by Jenna Pope

Created on: November 20, 2010

Anyone can lose weight by dieting, but usually their success is short lived.  This is because most people diet until they can “eat again” and don’t understand how to maintain their new, lower weight. 

Merry-Go-Round:

Many dieters are on a merry-go-round of eating too much, losing the weight, buying smaller clothes, eating too much, packing up their smaller clothes, taking down their size 14s from the attic, and starting all over again to lose the extra weight. 

Fat Cells:  Unwanted Guests:

The most important thing to realize, if you are serious about losing weight and keeping it off, is that even though you may lose pounds, you never lose those nasty little fat cells that are lying in wait to puff up again and make you fat.  Once fat cells take up residence in your tissue, they live there forever.  All that you can do is keep them at bay.

Lifetime Weight Maintenance:

Once you lose weight, it is important that you include a LONG period of weight maintenance and exercise.  Both of these positive habits should be continued for life. 

Weight maintenance involves knowing how many calories you can eat to maintain your current weight.  The link below will calculate this for you:

http://www.fatfreekitchen.com/weightloss/weightloss. html

One of the reasons that dieters who eat packaged diet meals don’t keep the weight off is because they never mastered weight maintenance.  Imagine paying all that money and ending up fat!  Especially when you can do it on your own.

In weight maintenance, you can still eat the foods you love, but you can’t eat very much of them.  If you have a small piece of cheesecake, be sure to take that into your total calorie and fat gram count for the day.  In weight maintenance, you can’t binge eat and you can never eat the way you did before losing weight.  I know that we all want the best of both worlds, but it’s just not meant to be. 

New Tastes:

The good news is that by the time that you’ve changed your eating habits permanently, you’ll have developed a taste for foods that are less fattening and better for you.  Eventually you stop missing fatty beef and cream in your coffee and gobs and gobs of whipped cream on top of your favorite, coconut cream pie.  When you are eating right, you will not crave sugary or salty foods.

If you can learn to eat differently and, thereby, change your eating habits permanently, your battle with food will be over and you (and not all those fat grams and calories) will wind up the winner.  Never will you have to diet again.  You will be the envy of your friends and co-workers and enjoy being the new, slimmer you.

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