1: Embrace small, subtle changes
Be more compassionate and gentle with yourself. If you are not insistent on immediate results, you can allow yourself to accept, and even embrace, small, subtle changes – rather than only being satisfied with dramatic, instantaneous shifts. Take it slow and easy, implement realistic and doable changes.
Take one or two things out of your diet each week, and add as little as 10 minutes of walking per day, three times a week, to your exercise routine.
2: Make minor changes to your diet
Here’s how to set yourself up for success with dietary changes:
- allow yourself to reduce sugar intake by cutting out candy, and reducing desserts to weekends only, rather than cutting out all sugar right away
- reduce overall caloric intake by only eating what is on YOUR plate (no grazing from your children or spouse’s meal)
- take out fried foods for a day and eliminate one trip a week to the fast food drive-through, a week at a time
3: Do not allow yourself to fail
No berating, no condemning and no starting over. This is a program that will have its good days and bad. Accept that there will be times when you won’t live up to your own expectations, but remember, this is a long-term, life-changing, life-benefiting program, not a quick sprint. And in life, life happens, and sometimes it gets in the way of what you had planned. Have a sense of humor and rearrange your schedule when necessary, instead of giving up, accepting failure, pigging out and eliminating exercise for a week, and then promising to begin again on Monday.
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