Losing Weight With Behaviour Therapy ~ Bloggerin Info

SO YOU HAVE tried to lose weight, but it makes you miserable. Why? Because you've done it the same old way, right? Too often dieting doesn't work. Chances are that you have dieted--and that you've already gained back all the pounds you lost.

The following is a revolutionary new concept of weight control based on behavior therapy. It doesn't focus on fat at all, but on you. It holds that eating too much is behaviour that you learn, and it applies principles of modern psychology to change these habits.

In a dozen experimental weight-reduction programs, psychiatriests and psychologists trained in behavioural methods have developed a series of techniques that are condensed here into a seven-point program to help you lose weight.

1. Learn your eating habits.

You can't change habits until you know precisely what they are. Keep a diet diary with five headings: when you eat, what you eat, where you eat, who is with you, and how you feel when you eat.

2. Avoid your personal eating cues.

Learn from your diets diary the particular circumstances that lead you to problem eating. If the very sight of food makes you eat, for instance, then remove all food from every room of the house except the kitchen. If you habitually snack at 10 a.am., wash your hair or tidy up the guest room at precisely that hour. If you have a job and invariably pause at the office food-vending machine, detour to keep it out of sight.

3. Count calories.

After a week of self-analysis, buy a calorie counter. If you cut your food intake by 500 calories a day, you will lose a pound a week. Don't aim for a greater weight loss, and don't try to reduce the calories below 1200 a day. Torturing yourself with a starvation diet is a fatal error; you need a regime you can live with. And don't skip meals: that's likely to result in binge eating by nightfall. Study your calorie counter for wise choices: cook green beans instead of peas, for a saving of 84 calories: save another 100 by eating fresh grapefruit instead of opening a can.

4. Practice good eating habits.

Take one small bite of food, then put down your fork while you savor its texture and taste. Chew it thoroughly and swallow before you pick up the fork again. It takes 20 minutes from the start of a meal for the stomach to signal feelings of satiety to the brain. So try to strecth your meal to a half-hour or more.

5. Control social eating.

Pre-plan. Save up a few hundred calories when you know in advance that you're dining out. Dull your appetite by having a cup of bouillon, a dish of gelatin or a raw carrot before you go to a cocktail or dinner party. If you still don't trust yourself, arrive late and miss the cocktail-and-nibbing ritual. In a restaurant, order the entire meat at once. The menu is designed to entice: you're better off without a second look.

6. Exercise calories away.

There are two ways to lose weight--eat less and exercise more---and it's helpful to combine them. But you needn't become an exercise nut. For example, simply by being less efficient around the house, you can work more physical activity into your daily routine. Stop saving steps. Stair climbing expends ten calories a minute, two and a half ties as much as taking a walk.

7. Reward yourself for losing weight.

Behavior is shaped by its immediate consequences. That's why it's hard to change an adult's eating pattern: the immediate pay-off for eating is pleasure, and dieting seems like punishment. to reinforce your new regime, you need a quick payoff. One possibility: drop a quarter in a piggy bank for each day you stay within your calorie count---to pay for something your really yearn for Never, of course, reward yourself with food.

Some of this tips may seem familiar to you, or even trivial. But remember that a new habit is only acquired by painstakingly altering a gamut of responses. By tacking one small step at a time, by becoming your own behavioral engineer, you'll learn that you can control the way you eat. And the reward of success will lead to ever more success.