Incrementally Adopt A Diet Plan
You might have picked up a hot new diet plan that calls for a complete overhaul of your entire lifestyle. Rather than eat how you’ve always eaten your entire life, they call for a total change to a system you’re not accustomed to. While you might be tempted to try the program full tilt, chances are you are going to drop it after a week or a month or a few months because the change is too drastic to maintain.
Rather than adopt the entire plan, try adopting bits and pieces and introducing them incrementally into your regimen. Rather than drop sugars completely, drop sugars on Mondays. After several weeks, drop it on Mondays and Wednesdays. Or drop sugars on weekdays except with your morning coffee. Or drop sugars on weekdays after 6pm. Simply change one minor thing about your regimen and one that won’t flip your world upside down. You don’t want to have to review a book to see if you can do something, that’s not the point to a healthy lifestyle, you want to do things that make sense and do them incrementally so you can adjust to them. Before long you won’t crave sweets after dinner and you won’t want dessert during the week, then you start adding (or subtracting) other things.
What I’ve been doing it starting to take classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (if we’re in town). At first I did only a Thursday, with a week off to let my body’s soreness subside, but now I’m on the full Tuesday/Thursday/sometimes Saturday routine after a month. Next will be introducing some night-time walks or cardio as I get the schedule down and before long I’ll be back on track with everything in line.
Rome wasn’t completed in a day.
(Photo by djdau)
