ABC's of Weight Loss: Reward Yourself?
Carolyn Classick-Kohn,MS,RD
ABC’s of weight control: observing your own
eating behaviors, identifying what feelings,
people, and situations are “triggers” for you to
overeat, and identifying new ways to deal with
the triggers instead to avoid overeating should
be your goals.
The last part, changing the consequences for
self-reward can be a critical part for you. This
seems very basic: we all learned as children
that there are consequences to good and bad
behavior, and when you complete a difficult
task, you reward yourself for your efforts.
Everyone knows that! But this is a very powerful
tool when it comes to changing habits like
overeating, smoking, and exercising: learning
how and when to reward yourself is an important
part of reaching and maintaining your goal. I
strongly encourage everyone to set up a way to
reward yourself that gives you the positive
feedback you need to keep up your efforts. But
first, there are some basic things to consider
in setting up a successful reward system.
An
Important Rule - Do Not Reward Yourself
for Losing Weight!
If you want to really be successful in the long
term and maintain the weight you’ve worked hard
to lose, then you have to make your new eating
habits a permanent part of your life (Your
PersonalDiets are designed to help you do this). If you
don’t, the old habits will return, and so will
the weight.
Almost anyone can lose a few pounds,
even many pounds in the short term, without ever
having made any significant or permanent changes
in the way they think of and treat food in their
lives. This is the problem with most “diets”:
the focus is only on losing weight. Remember
that weight loss claims are what these companies
make their money on, not real long-term help.
There’s a reason there aren’t many studies to
show what happens to people on diets after the
first year. So, instead of rewarding yourself
for losing a few pounds, reward yourself for a
new habit you’ve developed because that is what
is most important. Here are some examples of
habits that lead to permanent weight control:
Paying attention to true hunger
Eating within a hunger “comfort” zone. This
means not waiting so long to eat that you
starve, then stuff yourself. It also means
putting off eating when you are not really
hungry at all, and avoiding the habit of eating
out of emotion, boredom or other non-hunger
reasons. If this is a problem for you, develop a
way to reward yourself for learning to eat
within a
real comfort zone for hunger.
Choosing low fat foods
This habit of eating more low fat foods (yes low
fat foods), and saving high fat foods for
occasional use has been shown in
scientific studies to be
a real key to maintaining
weight loss.
So, when you work on choosing these foods and
successfully make good eating decisions (even
though the high fat foods may be very appealing)
this is a real milestone and is a great behavior
to reward.
The remainder of this
article, "ABC's of Weight Loss: Reward
Yourself", on long-term diet success has
been moved to our members area. The
remaining dietitian's tips are on:
(1) Exercising, (2) Keeping track of your food or
your “triggers”, (3)
Benefits of Weight Loss,
(4) Setting yourself up for success,
(5) What
are good rewards? These are
available to Personal
Dietitian members here:
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