Successful people are successful not because they never struggle or fail.  They are successful because they never quit trying.  How many times have you tried to change your eating and given up because the scale went up one or two pounds?  How many of you gave up before reaching your goal because of some ridiculous excuse?  Well here's something that I want you to think about--in my opinion it's always too soon to quit! Changing eating habits may not be the easiest thing in the world, but if you take it one step at a time and change the small things, those changes will add up to big changes.  Here's just one example of how small changes can yield big results.  If you drink 2 regular sodas a day, then you're ingesting 20 teaspoons of sugar a day. That means you're eating 140 tsp. or packets of sugar a week or, in other words, one and a quarter pounds of sugar every week just from those two cans of soda.  Now multiply that amount by a month, a year or longer and see how just 2 regular sodas a day could easily be piling on the pounds?  Now what if you made one simple change.  Instead of drinking two regular sodas a day, let's just say you switch to 2 sugar free diet sodas.  Can you see how one change would end up creating a huge change over time?

I believe most people fail because they don't maintain a positive attitude. Maybe the dietetic community is somewhat responsible for that because for years they weighed you, and focused on what you did wrong instead of what you were doing right.  That leaves you feeling bad if you make one wrong decision with your food.  But consider this for one moment.  Do you accept the fact that you are where you are because of your own choices and decisions?  If that's true, and you're not happy with where you are with your weight or health, but you got there through your own choices and decisions, can you also see that you can't keep making the same choices and decisions and expect a different outcome?  I think it's important to quit focusing on your weight; it's not really the issue anyway. The truth, if you're willing to accept it, is that your problem stems entirely from your choices and decisions.  What would happen if you quit weighing yourself and simply began making better choices and decisions?  I think the answer is obvious.

Now, here's where the dieters method always goes wrong.  They tend to think about changing in terms of all or nothing. They give up all of their junk food, alcohol, red meat and eating out.  The problem with that approach is that it is destined to fail because it isn't geared to an approach that you can do the rest of your life.  How about coming to the process of self-change in a different manner?  Instead of dieting, why not try the eating management philosophy?  Here's how it should be, if you can honestly acknowledge that eating red meat 5 times a week is part of your problem, adjust it to 2 times.   In addition, if you have been eating out 8 times a week simply adjust it to whatever makes you feel comfortable, like 3 times.  If you drink alcohol 5 times a week, adjust it to weekends only.  Can you begin to see what the cumulative effects of all those changes together would have?  There's no doubt in my mind that the weight gain would cease and weight loss would start. But here's the most valuable part of your adjustments:  you could actually live with all of them. And that is the real key to long term change.

Here are some pointers for ways in which you can begin your process of self-change.   First, make a list of the things you think hold you back from getting what you say you want.  This list may consist of five things or only one.  For example, let's say your list consisted of the following things:

1)                                          I don't exercise.

2)                                          I eat out too much.

3)                                          I drink too much alcohol.

4)                                          I eat too much red meat.

Based on your list, pick one or two areas that you could start making an adjustment.  For starters, I could start cooking more at home and reduce my eating out from 5 days a week to two.  Plus I could reduce my drinking from 6 days a week and drink only on the weekends.  Implement those two changes and wait about 2-4 weeks.  As those changes become normal, choose another.   Now, after those changes feel natural I may be ready to begin a cardio program 4 days a week for 30 minutes. Or it may feel better to me to take my red meat from 4 days a week to one or two.  Either way, as you make small changes you're constructing boundaries that you know you can live with instead of swinging like a pendulum from all to nothing. The key is to be consistent with those changes.

            A big part of what I preach revolves around the concept that you cannot make changes if you are unaware of what needs to be changed.   For example, let's say you eat at Chili's Bar and Grill and you want to do well so you order their Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad.  How many calories and grams of fat do you think you just ate?  450? 500? 600? Nope, you ate 1010 calories and 76 grams of fat!  See, if you don't know your food choices are bad, then how can you make a better choice?   Let's say you went into Quizno's and had a choice between a large Chicken and Honey Mustard Sub or a large Philly Cheese Steak Sub. Most people would choose the chicken sub with the idea that they had made the better choice.   But the Honey Mustard Chicken sub contains an astounding 1495 calories and 46 grams of fat while the Philly Cheese Steak Sub had 721 calories and 16 grams of fat.   If you ordered a lite Turkey sub at the same place you only ate 334 calories and 6 grams of fat, but if you add a 3 ounce chocolate chip cookie to it you actually ate more calories and triple the fat of the turkey lite sub.  That's right!  The cookie had 360 calories and a whopping 18 grams of fat!

            It's really a pervasive problem when people start eating out more. You have no idea how many calories or grams of fat are hidden within the food.  Let's just say you head to Chipotle everyday for lunch and only get a tortilla, grilled chicken breast and salsa.  Sounds like you're making a healthy choice doesn't it?  But the tortilla there has 9 grams of fat and 360 calories.  Most tortillas that you buy at the grocery store have about 140 calories and 5 grams of fat.  But here's the real shocker. The chicken breast you cook at home contains 18% fat. The chicken breast at Chipotle has a whopping 46% of the calories from fat.  Heck, their steak is 47% fat with about the same calories as the chicken.  Would you expect to lose weight if you went there everyday and ate a tortilla, steak and salsa? Probably not, yet, the two choices are very close to being the same in terms of percentage fat and calories.

            In an effort to do better you avoid the cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory and order the carrot cake instead. Take it a step further and you spilt the carrot cake with your friend and walk out feeling good that you exerted control and made a better bad choice.   But did you?  The Cheesecake had a total of 630 calories per slice; the carrot cake contained 1510 calories in one slice.  Do you realize that you could have eaten the whole piece of cheesecake and actually consumed fewer calories than if you ate just half a slice of carrot cake?

            Just remember, you are in control of what decisions and choices you make.  Don't ever think that you are giving up a food, but rather think about what you are getting.  You could wear the bread or the bikini.  The choice is yours and I think you'll find when you make the better choices you'll wake up in the morning feeling really good about yourself and your decisions.  You can and will make a lot of progress in your lifetime. The choice is yours to either make victories or failures. There are few people that are actually overnight successes.  So get over the idea that your changes need to bring a massive weight loss every morning. Progress is always made by a combination of preparation, perseverance and awareness.  And most importantly you need to stay aware of what you lose by not remaining committed to making better choices.  As your weight goes upward think about how it interferes with your ability to live life to its fullest.  Maybe you don't date anymore because of how you feel about yourself.  Maybe you don't go to your class reunion because you're too embarrassed by your appearance.  Or maybe you don't want to take a vacation to an exotic Island because you're afraid of wearing a swimsuit. Either way, if your weight is bothering you, then it's bound to be interfering with being more involved with life. In a similar sense, the cost of quitting is that you'll never ever get to your end game.

            So what exactly should the end game be?  I think that the way you eat should just be a part of who you are and what you're choosing to represent to the world around you. It's part of your essence.  If you aren't happy with the way you look and feel, you can change it by altering your attitude and identifying the key things that are holding you back.  If you reach this level of enlightenment then it really doesn't matter what other people around you are eating. You eat the way you eat because it makes you feel good, look better and live a longer more productive life.  If this level is achieved then even stressful events won't alter the choices you make because stress is kept separate from how you eat.  Just never forget that small changes yield huge results.