Planning the Right Mental Approach to Dieting
by Allison Whitehead
Dieting is not just about what food you eat, it's also about what attitude you have towards it. Your mental approach can literally make - or break - your diet plan.
Think about it for a moment. Whatever diet plan you're following; however healthy the food in your fridge is, it all counts for nothing if you rebel against it and decide to get a takeaway every night.
So how can you take a positive approach to losing weight? How can you make sure you remain committed to your diet - even when you've had a bad day?
The key is in the details. If you're looking at the bigger picture (for example, that your goal is to lose weight), even a small indiscretion can feel catastrophic. Having a chocolate biscuit with your tea will seem like a major disaster; after all, they're not healthy, they're not really necessary, and you weren't really hungry. So why did you eat it?
It's almost as if your brain concentrates on the negative event and magnifies it to seem disastrous. All of which can propel you onwards to eat more still, because you feel you've blown it today now anyway.
Let's look at that same indiscretion as a small detail. It's one chocolate biscuit. One. Not the whole packet - just one. You may still feel disappointed, and wish you hadn't eaten it, but it could have been much worse. You did at least have the willpower to stop at one. So congratulate yourself for that!
It's all about maintaining a positive mental attitude, because that's what will lead to your ultimate success, and to your goal weight.
If you view that chocolate biscuit as a disaster, you'll feel like a failure, and probably wonder what the point is of carrying on with your diet at all if you've already failed on such a small scale.
Do you see how much your attitude - good or bad - affects the end result?
Everyone who has ever achieved anything in life has done so through having a positive mental attitude. They have had the ability to see the best in a bad situation, learn from their mistakes and keep going regardless of the setbacks they may encounter.
Dieting is no different.
So however much weight you have to lose, and however hard or easy you are finding it, make sure you adopt a healthy mental attitude today. It will benefit you in more ways than you could imagine.
