New Diet Plan

About seventeen years ago I left the service weighing around 200 pounds and with a 38 inch waist. Through the years I put on weight and gained inches bit by bit. I started looking at all those diet planes and even tried a few. Nothing seemed to work for me. I did not want to get on the dieters roller coaster and end up worse off that I started. I did not want a starvation diet or anything that would be costly. I wanted a plan that was easy, effective and healthy. This year I finally achieved results. But I had to re-think a lot of the fundamentals. We get so wrapped up in the ideas of eating less and loosing weight. That thought process is just wrong-headed. Toss it out the window and I will show you the right approach. First, your game plan has to be customized to you and your situation. Everybody is different. What works for you (detail-wise) may not work for anybody else. That is okay. But even more to the point, is the fact that no-one else program, pre-designed menu, calorie counter or whatever is going to work either. Forget those things, they are nonsense and anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. Second, the key is health. You have a health issue if you are over-weight. You probably have more than one. The best approach is to first do everything you can to promote the body's own ability to heal. It needs proper nutrition! Modify your diet not for the purpose of loosing weight, but for the purpose of eating healthy. Supplement your diet with vitamins and minerals. Try stuff. Most multi-vitamins I tried did little to nothing for me. But when I found a good combination, it reversed numerous 'chronic symptoms' I had been dealing with for years! The right diet allowed my body to make repairs, but I was still out of shape and still not loosing weight. Next step for me was to look at some of those diet pills. I even tried a couple of the them. They all ready very much alike. They claim to work if used in conjunction with diet and exercise, oh and you have to take them with a full glass of water. Perhaps it is more about the diet and exercise! Do you think you would loose the weight if you increased your level of exercise, limited your diet and drank more water? Sure you would, but it would only last while you were doing those things. As soon as you setteled back into your normal way of doing things the weight plus a few more pounds would come right back. It has to be more than that. So if you modify your eating habits, and not just go on a temporary diet, we have made an important step! This is a lifestyle adjustment, not a fad! Eat what you need. Eat what you enjoy. But eat to be healthy. Don't eat for unhealthy reasons, or unhealthy amounts. Don't be silly. It's not about the food, it's about leaning to feed the body the building materials it needs to be healthy! Listen to your body, it will tell you what is working, and what is not! Then it occurred to me that all these diets ask you to drink water. You need to drink a lot more water than most people are drinking. Drink More Water drinking more water, you will improve your health. More water can suppress those mid-night cravings, help clean out body toxins, reduce your chances for some types of cancer and so forth. And best of all, water comes out of the tap for free. This health tip costs you almost nothing! Bottled water isn't cheap, but it can be a much healthier choice than soda-pop at about the same price. There are also a lot of teas on the market and the sports drinks are also good. These are low sugar drinks and they have added health benefits that high-sugar carbonated drinks do not have. Send you money more wisely, drink healthy drinks too! And stay fully hydrated! You may find yourself running out of energy or feeling hungry because you are dehydrated, and not because you need a quick pick-me-up. Putting these several items together last year I was able to go a whole year without any weight gain. I stayed at 340 pounds all year without gaining anything more. That was a first! But I was not loosing any weight either. I still became winded on climbing a single flight of stairs! I needed something more. The third key to success came to me while watching TV. Remember that reality program called The Biggest Looser? There was a trainer on that program that worked from a simple motto. Build muscle, because muscles burn calories, fat burns nothing! That put it all together for me. This is why all those ‘diet’ products say they work. They are tested on people who are controlling their diet, increasing their exercise and drinking water. Boom! That is an important key! For me the final piece of the puzzle fell into place when I took a summer job. I went to work as an operations and maintenance man at a local water park. The park covers about five acres of ground. I did a LOT of walking. I wore out a new pair of tennis shoes in just three months time. To keep hydrated I would drink PowerAid and bottled water one right after the other. After working eight hours in the heat of summer, I’d come home and soak in the tub. My muscles would ache after all that work! I began to be able to climb stairs without becoming winded! I started to loose weight. I’m back into my size 50 pants and down to 320 pounds. It is working! In reflection about what finally made the difference for me, I thought back to what I had to change. Then it hit me. The PowerAid and water! I had stopped drinking so much soda pop and started drinking a lot of PowerAid and bottled water. Now that is ’diet’ food to me! When you are working out so much that you are able to drink (and sweat) three or four bottles a day, you’ll find that you are not hungry for a lot of food, you’re too full of fluids! This is what worked for me. I think the basic concepts will work for you too. In short, it’s not about limiting your diet to loose weight. Forget all that nonsense! It’s about improving your health. Learn to eat healthy. Improve your diet with supplemental vitamins and minerals as needed. Do some research and try what you think will help you. Then listen to your body! It will tell you if it is working or not. Cut back on soda, beer, coffee.. And any other high sugar drinks! Replace them with water, teas and sports drinks. Enjoy what you eat and drink, just don’t gorge yourself! Then start where ever you are and begin to ramp up the activity level. Walking is good! Park farther away from the grocery-stores front doors, and walk a bit farther. Take the stairs more often. Build up your muscles and keep active. This is not about a short term program. This is all about making better lifestyle choices and improving your health. Then the weight thing will take care of itself!