Go ahead and treat yourself! Weight loss should be about gaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It should not be about losing the weight and then returning to your previous eating and lifestyle habits. If you truly want weight loss and a healthier body than you must adopt an overall better outlook at health and wellness. Lifestyle means everything in moderation. Moderation is one of the key concepts to weight loss and a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Moderation means not completely eliminating things such as dessert and wine from your diet but instead adding them in sparingly. Psychologically, deprivation doesn't work for so many people because it leads to an adverse reaction. Knowing you can treat yourself may be the key to keeping you on track. 1. Reward System - Sometimes dieting can be incredibly boring and really hard to stay on track. If you know you have a treat to look forward to at the end of the week, somehow sticking to your healthy regimen seems worth it. A reward makes all this veggie and lean protein eating a little more manageable. It's a work reward system. You put in the work and get the reward. Who doesn't love a reward? We've been getting rewarded for hard work most of our lives. It all starts when we're young and our reward for doing our chores is an allowance. This type of system progresses into career where we're rewarded with money and or challenging promotions with more responsibility. Treating yourself once a week in the health and weight loss realm is quite the same. You work hard at health and weight loss all week and the reward not only shows up in the form of a dessert or glass of wine but it will also show up in measurements and on the scale. You're creating a positive experience from this system and it becomes easier to maintain your weight loss program knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 2. Mental Break - Losing weight can be very stressful for some individuals. In fact, there are people out there who have stressed about losing weight so much that they actually gain weight. Until you get in the swing of things, the new schedule of eating healthy and working out can be stressful simply because it is something you may or may not be used to. Figuring out where to fit exercise in, when you'll be able to grocery shop and having enough time to make meals can be a struggle. Add the pressure of wanting to see big results on the scale and you've broken into full flown stressed out territory. Give yourself a break once a week. Eat out, have a drink and relax. Let the stress go so you can get prepared and be ready to do it all over again the next week. 3. Lifestyle Management - With a diet comes the practice of lifestyle management. You cannot simply diet, reach your goal and then return to your old eating habits. You'll return to your previous weight or heavier if you do. This is about achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle that you can live with. Even in weight maintenance, you're still going to have to watch what you eat, hit the gym and prepare your meals. And you'll still need to reward yourself. The bonus is that you get to reward yourself a little bit more in maintenance mode. Going through the practice of treating yourself once a week while still trying to lose weight sets you up for success in to maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle. Practice makes perfect so begin practicing in order to find out what works for you and what doesn't. Weight loss can be a battle but with hard work, you can achieve it. It's important to really stick to your plan but at the same time recognize that you are human and not only do you deserve a reward for your hard work but you need a reward as a way to begin the process of managing a healthy lifestyle. Don't feel guilty, you worked hard for it!
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