How To Diet Like A Champ: 10 Tips  By Garrett Davis

1. Stop going to the grocery store. Seriously, just stop going to the grocery store. Instead, do the majority of your shopping at warehouse stores like Costco and Sam’s club, if you have any in your area. These stores are great for dieters because you can buy all the foods that you will need ahead of time and in bulk. You could easily buy enough food for an 8 week diet in one trip. The key is in knowing exactly what foods you will need, which is a function of proper planning. Sometimes I hear about people who spend ridiculous amounts of time shopping in these stores. Not me. I am in and out in about 20 minutes. People who spend hours shopping are those who do not know what they are shopping for. If you don’t know what you’re shopping for, you are likely to end up buying a whole bunch of crap that you don’t really need.  Whatever food you don’t buy at the warehouse store, purchase at a farmers market. These will be foods that are too perishable to buy in bulk. There usually isn’t anything that’s not diet friendly at the farmer’s market. Besides, the fruits and veggies there will usually be organic and therefore free of pesticides and other chemicals that you shouldn’t be putting in your body anyways if you can avoid doing so.  Also, by shopping only at the warehouse stores and farmer’s markets you’re likely to save a ton of cash. The discounts can really add up quickly.

2. If you do go to the grocery store, don’t go down the aisles. Think about it: All of the foods that are good for you are kept around the perimeter of the store, while all of the foods that are bad for you are kept in the aisles. The fruits, veggies, meats, fish, eggs, and dairy products are all kept along the sides of the store, while the snacks, desserts, frozen and processed foods are all kept down the isles. Keep those foods out of sight and out of mind.

3. Buy good seasoned sea salts. There are lots of great seasoned sea salts out there, and they can go a long way in helping make diet foods taste a whole lot better. Sometimes you can get really good homemade ones at farmers markets. If not, natural food stores will usually have a great variety. The reason that you’ll want natural sea salt instead of seasonings made with regular table salt is that the sea salt is a lot healthier for you and honestly tastes much better anyhow. I find that it’s much harder to use too much sea salt then it is to use too much table salt. Sea salts even naturally contain trace minerals, so you’ll be doing your body a favor.

4. Prepare your meals ahead of time. This is a huge one. Prepare your meals for the next day the night before so you’ll have all or most of the food that you’ll be eating already made. This preparation will go a long way in helping you to avoid cheating. Oftentimes dieters will cheat when they simply do not have a good meal readily available. If you’re preparing your meals in advance you won’t run into this problem.

5. Take your meals with you. The whole point of preparing your meals ahead of time is so that you’ll have meals that you can grab and go. Everyday I can be seen carrying several meals around with me. I always have plenty of good food readily available, which leads me to my next point.

6. Buy lots of good Tupperware. Tupperware is a dieter’s best friend. If you’re preparing your meals for work or school the night before, you’ll need something to keep them in. Tupperware is a great way to make meals mobile while keeping them fresh. Just don’t microwave them. The heated plastic combined with the radiation from the microwave is really bad for you.

7. Get used to eating cold food. This can really be a tough one for some people, while for others it’s easy. If you really have all of you meals planned out, as you should, then oftentimes you’ll just have to eat them cold. It’s just part of dieting effectively. A lot of the good diet foods are foods that are best served cold anyways. Salads, wraps, and sandwiches are all foods that are served cold, and they can be quite healthy when prepared correctly. So choose the foods that you will take to go based on what is best served cold. A pot roast may not be good cold, while a sandwich or a wrap is great when it’s cold.

8. Know exactly how many calories you will eat. Far too many people decide to go on diets, yet don’t even know how many calories their diet calls for. How can you diet successfully if you don’t even know how many calories you’re supposed to eat? Dieting is really quite simple. Eat fewer calories than the amount that will maintain your bodyweight, and you will loose weight. A quick Google search will reveal many great nutrition facts websites so that you can know the exact breakdown of the foods that you put in your body. Also, if you do know how many calories you’re supposed to be eating each day, you’ll be better able to approximate how many calories are in the cheat foods that you may be tempted to eat. If you know that the cheat food will throw you way off course by causing you to be well over on your calorie count, you’re more likely to retain your discipline and avoid such foods altogether. If, on the other hand, you don’t have a solid grasp of calorie counting, you’ll be far more likely to rationalize eating the cheat food by telling yourself that it’s not all that bad.

9. Go higher healthy fat and lower carb. Fats have all the flavor and can be very healthy for you, provided you choose them correctly. The foods that I eat are usually quite tasty because I prepare them to be relatively high in healthy fats. Healthy fats are in olive oil, avocados, nuts, natural peanut butter, and many others. Carbs, on the other hand, tend to be bland comparatively, and can cause you to retain body fat like none other. The more carbs you eat, the more you will burn them for energy. When you’re burning carbs for energy, what you’re not doing is burning stored fat for energy.

10. Consider doing your cardio first thing in the morning. You’ll substantially decrease your chances of cheating. If you do your cardio in the evening, you’re more likely to think, "Oh, what the heck, I’ll burn it off later anyways". Believe me, when you’re up running around the neighborhood at the butt crack of dawn you’re far less likely to cheat later on in the day. You won’t want to mess up all the hard work you already did. Besides, you will burn more fat doing it that way anyhow because you’ll be burning your stored fat for energy instead of all the meals you’ve already eaten.

Going on a diet is easy. People do it all the time. The hard part is in sticking to it. If you follow the tips I’ve given you, success will be far more likely.

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