is that we find it easier to stay slim when we ' re young, and it gets harder as the decades pass. Unfortunately, this rule applies to you, too.
3. The same thing goes for exercise. Sometimes people with a fair degree of metabolic resistance find that to lose at a decent speed they have to exercise( which I urge you to do anyway). Then they tell me, " But back in 1994, I lost 20 pounds in two months without exercising " Get real. It ' s not 1994. Send all complaints to Father Time, Box Office Eternity.
Remember how individual your body is, and you should be forearmed against any other personal mind traps that I neglected to mention.
This is heavy stuff psychologically, and we all face it. Yet a high percentage of people do succeed doing Atkins-permanently. How?
Create Good Food Habits
You ' ve already learned some new eating habits and I would like to see you extend that ability further. You can learn not just what to eat, but how to treat food in general.
We are all plugged into our habits. If you can discover your bad connections and disconnect them, you will start to change. If you can learn new and improved connections and solder them into place, you ' ll do even better. Try these steps and see if they make your nutritional life easier:
• Eat slowly and extend the meal to give your brain time to signal satisfaction before your stomach is distended and you feel stuffed.
• Don ' t eat as much as you can; eat as much as you need.
• Don ' t finish something just because it ' s there.
• Establish food rituals that slow down the process of eating. For example, set the dinner table-even when you are eating alone-and don ' t eat standing up at the kitchen counter.
• Don ' t eat meals in front of the television set or computer, especially not snacks that you could eat great quantities of while distracted without even realizing it.
• Try not to eat while talking on the phone.
• Don ' t cruise the kitchen during the commercials.
• Eat three meals a day-or four or five smaller ones. Skipping meals leads to unstable blood sugar and cravings, which might allow your bad habits to kick in.
• If you ' re not staying on the program as perfectly as you should be, start a food diary and carry it around with you. This is an excellent way to bring your eating behavior to the forefront of your conscious mind.
Keep Control or Else Regain It
Maybe everything I ' ve told you will make you perfect. But so far I ' ve met very few perfect people, and it ' s quite possible that you will slip and slide now and then. Or else you ' ll go through a short period of rebellion and cheat with a vengeance. Here are a few ways to create a strategy for lifetime success:
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