Make Losing Weight Easier with One Diet Change

You'll lose weight easier, and thus faster, by making one simple change in your diet. I'm a certified personal trainer. And here is the change to your diet: Get away from the requirement that every time you eat, it must be delicious. To expect every bite of food you ever eat to be delectable will sabotage your weight loss efforts.

Instead of expecting and requiring food to be an indulgence, a source of great pleasure, think of food as sustenance, fuel for the body, and something that's health-giving to the body. By viewing food this way, you will no longer feel it's necessary to have pancakes or waffles drenched in syrup for breakfast, or sausage and pastries for breakfast.

You will no longer expect to have fatty meat and buttery mashed potatoes soaked in gravy for dinner. How you think about food directly impacts your ability to lose weight.

Who says that, for instance, breakfast should always be heavy and rich? My father has always believed that breakfast should be hot, heavy and rich: pancakes or French toast with butter and syrup, and often with that, toast with apple butter, or some kind of pastry. On other mornings it's a big omelet, toast with butter and jam, and often a pastry.

For him, breakfast absolutely must be decadent and full-course. A big plate of strawberries would be far healthier on so many levels, but in my father's mind, a plate of strawberries is what a pauper would eat; it would be an insult to his body, below his standards...because he doesn't view food as health-giving and energy-sustaining; he views it as an indulgence, of high pleasure.

And this way of thinking about food has cost him dearly. He has severe heart disease, not to mention difficulty losing weight; he's never been trim.

You don't have to "enjoy" every bite you eat. Get away from this thinking, and you will finally lose weight. And the weight loss will be permanent. I'm not recommending that you eat healthy foods that taste terrible. Instead, choose healthy, lower calorie foods that you can tolerate, or that are okay; nothing unpleasant. But something that, when you are hungry, satiates you.

Right after a workout, I'd love to eat a few Big Macs. But I view food as health-giving, so after a workout, I take a drink comprised of pomegranate juice, vanilla whey protein powder, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a tablespoon of cinnamon. This beverage is extremely nourishing, loaded with antioxidants, "good" fats, high in protein, and whey protein may reduce risk of breast cancer. Forget the Big Macs!

A breakfast, with the health-giving way of thinking, might be something like an egg white omelet and fresh squeezed orange juice. If you're hungry 90 minutes later, that's fine; who says that one feeding must satiate you for hours? This kind of thinking will interfere with losing weight, because it will encourage you to go for the big, heavy, high calorie, highly refined breakfasts -- kiss weight loss goodbye.

So 90 minutes later, you're hungry? If food is for pleasure, you'll end up eating some cookies, or a bowl of ice cream, or a hotdog. If food is for health and sustenance, you'll be drawn to a few apples for your mid-morning snack ... losing weight is now achievable - and permanent weight loss at that.

Make this one change to your diet - to the way you think about what you should eat - and weight loss will never be easier.