Always Have a Plan

On the path to a healthy life and weight loss, it is important to always have a plan. Plan your meals and snacks. Plan your food shopping list. And plan for adversity.

This sounds like a lot of planning, but it is not. Planning your meals and snacks is simple. You can bring your meals and snacks to work and plan what is acceptable when you go to the cafeteria or restaurant. Food shopping is a little more time consuming before you go, but it is quicker at the market. You know what you are going to get so there is no need to lollygag and you are in and out. You are also less likely to succumb to the marketing plays of the store that are designed to separate you from your money. We all know how different the food shopping experience is when you go with a list and without a list. We also know how different shopping can be when we go on an empty stomach. Don’t you buy more junk and high calorie snacks when you shop hungry? I know I do.

It is also very important to have a plan for adversity. When your schedule gets out of whack, and when you find yourself in a dangerous environment, such as an office party with cake and donuts, what will you do? What will you choose when you go to the vending machine? These choices can make so much difference in your daily calorie intake. One unplanned and poor choice can add hundreds, even more than a thousand unplanned calories. Many vending machine choices have five or six hundred calories in an itsy-bitsy little bag.

Always bring snacks with you. There are so many choices that with accelerate your weight loss, such as, carrot or celery sticks, low calorie crackers or cookies, fruit, nuts, trail mix, water, and baked chips or tortilla chips with salsa. It is simply a matter of making the right choices and having those items with you during the day.

Most snacking occurs because of boredom or habit. If you have a plan for when this happens you will save a lot of calories and guilty. When the urge strikes to snack out of habit or boredom, get up and change your scenery for a moment. Walk to the copy machine or outside in the fresh air. A quick and brisk short walk followed up by a cold bottle of water can alleviate your cravings. It also gets your blood flowing to bring vital oxygen to your organs and extremities. It is a matter of changing the pattern that you have had for years.

Change your patterns, change your life.