Starting off with telling yourself that you are going to go on a diet could be deadly. You will soon crash land into a pile of ice cream with chocolate syrup, sprinkles and other toppings and after eating it all and licking the bowl cry until morning, not quite understanding what happened. You were doing so well on your DIET!

Start out with telling yourself that you are going to change your food. Clean out the old crap in your cupboard and I mean really clean it out. Throw away all the chips, the cookies, the cakes and pies, sweet cereal, etc. Then eat a good breakfast, eggs, some toast and water, juice or coffee. Do not go to the store hungry. Fatal, very fatal.

Shop the outside of the store first. Start in the produce section. Look for color, lots of color. The more color you have in your fruit and veggies the better they are for you. Don't go crazy with your buying here, they do not last forever. You may have to either come back in a couple of day and get more fresh fruit and veggies or opt for buying some frozen. (I buy frozen fruit to put in my homemade smoothie that I make every morning)

Off to the meat, if the bakery is near the produce or meat or in between walk thru it with your head held high, very high. DO NOT STOP! You do not need anything in this section! Look at the meat and go for something that you haven't tried before, ahi, or tuna steak or halibut. If you do not know how to cook any of these choices either ask for help on cooking ideas, or see if they have any idea recipe cards. Or use the internet. But you want to be able to cook these new foods with ease. If you don't find anything that looks good go for the chicken. Chicken is always safe and you can do so much with it, but just remember to think slim. Chicken breast, cooked, sliced and thrown on a bed of lettuce with other salad stuff that you like. It is that easy.

I hope that your basket is somewhat filled by this point with some old and some new stuff to try. Remember that you are not on a diet; you are changing the food that you eat.

Be very careful of the isle that you go down from the meat counter on. Dairy is great, but in moderation only. And try and get as close to low fat, no fat as possible. Do not go down the soda isle. No diet soda, remember, you are not on a diet, so you can't buy any of this. You will buy water, water, water! Buy some cereal; make sure it is full of good stuff and not sugar. Read your labels. Bread, whole grain. You may need to make a couple of trips to help refill your cupboards, but do not give up and do not pull out of the trash any of the crap that you threw away.

Baby steps and keep telling yourself that you are doing a great job. And you will soon start looking better, feeling better, and finding new ways to cook and eat and you will never ever go back to eating all that junk that you were. You buy it (the junk food) you eat it, so do not buy it and bring it home, cause you will eat it.

Do not forget to reward yourself here and there, not every day. When you have started eating better and want a candy bar or a piece of cake then have one. Key word here, ONE! You will feel like crap if you indulge and go crazy.

Think of your body as a river. You keep throwing trash in the river it will get clogged up. You need to flush it with water, water, water, and start putting into it stuff that will easily be able to be broken down and move threw the river with ease.

Good luck and DO NOT GIVE UP!

Learn more about this author, S. Murphy.
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