HELP!!

What seems to be causing you to miss your goals Sindy? Hunger? Not having healthy meals handy? Social or coworker pressure?

Quick tips:

- 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, by way of chicken, eggs, or protein powder

- Eat two lunches, a first and second three to four hours later, to get through the challenging afternoon period. I'm partial to baked skinless chicken breast with Montreal steak rub seasoning, mixed veggies, black beans and spinach. Have a similarly healthy meal for dinner.

- Have Slim Fast handy to ward off chocolate and ice cream cravings.

- Have an Atkins peanut butter and nougat or similar bar handy to ward off candybar, candy, chewy cravings.

- If you're hungry before bed, have two tablespoons of almond butter on a celery stick. This will help keep you from feeling like crud in the mornings as well.

- Losing weight is more about diet than exercise - get your eating right, and you'll find yourself more challenged to eat enough calories than too many, especially if you exercise for 30-60 minutes a day as well.

- Building strength builds metabolism, incorporate some strength training to help accelerate your fitness gains.

- You'll notice results in just a few short weeks, as in real results, progress, a change in clothing size, etc. Get through these first few weeks and the progress you make will give you all the motivation you need. It's worked great for me. :-)

Best of luck! We're all here for you. :-)

Definitely, no reason you should ever go hungry at all. In fact, if you can eat enough healthy meals, you'll have more trouble eating enough calories than too many.

It's a paradigm shift to start planning and preparing meals in advance, but once you get into the swing of it, you will be amazed at how easy it is to turn away unhealthy food.

Here are some of my favorites:

Breakfast
- Protein powder (30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking)
- Ensure Protein shake, if I'm too rushed for the above (which is bullbutter, because it takes about 30 seconds to prepare)

Lunch
- Chicken meal (baked skinless breast with Montreal steak seasoning, mixed veggies, spinach, black or pinto beans)
- Egg meal (same as above, except with 2-3 hardboiled whole eggs, 1-2 just whites)
- Fajita bol (fajita steak, romaine lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, salsa)

Second lunch and dinner are a repeat or rotation based on the three earlier meals, or a Slim Fast for second lunch if I'm craving a shake.

Snacks
- Atkins peanut butter nougat bar
- Mozzarella string cheese
- Slim Fast, I'm partial to French Vanilla

One of the biggest things I think is to ignore any social influence friends/family might have over your diet. You want to take control of your weight and fitness for you. They may question or mock or joke about your meals/diet at first, but trust me, it takes less than a week for them to not notice or care whatsoever that you're eating healthy. In fact, usually, I start getting questions from friends about how they can eat healthier and feel better.

You can prep days of these meals in advance. Invest in some ziplock baggies and three-compartment tupperware containers - you can cook up a mess of food for the next 3-4 days, stack the containers by day, and just bag them on your way to school and refrigerate there.

I still get wild cravings (pizza, fried chicken, mac and cheese), and half the time I succumb, but they fade quickly after just a few weeks of sticking to a healthy diet. :-)