Weight Loss Survival Skills

Australian outback, schmoutback. If you're talking about a true survival challenge, you're talking about weight loss. The tests: Surviving going to a buffet and choosing the salad bar instead. Choosing to exercise during the one hour you have to yourself. Staying motivated when you hit a plateau…. now there's a challenge!

I'd like to share my core weight loss survival skills with you this week. I feel these are small changes that are crucial to my success, and I am sure they will continue to be necessary when I enter maintenance. I'd love to hear your weight loss survival skills! Use the link to the right to visit the message board or e-mail me and we'll feature your tips in an upcoming article.

1. Downing diet soda. I am a guzzler. The waitresses at my favorite restaurants probably hate to see me coming because I take the concept of "free refills" to the extreme. It is not unusual for me to gulp down three or four glasses of soda at one sitting. Once I decided to add up how many calories those sodas amounted to. Can you believe I was drinking more than 2000 calories a day just in soda? After years of swearing that I would never drink diet sodas, I switched. I couldn't stand diet sodas at first, but the more I drank them, I got used to them, and now I actually prefer some diet sodas to their high-calorie counterparts.
2. Exercising when I don't want to. Sometimes I can list a dozen things I could be doing instead of exercising. It's hard not to give in. "Well, I really do need to reorganize my closet. I could get ready so much more quickly in the mornings if everything was grouped together by colors." The only thing that gets me to exercise when I don't want to is to think about how I will feel afterwards, knowing deep down that I have done something that is far more beneficial than color-coding my closet.
3. There are also two other tricks I use to "force" myself to exercise. One is to focus on the benefits besides weight maintenance. For example, when I walk on my lunch break, I remind myself that it's to get fresh air after being stuck in the office for four hours and to get moving after being seated in front of my computer for a half a day. I know that it's good for my mental health and emotional well-being to get that break and fresh and air, and the brisk walk keeps me from getting the afternoon dullsville syndrome.
4. Another way I get myself to just do it is to go ahead and change into my exercise clothes, even if I think I don't feel like exercising. Most of the time, I'll go ahead and break a sweat since I'm dressed for the occasion. Granted, sometimes it doesn't work; once in a blue moon I'll end up doing nothing but watching TV Subconsciously, I think I believe that channel surfing can be considered an aerobic activity if I do it wearing spandex! But nine times out of 10, I feel obligated to finish what I started and I hop on the treadmill or pop in that exercise video.
5. Pack up a portion. I read this tip years ago in <i>Prevention</i> magazine and I recently started putting it to use religiously. We all know how massive portion sizes have become in restaurants. Cut your fat and calories in half by dividing your meal into half as soon it is brought to your table and put it in a container to take home. It cuts down on how much you are consuming in one sitting, and provides you with a meal to heat up for lunch the next day.