Deprivation doesn't work
It's no secret that to lose weight, you need to consume less
calories or energy, than you expend. The reality is if you stop
eating the things that have given you so much pleasure in the past
you will be depriving yourself. Deprivation is a negative emotion
which is why many traditional diets feel like a punishment where
you are denied your favourite foods until the weight is lost. Once
you reach your goal and are free of the restriction, you can't wait
to go back to your old ways. This is the reason so many people
struggle to maintain their weight loss; they are yo-yo dieting.
From our experience the secret is to remove the deprivation and
make the program feel like a positive, sustainable experience that
fits with your lifestyle. If you are losing weight, and feeling
great, there is no reason why you should be overweight again. It's
not just about changing what you eat; it's about changing the way
you eat.
Are you really hungry?
Before simply changing the way you eat, you must first work our
whether your hunger is in your head or in your stomach. If the
hunger is in your head, a craving, no amount of eating will help.
Instead, you should identify the situation that triggered the
craving and see how you can best deal with it without giving in to
eating. If the hunger is physical, then having a healthy
pre-prepared snack ready will help you avoid bad foods that could
make you hungry again sooner.
The Celebrity Slim Program has a range of products available
that will help with suppressing your appetite and curbing
cravings.
Eating smaller meals, more often
Many dieters spend much of their day eating very little, but
then eat 1 or 2 larger meals with the belief that starving for most
of the day will help them lose weight. In fact, the opposite is
true.
When you 'starve' yourself for maybe 5-6 hours, a number of
physiological changes occur in your body. After around 3 hours
without eating your blood sugars begin to drop and will cause you
to feel quite hungry. If you have a meal at this point, your
rampant appetite means you risk overeating. You may also find you
crave something sweet or starchy - that's your body looking for
carbohydrates as a quick fix to restore its blood sugar
balance.
If you don't eat anything and continue to fast, your metabolism
starts to lapse into what's called 'starvation mode'. Your hunger
pains may go away, but this is a sign your metabolism is starting
to slow down as your body starts to conserve energy, which is the
opposite of what you want. When your body conserves energy fat
burning slows down, making weight loss more difficult.
If after hours of fasting you now decide to eat, your metabolism
will quickly swing into high gear as it senses food is now
available. Straight away your appetite comes back as your
metabolism wants to encourage you to stock up on food, as much as
you can eat, to compensate for the probable next starvation period!
This starvation mode is a throw back to the time of our primitive
ancestors, where food was often in short supply. When food became
plentiful after a period of scarcity, their metabolism would
stimulate them to eat as much as possible in order to store more
energy reserves for future times when food was again in short
supply. Unfortunately we have all inherited this metabolic trait
which helps us to store fat easily.
But we can avoid this phenomenon with the simple trick of eating
every few hours, which means about 5-6 meals spaced out during each
day. By eating regularly, your blood sugars remain stable, you
don't get overly hungry, your metabolism stays active and you don't
tend to overeat at each meal.