How Do You Start A Diet?

Q: After many attempts at dieting and failing every time, I finally quit and let myself go. Ha, “let myself go” is putting it lightly since I currently make Jabba the Hutt look like a figure of health! Do you know how fucking hard that is to do?!?! It’s fucking ridiculous. I know I need to do better but…ummmm…how do you start a diet so it actually works?

A: Weight loss is easy.

All you have to do to lose weight is consume fewer calories than your body needs, which can be done via what’s commonly known as a “diet”.

How you go about reducing the amount of calories you consume can be done in a number of ways, such as by eating more fiber so you fill up on less food and eating slower to prolong the length of your meals so your brain has more time to receive fullness signals from your stomach, for example. Common advice of that nature on how to decrease calories involves a change in your established eating habits and behavior and it’s difficulty with that change that often trips people up and causes them to quit their diet sooner than expected.

At their core, diets are about making changes. And the longer you can sustain a given change, the better your results will be. It’s for this reason that if you want to start a diet and be successful at it, one of the most important things you can do is to only make changes that match your lifestyle and preferences.¹ By only changing what or how you eat in accordance with your likes and dislikes instead of trying to force yourself to do things that you don’t want to do, you can create less friction so not as much willpower is required to carry out the desired change. Basically, this means that you shouldn’t lie to yourself about who you are or what you’re capable of. Along the same lines of staying within your limitations, you should also only make small, gradual changes to your diet at a time. As tempting as it may be to make drastic changes at once, doing so can be overwhelming to adjust to and result in stress and frustration that leads to giving up altogether. The way to avoid that is to focus on changing a single habit or behavior for enough time to get used to it and then when it becomes routine, move on to the next one.²

Once you set a realistic goal concerning how much weight you want to lose and by when, the preceding advice should be enough to get your diet off to a good start. So that’s the answer to your question about how to stop making Jabba the Hutt come across as a sex symbol in comparison. Speaking of everyone’s favorite intergalactic crime lord, here’s an additional fun fact. Not only was Jabba the Hutt supposed to appear in the first Star Wars movie but the original scene was also filmed with the character being human instead of as a slug-like creature.³ Betcha didn’t know that!

Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?⁣⁣

Glossary: calories, diet, fitness, nutrition, results

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer and online coach in San Diego. He's helped hundreds of people lose weight, build muscle, and become more attractive to their loved one so they don't have as strong of a desire to cheat on them anymore. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys making fun of Drake and people who like the guy.

How Do You Start A Diet?

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