Have you ever tried to lose weight simply by deciding that you will stop being a junk food addict? You finish the last 4 Oreos in the bag and then spend the next three or four days eating nothing but yogurt, chicken, and mushy salads. So what’s up? You find yourself opening a new bag of Oreos because you feel like life isn’t worth living if you can’t be happy with what you eat.
Do not worry. This happens to most junk food addicts because they think they can only lose weight with willpower and a sharp change in their diet. Although this looks great on paper, it doesn’t work for most people because focus is what we call all at once. Change must happen gradually in order for it to work in the long term.
Face the facts first. You are addicted to junk food. You’ve been eating junk food for a long time and find it extremely difficult to eat a carrot instead of those tasty McDonald’s fries. It has taken him years and years to lose his shape and become sedentary. If it had happened overnight, you would have noticed. No one can easily break a long-standing habit.
For anyone to lose weight and not regain it forever, they must lead a healthy lifestyle. Knowing this is important because it is the ultimate goal of anyone wanting to lose weight. Living a healthy lifestyle includes exercise, proper nutrition, and a sense of well-being in the areas of your life that bring you joy. Everything daily.
Your first thought is probably that it takes a lot of work to kick the junk food habit and lead a healthy lifestyle. Do you exercise every day? Who has the time and energy for that? And proper nutrition will get you back to those mushy salads, right? Incorrect! People who lead a healthy lifestyle eat McDonald’s French fries and Oreos. They just don’t eat them all the time.
When it comes to exercise, all a person needs to stay fit and active is 30 minutes. Walking, running, biking, dancing, skating, skiing … it doesn’t matter. If you can’t set aside half an hour each day to ensure the health of the only body you have to take care of in your life, you need to make more changes than just lose weight!
What does all this have to do with how you can stop being a junk food addict? Much! Now that you know that leading a healthy lifestyle is the end goal, you can establish a roadmap to achieve it. Everyone wants to be there overnight, but setting a realistic time frame to achieve your goals is a more efficient and productive approach.
Your parents probably told you to eat vegetables when you were a kid. Somewhere along the way, he decided to eat himself and junk food replaced what he had always known to be a healthier option. The shock value of going back to those veggies without continuing to eat your junk food won’t feel good to you. I say keep eating your junk food.
That? Are you still eating junk food? Yes, that is my advice. But here’s the catch. Instead of eating junk food every time you sit down for a meal or snack, choose one meal a day that will change for better food choices. I told you this would be gradual. If you usually eat Cheez-its every day at 3 p.m. as a snack, have a bowl of granola cereal instead.
After making this small daily change for a few weeks, discipline yourself to take it to the next level. Now that you are okay with eating right once a day, do it twice! This could be two snacks, two meals, or one snack and one meal. This time I would go eat because it will accelerate your weight loss more than changing your snacking habits every day.
So after a month of this, you really aren’t eating junk food all the time, right? You’ve probably lost some weight, but you can still eat pizza every Friday night. Hmmm … interesting how this works. Now that you’re on your way to eating right without giving up the foods you love, it’s time to think about exercise.
We’ve already established that you don’t have 30 minutes a day to sweat on the treadmill. Okay, how about 5 minutes? Everyone has 5 minutes to walk around the block. Spend 5 minutes a day doing this for a week. Once you start to feel better, which you will do, you will want to do it more often. I can almost guarantee that you will find 10 minutes in your busy schedule.
Continue at this speed. Increase your exercise time each week by 5 minutes. After a month and a half you will be up to 30 minutes and that’s it! Whether you want to continue improving your health is your own choice, but for the most part, people only need 30 minutes of sustained exercise a day to maintain a healthy weight.
Even if you are reading this and know that you can eat better than one meal a day or exercise for more than 30 minutes, don’t. You will just burn out like all the other times you have tried to lose weight. Keep it gradual and you will eventually get to the point where you actually exercise and eat healthy most of the time without a second thought.
This approach worked for me 15 years ago and I have maintained a 70 pound weight loss since then. I had severe asthma and couldn’t exercise at first, but when my body became healthy, I suddenly found myself off medication and cycling every day. Words cannot describe how happy I am to be able to do this now and breathe properly now.
For things to change, you have to change. Just remember that kicking the junk food habit doesn’t have to be overnight. In fact, the more gradual it is, the more effective it will be in the long run.