No-Diet Weight Loss

A no-diet plan to lose weight and keep it off.

Losing weight is not as much an issue as keeping it off. Weight cycling is common. If you want to get off this treadmill, try a different way. Support your effort with a combination of psychological strategies and tips that you'll find here. Stick with this experimental series. Check in weekly. Stay on track. Build a healthy lifestyle into your daily routine. Improve your way of living.

The series consists of blogs where I explore topics, such as how to stop procrastinating on taking weight control measures and how to subdue seductive inner cons that snafu healthy eating habits. You'll get briefer tips that address topics, such as how to politely refuse fattening food at a party. The blogs and tips help you stay engaged in learning to get to your goal weight and stay there. Tips are labeled No-Diet Tip 1, 2, etc. Guest experts will share their thoughts on how to attain permanent weight loss. You'll see evidence from the research literature on what goes into weight loss success.

Despite your best intentions to eat healthily, old harmful eating habits tend to recur. This is a psychological challenge. I'll mainly focus on psychological factors to sustain a lifestyle change.

Choose your own diet. Pick food that is both healthy and that you enjoy eating. I'll help with the psychological part. Let's begin with diet fallacies, goal setting, planning, and getting started.

Diet Fallacies and Benefits

Most who want to lose weight diet, but traditional dieting often does more harm than good. Using a low caloric diet to jump-start a weight loss program can have a boomerang effect. As many as 70 to 90 percent regain the weight they lost. Dietary restrictions are another matter. This is where you intentionally add and delete certain foods. For example, delete your daily cream-filled donut from the menu and this small adjustment can make a big difference in a month or two.

Some diets are based on bad science. The macrobiotic diet took about 19 lives in the 1960s. Not all diets are cut from the same cloth. The BBC Diet Trials showed that behavioral programs, such as Weight Watchers, help people lose weight. Sustaining the loss is another challenge.

Executing a rational weight control plan reduces your risk for diseases, such as cardiovascular disease. Some lifestyle changes appear to accelerate these health benefits. For example, Mediterranean style diets are high in fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, olive oil, and cereals. This style diet correlates with a lower risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, and sexual dysfunctions.

Set Goals and Plans

Goal setting and goal execution are critical for achieving positive results. Start with reasonable, measurable, and attainable goals: (1) Does my weight loss goal make sense within the time I've set? (2) How do I quantify my progress? (3) Can I objectively achieve the result I seek? Manageable goals are easier to meet that the perfectionist kind.

We often set endpoint goals of, say, losing 15 pounds by a certain date. But what goes on in between? You may have process goals. Weighing yourself weekly is a process goal. Checking in weekly on this series is a process goal. Adding or deleting a food from your diet is a process goal.

I'll join you in this permanent weight-loss experiment by losing 12 pounds and keeping it off. I set a 12 pound loss as my endpoint goal. The timeframe is between January 26 and July 26, 2011. One of my process goals is to weekly track my weight. Another is to sustain the process leading to the expected loss.

Goals without plans are like beached sailboats. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you're going to have to get your boat in the water with a healthy lifetime eating plan. I'll emphasize the no-diet plan.

How does the no-diet plan work? Suppose you are a 5' 5" tall, forty-year-old woman who weighs 150 pounds and exercises moderately. It takes about 2100 calories a day to maintain your weight at 150 pounds. It takes about 1919 calories a day to stay around 125 pounds. By starting now and taking in about 1919 calories a day, this more gradual weight-loss process eventually levels off at your goal weight. What do you eat? Do research and identify a healthy diet change for you. Does the change rely on a portion control adjustment? Do you need to make a sweeping change, or do something in between? How will you keep within the limits of your new diet plan? (Plan for change. If your activity level drops, adjust your diet.)

The no-diet plan gives you an action framework for positive change. You fill in the gaps by deciding what you'll eat and in what amount to sustain your weight at the level you desire.

You'll take longer to meet your goal weight with the no-diet plan. However, reaching and maintaining your goal weight reduces your risk of cycling through diets and weight gains. You will also have developed new eating habits by the time you reach your goal. You are less likely to revert back to your old weight-gaining ways. (Note: I first published the no-diet plan in Change Your Life Now , John Wiley 1994, and later in The Procrastination Workbook, New Harbinger, 2002. You'll find an extensive discussion of the no-diet plan in both books.)

Do the Math and Get Started

The Internet is rich with automated calorie calculators. Some give you a daily calorie number to meet a weight goal by a certain date. Here is a free link for one: http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-goal.php .

How many daily calories do you need to maintain your goal weight through the no-diet plan? For a no-diet plan, you'll have to make an adjustment in the calculation. Here's how. You are a 40-year-old 5'10" tall male who does light exercise. You weigh 190 pounds. You find that 170 is a healthy weight for you. On the calorie calculator, type 170 for both your current and goal weight. Input your age, height, and physical activity level. You'll find that it will take about 2320 calories a day to maintain your weight at 170 pounds. Now you have to figure out how to adjust your diet.

Calorie counting is relatively simple. However, weight loss efforts rarely follow a smooth calorie-counting path. Complications come in the form of natural eating urges and mental deceptions. Old dysfunctional eating habits tend to keep coming back, sometimes in different forms.

Cut back 250 calories a day (the equivalent of about two slices of enriched bread) and you'll lose a pound in fifteen days. However, if you substitute snacks for the bread, you have a new nemesis. As you pass that bowl of chips you take a few extra, then you circle back for more. You repeat this snacking pattern. Instead of losing weight, you gain. Now you have another process goal: to deal with temptations that lead to undesired results.

It takes time to develop new eating habits to replace the old. Six months is a small time and effort investment to develop self-management skills that can last a lifetime. That is because the permanent weight loss you seek comes about as a result of making a healthy lifestyle change in your eating habits. To help jump-start your change plan, explore this change process:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201101/change-procrastination

Although the no-diet program is for people who weigh more than they like, and want to drop some pounds, people with eating disorders also may get ideas and tips to support their progress.