It can be quite frustrating when you’re trying to lose weight and don’t seem to get nowhere so for all those people, I decided it would be a good idea to blog about the steps I took which helped me to lose my weight things that worked things that didn’t work.

One of the first things I tried was just making a few minor changes to what I ate but the problem with this was when I thought I was eating well I wasn’t, you tend to think you are when you necessarily aren’t eating well, things I was tending to do was drinking Lucozade when I wasn’t feeling too well, all this is a recipe for disaster without a doubt, drinking that is more or less like drinking pure sugar so that is one thing that had to go no more fizzy drinks full of sugar as most of them are as you’re probably aware

One particular habit I got into was eating more or less the same food every day this in itself became quite boring, but also I was eating the wrong foods again as you read this you might probably see where it’s going but if not I’ll tell you anyway, I used to eat jacket potatoes more or less every day now while these are quite healthy, the problem is they can turn into glucose into your bloodstream quite quickly I never really knew this until I started to learn about how certain foods affected your body.

Sometimes I would eat a jacket potato with some spring onions and some pork pie now there is a big mistake straight away eating the porkpie, those things are full of fat you see what we tend to do is we still want to eat the foods we used to enjoy, now this isn’t a very good idea most most of us I would say don’t eat consciously.

We just tend to eat the things that we like and by cutting out some of the foods we like, we may substitute them with other poor choices which isn’t a good thing to do. And that is exactly what I was doing, it wasn’t until that I really started to look at what I was eating, that things began to click into place as it were as I began do more research on food, I started to realise that certain foods do and can suppress your appetite which is one of the keys to weight loss when you eat the wrong foods you can constantly feel hungry thus eating more food.

If it wasn’t for doing research for this blog. I might not have known which food choices to make in order to effectively lose weight, for instance one of things that I came across was that soup is an excellent way to lose weight. One of the main reasons being is that it acts as an appetite suppressant and knocks cravings on the head.

Eggs coincidently have the same effect so there you ,have two simple choices that can make a difference to how you feel food wise. Another trick is having a drink of water about half an hour before your main meal this will full your stomach with water and you will tend to eat less.

So to summarise the first part of this, the very first thing to do to yourself is write down exactly what you are eating that means everything every crumb every single thing you eat this way you can actually see what you’re eating throughout the day otherwise all that will happen is you will tend to eat on autopilot which is what you don’t want, I have lost count the amount of times I have seen people trying to lose weight, and when asked what they have been eating they tend to say the healthy items.

And then tend not to talk about the bad things they had been eating, even though they were supposed to be taking notice of what they ate, when you keep a food journal there is no excuse you can see exactly what you have eaten throughout the day and make the necessary adjustments to your eating habits.

I myself didn’t do this but it wasn’t long before I realised where I was going wrong I started to eat mostly calorie dense food things like salads, beans on toast, porridge for breakfast, soup, eggs e.g. scrambled eggs ate more fruit, in particular apples eat three of those a day before each meal and you will eat less.

I also followed something called the GI diet which is eating foods that supposedly release their sugar slower, this will allow you to feel fuller longer and help you to lose weight another thing which you must do which is very important it is to look after your liver because this is the main fat burning organ within your body. Eat foods that are kind to your liver and you will find it can help a lot in helping you to lose weight.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the other most important keys to losing weight I’m sure you’ll agree, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to join pay a expensive gym or buy expensive gym equipment.

I didn’t at all in fact all I did was was buy a machine called a twist and shape, this is a stair stepper machine which goes up and down, and side to side this has a double effect it works your stomach as well as your legs. All I did was two 10 minute in intense workouts per day 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening four times a week four days on three days off. Studies have shown that doing exercises this particular way is far more effective than doing one batch of exercise.

Visualization

One of the things that I tend to do or use which have neglected I must admit is meditation, combined with this I used what is known as creative visualisation, which basically means seeing yourself a particular way or in a particular situation doing something or seeing the person you want to be.

When I was trying to lose weight I used practice this all the time, what I used to do was see myself on the scales losing weight and also seeing myself as the person I wanted to be, what this tends to do is actuate the part of your brain which is called RAS or also known as your reticular actuating system.

What this will do is implant into your subconscious mind what is needed in order to accomplish your goal that your, visualising so as an example of this you could see yourself as a thinner happier person eating all the right foods and gradually losing weight.

Keeping Score

When I was at the start of my weight loss journey I made a table in Word so that I could track my progress it was a very simple table, it had the date my waist size and weight, I did this each week on every Friday sometimes I forgot to fill it in but mostly when I did it was very satisfying to see progress being made over a period of time, it has been proven that keeping records of where you are what you’re doing is overall more effective than not doing it, this is a practice I would highly recommend to yourself.

Outcome

I would have to say that anybody who is trying to lose weight whether it’s you or me there is always something to learn. As to where I am now I still have some weight to lose, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was. In order to get to my ideal weight I need to lose about a stone, I think the only thing that has prevented me from doing this is just a lack of exercise, that is it nothing else. That is something I tend to put right in the near future.