The Easy Six Week Diet Transition

You think you can’t lose weight?  Here is a little “how-to” lesson that says you can experience a weight loss, just by making some changes in your life over the next several weeks.

You see, in some ways, changing your diet is similar to making a successful resolution in that it’s conceptual at first. Your long-range goal should just be to eat well. As your healthy eating behavior becomes a habit, you will find the other intangibles (such as weight loss, energy gained, etc.) falling into place. The easiest way to accomplish this is a gradual transition from food choices that don’t help to food choices that do. By making this transition gradually over six weeks, it is one of the easiest diet programs ever recommended.  By the way, when talking about healthy eating as part of a fitness and health program, I prefer to use the term ‘lifestyle change’ rather than diet.  This is becos I want it to be a permanent change and not just a temporary one.   After going thru this particular diet transition that follows, you might feel that you want a permanent lifestyle change too.

The Easy Six Week Diet Transition:

Working in a 6-week cycle, you can train (or trick, if you will) your body into craving more nutritious foods. This cycle is easier if you’re exercising becos your body will crave the proper nutrients to re-build its broken down tissue.

Week 1
Eliminate the junk from your diet. That’s it, just junk; no potato chips, candy, ice cream, etc. Other than this you may eat whatever you like… and here’s the kicker: you may cheat on this twice, and that means for TWO WHOLE DAYS YOU CAN EAT WHATEVER YOU LIKE AND STILL SUCCEED!

Week 2
No eating for 3-hours before you go to bed. That way your body can go to sleep in fat-burning mode, rather than in calorie-storing mode. Plus each week carries over, so you still cannot have junk, except for the 2 days when you may cheat and eat whenever and whatever you like.

Week 3
Eat 5 to 6 small meals a day. If you make yourself do this, the size will control itself becos you won’t ever get ravenously hungry. Try to keep each meal balanced as close to 30% protein, 40% carbohydrates, and 30% fat as you can – and try and eat for what you will be doing for the next three hours (If you’re working out, eat more, sitting at a desk, eat less)… Still no junk food, and still no eating three hours before bedtime. You may cheat on two days.

Week 4
Eliminate fast food and alcohol. This can be hard for many of us because we now have to plan our meals, but hey, it’s only for a couple weeks. People tend to forget that alcohol has calories, and it also slows your metabolism. Cheat ONLY ONE DAY this week.

Week 5
Eat whole foods. This means that you eliminate any processed foods from your diet, such as bread, most salad dressings, almost all cereal, luncheon meats, cheese, anything with preservatives, and most everything served in restaurants. What you can eat are whole foods such as fruit, raw or steamed vegetables, meat (sans any type of sauce), natural grain rice, poached eggs, etc. It shouldn’t be terribly hard since your eating habits have been slowly changing. Still, it’s a hard week because it will feel like dieting. Try not to cheat, but you may if you find yourself getting ravenous – just keep your blowout to a minimum.

Week 6
Eat healthy. Eat whatever you want, following the general rules you’ve followed for the last five weeks. You may be surprised to find yourself craving something healthy instead of a candy bar or pint of Ben & Jerry’s. You should now be better at listening to your body becos it will tell you what it needs to eat, as opposed to what you’re used to eating – especially if you’re working out. Keep a couple of cheating days, allowing yourself to give in to occasional indulgences. Just try not to overdo it.

Now take some time off and don’t think about dieting. Have your eating habits changed? Most likely they have. You may find that your body feels transformed and that you’ve shed some fat! More importantly, becos you have gradually changed your lifestyle, your body is likely to maintain this change, without a lot of effort on your part.

You should now know enough about yourself to tweak your lifestyle change to suit you. However, keep the cheating days. They are important, and not just becos they allow you to have fun. Whenever you are restricting your caloric intake, your metabolism wants to slow down becos it thinks that you are starving. By “cheating” a couple of days a week, you actually trick your metabolism to stay higher, so you lose more fat.