Dieting

While folding clothes last week, I turned the television on to The View. They were having a segment about weight loss with Joy Bauer as their guest. Joy is the resident nutrition/health expert for The Today Show. Her role on the show is to report on recent studies and help guide viewers towards making good choices at the supermarket so that they can develop their own strategies for staying healthy and trim.

Diets rarely work for me so listening to Joy talk about making life changes really hit home. I decided to check her website out. I ordered her book, Joy's LIFE Diet: Four Steps to Thin FOREVER . I started the first step this week - Release. During this week, the goal is to break free of food cravings and negative eating patterns (I have quite a few of those). Most important though is that during this week, you should get a jump start on dropping pounds.

The hardest part for me this week has been giving up my Diet Dr. Pepper. During week one you are not allowed ANY sugar or sugar substitutes. The reasoning behind avoiding sugar and sweeteners is that they keep sweetness on our taste buds and our minds and the goal is to reprogram yourself.

Okay, so I am two days into week one and am using all of my willpower not to open one of those Diet Dr. Pepper's in my outside fridge.

I am also a bit hungrier than normal but I suppose some of it is psychological. Yesterday by mid-afternoon I was really starving and caught site of the banana bread. It would have been so easy to rationalize in my mind that it couldn't be all bad because it contained bananas. But I withheld. Today I ate a handful of abby carrots without dipping them in ranch. I consider that an accomplishment. So I hope each day it will get easier.


So we will see how this week goes. I am hoping for a significant weight loss. It will make giving up the Diet Dr. Pepper all worthwhile.