Planning your successful weight loss is a lot like organizing any project: in order to be successful, you need to research the options, decide on a budget, determine your goal and create a timeline. You'll need to pick up a few techniques and establish strategies to keep you on track and motivated. And you definitely need to develop a reward system--one that doesn't set you back on your timeline.
Perhaps the single component--besides determination--that has the greatest impact on how successful you will be is choosing the plan that best suits you.
This can be tricky: after (rather futile) years of trying various plans, I finally got to the point where I tried the one plan I thought was least likely to work for me--Atkins. As a nearly a life-long vegetarian, I didn't see how a diet of meat-meat-meat-and-fish could possibly work for me. I was willing to start eating fish and fowl but no meat, which believe me, was radical enough. I decided to give it exactly two weeks--the amount of time to run through the first stage of the plan, called "induction". If in the end, it didn't work out, well then, that would be that. I would resign myself to a life of wearing mumus and join Costco so I could buy double-stuffed Oreos in bulk.
And so I did induction. I cheated a little--I had a few non-induction foods like nuts and strawberries--but I didn't cheat a lot. I had no foods not on Atkins' on-going weight loss list--no bread, no pasta, no potatoes. No bananas, no sweet potatoes, no rice. No sugar! No cookies, no cake, no candy--are you hearing the violins yet? No sweets of any kind, unless you counted the strawberries, which I certainly didn't. But I did eat as much as I wanted of the permitted foods. As my friend Lisa's boyfriend said: if you're hungry, have a chicken breast. If you're still hungry, have another. This became my mantra.
After a few days, I noticed that I no longer craved sugar. My blood sugar stabilized; I didn't get shaky and desperate before meals. Snacking lost its allure. I was rarely hungry, and never starving.
At the end of two weeks, I got on the scale. Although I already felt a ton better--better rested, better nourished, more energetic, less bloated, and my pants seemed noticeably looser, too--these benefits didn't have much sway over me at the time. Forget about "life plan": at this point, Atkins was a diet, whose main permissible food group was one I didn't like. Blood sugar be darned, I wanted to see weight loss. The more the better. I got all worked up imagining a lousy pound or half pound loss after all that time. Or worse: that with all the butter, cream, cream cheese, mayonnaise, and blue cheese dressing I would have gained weight, a prospect I was not ready to accept if it didn't include the consumption of cake. I got on the scale, prepared for the worse.
I'd lost 12 pounds.
Already then! I was on board.
If I never before thought it would work because I was not a meat-eater, I didn't take into account all of the components that made it surprisingly compatible for the way I do like to eat and to live. I'm not big on counting things--calories, "points", etc--and on Atkins I don't (although some people do find it helpful to count carbs). I'm also not big on meetings, fees, or weight loss groups, and Atkins doesn't require any of these. I don't mind cooking, and actually like vegetables--most of which you can, in fact, have on Atkins--although I'm not crazy about most fruit (with the exception of berries), preferences that are compatible with Atkins. Perhaps the two things that sold me the most on Atkins is that one, I can't stand being hungry, and two, I can't stand "diet" food or dainty, diet-like portions. I'm a hearty, food-loving girl.
As you consider for yourself what plan to follow, it's important to think of your natural preferences, but it's also important to think outside the box. If you keep running into failure, maybe it's because you keep trying the same type of thing, thinking that that's your ticket when really you're barking up the wrong tree. Never mind the mixed metaphor--you know what I mean. If you've been convinced no- or low-fat is the way to go but the scale isn't budging, maybe it's time to try a low-carb approach instead. And vice versa: if low carb just doesn't make you feel good, try a low-fat approach.
It's unlikely that you'll find the perfect diet for you, and so the goal should be the next-best thing: an eating plan that you can live with. This is to encourage you not to get hung up on every detail of a particular diet, but access the suitability of a plan overall. I would have never tried Atkins if I'd focused on the fact that meat is a big part of the plan for most people. But with a little research (i.e. finding out that vegetables are in fact encouraged and part of the plan) and a little bit of compromise (eating fish and poultry) I found a plan that worked for me by providing lots of fresh, delicious, non-diet food in non-diet portions. But Questers, everything has a cost: I go months without having so much as a piece of bread, and haven't had a single Oreo in years. It's also true that on Atkins my grocery bill went up and I'm most successful when I spend 10 or 15 hours a week cooking.
What are you willing to give up? What aren't you willing to give up? Try identifying the top three things on each list and then go to webmd.com's Diet A-Z page, which has the low-down on over 50 plans, including such unlikely prospects as "The Cookie Diet" and "The Fast Food Diet" in addition to old standbys like Weight Watchers, Pritikin, and of course, Atkins. Do your research, keeping your preferences, your budget, and the time you have to prepare meals in mind. Be willing to consider eating in a way you hadn't before imagined--the change may very well prove to be the break-through you've been waiting for.
Yum! Pretty and festive. And yes, you can eat pansies! They're sort of peppery--and delicious!