Why You Just Can't Lose Weight

You step on the scale and groan at the number peeking between your toes. "I'll go on a diet today!" you think. Not so fast. Unless you are mentally ready to lose weight, any diet you try is likely doomed to failure.

In a widely accepted model of behavioral change, there are five stages of motivational readiness. If you're stuck in an early stage, your diet won't work, says registered dietician Karen Collins. Studies suggest that people may feel ready to lose weight, but if they are unprepared to alter their behavior, they'll fail, reports the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C. in a column titled "Nutrition Notes."

The five stages of motivational readiness that can be applied to dieting, exercise, or just about anything in your life:

Stage One: Precontemplation

A person has no intention of changing.

Stage Two: Contemplation

A person intends to change--later.

Read the rest of the stages here.

Vivrant Thang blogs about live, love and music over at Songs In The Key Of Life.

Diet Mondays: Portion Control -- It Works

One the easiest and least painful ways to get your diet started is to use portion control. So often, in much of diet literature, portion control is overlooked or not discussed seriously. Many “experts” claim that it’s too hard and the everyday individual is loathe to practice it because of its difficulty. The reality is portion control is quite easy and if you follow a few simple steps you can be on your way to a slimmer waistline:

1. Fix your plate the way you normally would. Pile the food on. Don’t worry about whether you’re putting too much on your plate, just follow your normal routine.

2. When you’re done take half the food off your plate and put in a container for later.

3. Eat the half you have left.

4. After you finish eating, wait 10 minutes and if you still feel hungry go and get the food that you put away and take half of that, put it on your plate and eat it.

5. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Try it for a week. After the first couple of days you probably won’t even need that second helping and my guess is, by the end of the week, you may have lost a couple of pounds. Ultimately, portion control is about eating less food so you consume fewer calories. If you’re now eating half of what you normally eat then you’re consuming half the calories and pounds will begin to come off.

Obviously what you eat matters, but if you’re just starting a dieting regime and you feel overwhelmed with all of the health and fitness advice from the “experts” this is a simple way to get the ball rolling. Once you see those early results you will feel motivated to keep it going and make even bigger changes in your diet and lifestyle.

Looking for Good Healthy Recipes?

I found a few sites that can help:

1. Prevention's Recipe Website

2. AllRecipes.com

3. MayoClinic.com - Healthy Recipes Center

You know I should start a food blog. Folk always telling you to eat healthy but most of the time finding good healthy stuff to eat can be a pain in the rear. Sometimes you just want someone to hand you a wekly menu and say, "Here, eat this and you'll lose weight." Just that simple. What I woldn't give to have a cook..lol.

If anyone has great healthy recipes they'd like to share, send them in. Sweetpotatopie07@gmail.com