Baby Steps

newmercy4me

I was once challenged that dieting is better as a lifestyle then a binge - which I agree with. That same person also mentioned giving up or changing one thing for 4 weeks, and then another, so for the next 4 weeks what is one thing you can give up or change? I am thinking I need to reboot my thinking as much as my diet.:huh:

samwise69

good luck

ineednapkin

How about trying to just drink water and make sure you get your 8 cups a day minimum?

tamanella

I've actually been thinking of this myself for the last few days and wondered about giving up something for 30 days. I was thinking about sweets. I swear I'm addicted to sugar and I need to get it out of my system. And I mean sugar as in sweets such as cakes, pies, ice cream, candy, etc...So maybe I'll do this starting Monday when I begin my exercise program! Thanks for the post!

thedons

i have done that. it actually worked & still works for me. i started with salt. i dont use it at all anymore. then sugar, which was hard, but now i can control my intake better.snacks like chips & dip were more of a challange for me because my husband is a big fan of them. the biggest one for me was sweets. i have a real bad sweet tooth. but i was determined not to let it have the hold on me that it used to. took alot of willpower & time but now i can have only a taste of it without wanting more. my last giver up was coffee. for good. last cup was on christmas day. i dont even crave it anymore although i still like the smell of it. i think it works for some people but others find it easier to cut things out for a very limited time, or just cut back on the portions. i couldnt do that because the craving was too strong so in order for me to fight it, the easier battle was just to go cold turkey & stop it all together til i knew i was able to control how much i had.

borichfan

Coffee has been my problem. I got addicted to coffee and would drink 2 or 3 cups a morning and then ruined my chances of exercising because i was full on coffee. Then during the fall and winter months, i got addicted to having coffee again when i came home from work in the evenings. I would like to kick my coffee habit. I believe that is why i don't exercise much.

WolffEarl

I agree with the premise that much progress can be made by taking many small steps. My thoughts regarding diet and giving things up are a little different then the replies I just read: The first thing I tried to give up was thinking about my new eating habits as a "diet" (with all its negative, can't have this, can't have this connotations). Instead I simply think about making smarter better food choices, something that I would be happy to maintain for the rest of my life. Therefore I am not giving anything up, simply replacing it with something better. The same way you would not hesitate to throw out a broken down, fuzzy picture TV with poor reception and 2 channels, to replace it with a 50 in, plasma screen, 100 channel universe:). You would not think: I sure miss the old TV:). For me that meant for example, realizing that the natural sugars in fruits are simply better for me than the sugars in cakes, jams, cookies, the oils found in fish, lean chicken, nuts, beans, seeds better than the fats in cakes, icecreams, cookies, etc. So I am not giving anything up, I getting the better stuff instead, Ergo "Moving up in the world".
OF course, once in a while we might drag the old TV (poor eating habits) out of the dumpster, try it out and then laugh about how we once thought how it was the coolest thing. Hopefully that will be temporary lapse. Life is good.