
5. Don't eat when you are upset.
6. Don't keep "wrong" foods in the house.
7. Don't be inactive; keep busy all the time.
8. Don't eat large amounts.
9. Don't eat fast.
10. Don't stay up late at night when dieting.

SECTION E

1. Decrease consumption of fat, sugar and starches.
2. Increase consumption of vegetables, fish and cheese.
3. Drink plenty of water.
4. Eat plenty of grapefruit.
5. Avoid salt and season your food the low-calorie way by using herbs, spices, garlic, onions, chives, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, vinegar and lemon juice.
6. Drink a cup of skim milk before bedtime.