Achieve Your Ideal Weight with These Easy and Unusual Tricks

It doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated to achieve your optimum size. Here are three uncommon pieces of advice to help make it easy.

1. Put a mirror on your fridge. This will help you to catch a glimpse of yourself each time you open it and make you aware of how many times you do so unconsciously, as a habit, when you’re not even hungry. The mirror makes you do a double take and gives you a second’s gap between the cause (stress, boredom) and the response (mindlessly opening the fridge to comfort eat), to help you make a new, healthier decision.
2. Think before you eat. Before you put food in your mouth, take a moment to do this exercise: imagine how the meal or snack will feel in your body for the next few hours as it digests. For example, if you have something healthy, like vegetables and lean protein or complex carbs, very likely you will feel energetic for hours and you will feel full until your next meal or healthy snack. However, if you load yourself up with empty calories like chips, cookies, or lots of bread, you will tend to feel heavy and tired for hours after – and you will probably feel hungry again before too long. Remember that food is fuel. You are eating to live, not living to eat. This means becoming conscious of how your body feels in the long term, rather than focusing on things that provide short-lived instant gratification, such as junk food.
3. Phase out unhealthy foods. Rather than trying to give up your favorite foods cold turkey, phase them out gradually. Start by writing a list of all the junk food that you eat. Let’s say, for example, that your vices are chocolate, chips, French fries, bread and ice cream. Eliminate one vice form your diet at a time, taking at least two weeks to break the habit. For example, if you start with chocolate, find a healthy substitute for it like fresh fruit. After two weeks of sticking to it, you’ll find that the cravings will disappear and then, and only then, do you move on to eliminate your next vice. In this way, you are gradually changing your lifestyle and building healthy new habits without feeling deprived. The key is to be patient and consistent, and before you know it the pounds will be dropping off.