10 Days to Permanent Weight Loss, Day 9

How much weight can you lose on your program? How much do you want to lose? Keep going until you are where you want to be.

Now what?

Well, you have a choice. You can throw caution to the winds, discard your intermittent feeding program, and eat your way back to your old self, or you can opt for maintenance.

If you'd like to stay at your goal weight, you'll need to experiment a little, always with a keen eye on your trusty scales. If you settled at 3 days of stringent dieting a week, drop back to two and see what happens. If you're still maintaining, drop back to 1. If you've really cut down on your portions and streamlined your intake, you may be able to return to eating 7 days a week. But keep that hawk's eye on the scales and immediately add back a day of deprivation if you gain 2 pounds or more.

Also experiment now with the different quickie diets you've become familiar with. Some will be more effective for you than others so stick with the ones that give you the most bang for your buck.

Next: The final takeaway.


Virginia Bola http://www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html

10 Days to Permanent Weight Loss, Day # 8

We've talked about what a large selection of foods you have for your diet days, those 1 to 3 minimal intake days a week when your weight loss spurts. What to eat on your "off" non-dieting days?

Again, it's all up to you. Initially, you may want to eat whatever you normally eat (no playing "catch-up" for your day of deprivation success, mind you!). As you progress through your program, you will start to find yourself unconsciously lowering your intake because your old portions now seem too big. If you're strictly dieting 3 days a week, you've cut your overall weekly caloric intake by up to 43% so naturally your body no longer craves the amount of food it demanded in the past.

If you want to be even more virtuous, you may elect to concentrate on highly nutritious but low calorie foods on your "off" days also - fish, poultry, vegetables, rice, fruit. The important thing is to eat things you like on those "off" days. The thought that gets you through the painful diet days is that "this is only for a day, 2 days, 3 days." If you don't have fun "off" days to look forward to, you're back to the old endless deprivation mindset, you'll get sick of the whole thing, and relapse stares you in the face.

Next: Making it last.

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10 Days to Permanent Weight Control # 7

You may wonder if the diet you pick makes a difference. Not for this program. There are literally thousands of "quickie" diets ranging from a minimum of 6 or 8 hours to as long as 7 to 10 days. Some are obviously more nutritionally balanced than others. Canned formula programs or mix-up shakes are usually quite complete while tomatoes and cottage cheese or cabbage soup routines may be deficient in many nutrients.

However, this is not a lifetime eating plan - you are eating unnaturally for only a few days at a time. Your body and digestive system can survive almost anything, including the complete absence of any nutrients, for a few days. What is important is that the diet be a true fad diet - stringent, Spartan, a minimum in calories of any kind.

The most effective approach is to mix and match. One week you might drink fruit juices for a day, then go on straight protein for a day, and lettuce and tomatoes for the third day. The frequent changes keep your body off balance and head off that dreaded "famine coming, famine coming" reaction which slows your metabolism to a crawl so your body can hang on to its dearly beloved fat stores.

Find new fad diets wherever you can. There are hundreds on the Internet, books and pamphlets galore, and every woman's magazine hosts its diet o'the month. You can try a total fast if you'd like but it's better to either limit that to 24 hours or to occasionally extend to 4-5 days as the second and third days are really tough while by the fourth and fifth days, any sense of hunger has completely gone. Don't go any longer than about 5 days unless you're an experienced faster or under expert supervision.

Pick whatever you like and what works within your food budget: buttermilk, cottage cheese and grapefruit, eggs and tomatoes, fish only, milk and bananas, yogurt, rice, raw food - there is a fad diet for almost anything you can imagine.

Keep trying new things to maintain your interest.

Next: Handling the non-dieting days.

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10 Days To Weight Loss # 6

You know what you're capable of handling and what is just not acceptable. Use your personal level of tolerance for discomfort to determine how you combine your eating and dieting days.

To minimize the chance of relapse, start off a little more slowly that you think you can handle. You can adjust your program at any time and, in fact, after the initial success, you are likely to keep raising the bar as your belief in yourself blossoms and a kernel of pride starts to germinate.

For the first week, for example, you may select one day in which you will observe an extremely stringent fad diet for 24 hours. You survive that one day of deprivation because you know it's only one day and you have had the opportunity to plan it out ahead of time to minimize distractions and temptations.

For the few days after your 1 day diet, feel the glow. You may, or may not, have actually lost weight - it is the feeling of success that we are seeking and you need to relish that feeling for all it's worth.

If you believe you can do it, stretch the one day to 48 hours the next week (or stay at the 24 hour per 7 day schedule for a little while, constantly building your ability to do this). It's up to you whether you want to set it up for 48 straight hours or make it 2 sessions a few days apart.

Make sure you give yourself credit for what you are doing. It may not show immediately on the scale but you have actually cut your food intake by initially 14% and now 29%!

When you know you're ready, and only when you know you're ready, move up to 3 days per week! Again, it's up to you whether you pick a 3 day diet or intersperse 3 different dieting days throughout the week.

Next: which of the diets shall I pick?

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10 Days to Weight Loss #5

We can repeat the short bursts of pain from stringent food restriction in a well-organized long range program.

We know the quick "fad" diets work because they have worked for us - in the short term. The problem is that we then return to our old eating habits and those ugly, temporarily jettisoned, pounds pop right back.

If our goal is permanent weight control, we need to map out a campaign that combines short bursts of progress with longer periods of regular intake.

If you remember, our memories of pain fade quickly so a return to a short period of deprivation is no more difficult than the initial jolt.

It is this seesaw between tough days and satisfying days that lets us stay with the program and maintains both our momentum and our motivation.

Next: Mapping out your schedule.

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10 Days To Weight Loss - Day 4

We can keep the pain of dieting sharp but short. We find it
much easier to handle even intense pain if the duration is
limited. We'll accept the sharp pain of lancing a boil or a
blister, knowing that it will be over in an instant and will
resolve that dull discomfort that has existed for days.

Likewise in dieting, we find it easier to be strict, even
tyrannical, on our food intake for a very limited period of
time. It is far easier to accept fasting, or a liquid diet,
or a single food item only regimen, if it is just for a few
days. That is the basis of the continued popularity of the 3
day - 7 pound "Hollywood" and "Celebrity" diets. It is the
reason people go to fat farms or fasting spas for a week.

We can deny ourselves almost anything for a few days. It is
the long-term denial, even of only a few items, that saps
our energy and destroys our resolve. The long, slow, weight
loss programs so loudly recommended lead, for this reason,
to inevitable relapse.

Ten Days To Permanent Weight Control - Day 3

We can't avoid some pain, at some point, in our journey to lifetime thin-dom. Those pictures of happy, laughing dieters are a myth! If the diet is as easy, tasty, and fun as it's cracked up to be, it won't work.

Let's face it. You will never get the same thrilling shiver of delight from a celery stalk that you get from a box of Godiva chocolates. You will never salivate for hours at the thought of a broiled veggie burger as you may at the prospect of a perfect Chateaubriand or an enormous lobster tail. Wake up and smell the decaf - denying ourselves pleasure is tough. And repetitive denial just gets tougher.

So what can we do?

We can manage the pain by planning our attack in several different ways.

Next: Relief is on the way.

This is a section of a 10 mini-course outlining a plan to lose weight rapidly and permanently. For more information, visit: http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/index2.html