Successful Dieting: It's More Mental Than You Think

The word diet brings to mind bad connotations. No one likes to diet. It is, however, a part of life for most of us in this world of fast food joints and pizza commercials. Learning to live with a diet and learning to like it are two different things, but the more you like your diet, the more successful you will be. It is important to have mental strategies that work for you when you're bombarded with those images of cheeseburgers and fried onions and feel at your weakest.

Most diets focus on your behavior, but these easy strategies will help you in the mental department, where the battle can be won or lost... even before a fry crosses your lips.

One of the most important strategies can be the "Weekday Diet". This focuses on being good during the week, while cutting yourself some slack on the weekends. This does not mean you should go crazy on the weekends, but that you should cut yourself some slack if you do enjoy that serving of fries. If the thought of dieting is depressing to you, this strategy may work for you as it gives you a way to think more short term and keeps you from feeling like you can't ever indulge. If you tell yourself you can eat what you want on the weekends, you'll be more motivated to deny yourself during the week, with something to look forward to. Conversely, if you feel like you have compartmentalized the times when you're allowed to indulge to two days out of the week, you may feel motivated that your indulging isn't sporadic, but planned, like a vacation.

Another important and similar strategy I personally use is thinking of my eating habits as a percentage. If I tell myself I will try to eat healthy 75% of the time, I won't be so hard on myself when I do indulge and I'll be more likely to return to eating healthy if I don't add fuel to the fire by putting a guilt trip on myself. All or nothing thinking (I must eat healthy all the time, If I eat one bad thing I've blown it) can be detrimental to some. If you're easily discouraged, then being a perfectionist about your dieting is not a realistic way to go about shedding those pounds. The pitfall of this strategy, as with any of these strategies, is that it could be used as an excuse, rather than a way to motivate yourself to eat better.

A third strategy is to learn what motivates you. If you love the fact that vegetables are anti- aging, focus on how good you're being to your body to feed yourself a healthy diet that is mostly vegetables. Focus on how all that water you're drinking is cleansing your body of toxins. Another example would be to exercise, because it encourages you to eat healthy, since you don't want to undo all that hard work you've done.

Lastly, have a few tricks that you rotate in and out of your routine. When one doesn't work for you, focus on another. In the end, you'll find that knowing yourself and finding dieting tips that are not extremes may work better for you than a strict regimen that in the end causes you to abandon all eating restraints.