by Caroline Tigeress

Created on: June 27, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

Losing weight is never an easy task and one even more difficult in our food-oriented culture. As someone who has lost a few hundred pounds over the years, I have learned a few common sense things that can help you out.

First, you must learn to retrain yourself. You need to put yourself on a pattern. One does not do this instantly, but makes slow, gradual changes, because that's the best way of making those changes permanent. Consider it takes between forty to forty-five days to make a permanent habit change in your brain.

What you can do now, today, is simple. If you're able to, begin by walking around the block whenever you have to take your car out.

Sounds silly, doesn't it? However, our ancestors did not have cars, and were not morbidly obese, either. If you can, if you're close enough to the grocery, consider walking there as well. It'll give you a lot more perspective than just zipping down to the store for a sixty-four ounce soda and coming back. That's what we're changing, your perspective to food and exercise.

This brings me to food. What you eat is not nearly as important as how much you eat, and where you eat it. In our fast food nation, we grab food toss it in the car, and munch it up going down the road. We're getting the sensation of movement, and accomplishment by chomping a giant hamburger and sucking down a soda.

Gradually, wean yourself off caffeinated beverages of most any kind. A walk in the morning will wake you up just as well as the Frappachino, and you won't be paying five bucks and seven hundred calories, either. Ideally, you should be drinking water as your main beverage a majority of the time, with the occasional fruit juice. Carbonated beverages should be avoided like the plague, as they have a tendency to allow you to overeat more by distending the stomach and, 'settling' foods. Think of Alka Seltzer. Same exact action. You can chunk down the double hamburger because you're using the carbonation of the soda to help distend the stomach to get it all in. Kind of scary, isn't it? The fast food giants thought of that one a long darn time ago.

Treat your meals with care. Take the time to prepare them yourself. Don't know how to cook, or what to cook? Helium has some excellent food articles, so do take the time to stretch out your knowledge base a bit.

One thing that you'll find will really help peel the weight off, and this is a difficult thing to do is to eat several smaller meals a day. When I go into a training cycle, I eat six meals a day, with the largest being about the size of a Fuji apple. I make all my own meals and snacks, put them in my cooler, and set a timer in it.

Timer goes off, you get a meal. Reset timer.

At a certain point, your body will have reset itself using these behavioral mechanisms, and while you may not lose fifteen pounds in three days, you are developing healthier habits that will assist you in your quest for a better life and lifestyle.

It's critical that you look at this not as, 'losing weight' but as 'changing your lifestyle for the better.'

It's much more about personal empowerment than about pound loss. Small, gentle changes will give you a much better chance of not just taking the weight off, but keeping it off, and being a healthier human being.

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