Losing weight and creating a healthier and more vibrant you can be easy when you follow these 5 simple steps.
Once you know, and more importantly follow these steps, it will ensure that you will be clear on what you want and give you the best chance to achieve the results you seek. You will become more aware of the food that you eat, your habits and relationship with food, and more attuned with your body. You will stop yo-yo dieting forever and develop a long term enjoyable eating plan and healthier lifestyle. Your health and vitality will soar and you will gain increased energy and have greater mental clarity.
The 5 Steps Are:
- Having the right mindset – Knowing why you want to do this and commitment to your goal are paramount
- Having a plan is the key to success
- Set your environment up to support you
- Purchase your low calorie foods in advance
- Incorporate Exercise into your daily routine
Step # 1 – Having the right mindset
Knowing why you need to lose weight and being committed to doing whatever it takes is crucial to your success; otherwise it will be easy for you to lose focus.
Your mindset, and the intention you set, are so important to ensuring that you follow through.
Be clear on the reasons why you are fasting and what it is you wish to achieve.
The reasons why you need to do this include:
To see results with any type of diet will not happen after just one day of fasting. Therefore commitment to a set time frame such as 4 weeks will ensure that you see results you need to keep motivated. Losing weight, losing inches around your waistline, or seeing a decrease in your cholesterol or other health markers will make you want to continue with the plan, and adapt this into your everyday eating and lifestyle
By being committed to your goal and outcome sets the intention to yourself and others that you are serious and are determined to see improvements in your health and well being.
Be clear on the reasons why you are fasting and what it is you wish to achieve.
When you are committed, you will be less likely to allow yourself or others to sabotage you, or to distract you off course from achieving your goals, because you know the results will be worth the small changes and sacrifices you will have to make.
“A diet without commitment and intention is like pushing a door that says pull… It just won’t work.” ~ Sarah Jones
Step # 2 – Having a plan is the key to success
Having a fasting diet plan is crucial because, just like any goal that you set and commit to, you need a plan so you know how to get from A to B. This includes planning the two designated days each week, as well as your meals on the days that you fast.
The 3 reasons you need to do this are because:
- It will keep you focused on your goal and outcome
- It will make it easier for you to shop and stock your fridge with suitable foods.
- It will help you schedule your social and other commitments around your fasting days, helping you minimize distraction and temptations.
And should your commitment waiver on a fasting day, you know exactly what to do so you can easily get back on track that week without having to beat yourself up about it.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
Step # 3 – Set your environment up to support you
Having a supportive environment around you is critical to you achieving your goals. It means that the people surrounding you are aware of your plans, and can encourage and support you rather than sabotage your efforts.
Make sure they know why you are doing this and what you want to achieve. If you can get them to do the diet with you, then this is even better and can actually lead to even greater success for all involved.
Creating the right environment is so important to achieving success because:
- It will limit negative influences and distractions
- It will mean people can provide you with support to help keep you on track and remind you that the hard yards you put in will be worth it
- Others can be a source of inspiration, ideas, motivation or just a sounding board for when you need it.
Your environment includes everyone around you, your significant other, others at home as well as friends and colleagues.
“You can’t make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.” ~ Deepak Chopra
Step # 4 – Purchase your low calorie foods in advance
Purchasing your foods in advance is one of the most vital steps to success when fasting.
By having low calorie foods at your disposable on your fasting days means that it will set you up for success and will be easier to stick to your goals and help you make it through the day with relative ease.
By stocking your cupboards with low calorie foods, it will be more enjoyable and easy to follow. It allows you to plan out suitable meals and snacks and ensure that you have the right foods at hand no matter where you are, at home or the office.
3 reasons why you need to purchase your low calorie foods in advance include:
- So that you can enjoy eating foods that you enjoy
- Although you are fasting, you will not feel that you are dieting because you are still able to enjoy a variety of healthy and nutritious foods throughout the day
- It limits temptations. If you have the right foods available, then you do not need to think, but rather just reach for the food that you have prepared in advance.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” ~ Hippocrates
Step # 5 – Incorporate Exercise into your daily routine
Any healthy eating program must always include exercise.
To get the best results from your intermittent fast, it is crucial that you continue to exercise throughout the week.
This is to keep your metabolism firing, which will help you to burn even more calories. To increase the effectiveness of your fasting and speed up your results, exercise such as brisk walking, gardening, cycling, playing your favorite group sports or some resistance weights are ideal.
To increase the effectiveness of your fasting diet plan and speed up your results, exercise such as brisk walking, gardening, cycling, playing your favorite group sports or some resistance weights are ideal.
The main reasons why this is important include:
- It’s really as simple as doing the Math! Exercise and calorie restriction go hand in hand. If you are consuming less energy, and being more active, then your results will be increased as you are burning more calories than you are putting into your body.
- Exercise makes you feel good; it gets the heart going and pumps oxygen and much needed nutrients around the body.
- It releases endorphins and feel good chemicals throughout your entire body including the brain. These feel good chemicals will not only make you feel better about exercising, but can actually make you feel better about the rest of your life too.
Exercising gets things moving internally. When you’re exercising and getting your heart pumping, it is also flushing the toxins, nasty chemicals and waste products from your system. Toxins and waste products can be eliminated via sweating, breathing and through your digestive system. That’s why it’s so important to always drink plenty of water while exercising and fasting – to help flush out the toxins. Removing these toxins and waste products from our systems gets our ‘machine’ working at its optimum, and this is when we start to feel even better, and have more energy (not less), greater mental clarity and will even start sleeping better and needing less of it.
By including exercise into your plan, the results can be magnified, compared to if you were just doing the two days each week calorie restriction alone.
“Physical fitness can neither be achieved by wishful thinking nor outright purchase.” ~ Joseph Pilates
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By combining all these 5 steps, it will set you up for success and intermittent fasting no longer feels that you are dieting, but rather making small shifts in your lifestyle for greater results in your health, vitality and general well-being.
So implement these 5 steps immediately into your life, stay strong and focused, and all the best on your weight loss journey.
Kind regards,
Sarah
