Setting Yourself Up for Success

After making “a no turning back” commitment to a lifestyle change for good health, and to reaching your healthiest body weight, you’ll then need to make your environment conducive to making this a reality. Continuing with the same eating and exercise behaviors will not give you what you want, which is reaching your health and fitness goals. Making sure your environment encourages positive behavioral changes and does not promote the old behavioral patterns is CRITICAL! Several aspects to making this happen are listed below:

Make your home a place, which is safe from tempting old eating behaviors. Make sure you remove unhealthy junk foods that are impulse or binge foods for you. Foods like sugared sodas, crackers, cookies, breads, and pastries, candies, ice cream, and high fat foods should be removed from your home, kitchen, study, or wherever you might be hiding them.

Make your workplace conducive to ongoing progress in reaching your goals. Take healthy foods to work to replace any tempting foods that are brought in by other people.

Go grocery shopping with a goal of buying healthy foods: Make a shopping list before you start and plan on sticking to the list. Put foods in your refrigerator that are compatible with your taste and are also healthy.

Plan your meals and snacks ahead of time: Write out a breakfast, lunch and dinner plan the night before so that you’ll be less likely to eat impulsively or to overeat.

When you go out to eat, plan on visiting restaurants where you know you can make good food choices. Restaurants that have low fat “healthy heart” items on their menu or where you can order healthy “a la carte” dishes should be a priority.

As you make each of your weight loss goals plan on not returning to old behaviors just because you reached your weight goal. Be serious about your lifestyle change for improved health and fitness. Returning to old eating and exercise behaviors will only return you to your previous overweight out-of-shape condition.

As a part of not returning to old behaviors, make a vow to not return to old “big clothes” that are now too large for you. Get rid of these “big clothes” and buy new clothes that show the slimmer you, and personify the “new healthier you”!