Left, right, or straight ahead (the road less travelled)?
Record-keeping is often the key to success. Depending on the weight loss program you choose, you might need to track: carbohydrate grams, calories, daily weight, all food consumption, blood sugars, etc. For example, I provide daily logs for all of my diets: Paleobetic Diet, Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet, Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet, and Advanced Mediterranean Diet.
Accountability is another key to success. Consider documenting your program and progress on a free website such as FitDay, SparkPeople, 3FatChicks, Calorie Count (http://caloriecount.about.com), or others. Consider blogging about your adventure on a free platform such as WordPress or Blogger. Such a public commitment may be just what you need to keep you motivated. Do you have a friend or spouse who wants to lose weight? Start the same program at the same time and support each other. That’s built-in accountability.
If you tend to over-eat, floss and brush your teeth after you’re full. You’ll be less likely to go back for more anytime soon.
Eat at least two or three meals daily. Skipping meals may lead to uncontrollable overeating later on. On the other hand, ignore the diet gurus who say you must eat every two or three hours. That’s BS.
Eat meals at a leisurely pace, chewing and enjoying each bite thoroughly before swallowing.
Savor every bite
Plan to give yourself a specific reward for every 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of weight lost. You know what you like. Consider a weekend get-away, a trip to the beauty salon, jewelry, an evening at the theater, a professional massage, home entertainment equipment, new clothes, etc.
Carefully consider when would be a good time to start your new lifestyle. It should be a period of low or usual stress. Bad times would be Thanksgiving day, Christmas/New Years’ holiday, the first day of a Caribbean cruise, and during a divorce.
If you know you’ve eaten enough at a meal to satisfy your nutritional requirements yet you still feel hungry, drink a large glass of water and wait a while.
Limit television to a maximum of a few hours a day.
Maintain a consistent eating pattern throughout the week and year.
Eat breakfast routinely.
Control emotional eating.
Weigh frequently: daily during active weight-loss efforts and during the first two months of your maintenance-of-weight-loss phase. After that, cut back to weekly weights if you want. Daily weights will remind you how hard you worked to achieve your goal.
Be aware that you might regain five or 10 pounds (2–4 kg) of fat now and then. You probably will. Don’t freak out. It’s human nature. You’re not a failure; you’re human. But draw the line and get back on the old weight-loss program for one or two months. Analyze and learn from the episode. Why did it happen? Slipping back into your old ways? Slacking off on exercise? Too many special occasion feasts or cheat days? Allowing junk food back into the house?
Learn which food item is your nemesis—the food that consistently torpedoes your resolve to eat right. For example, mine is anything sweet. Remember an old ad campaign for a potato chip: “Betcha can’t eat just one!”? Well, I can’t eat just one cookie. So I don’t get started. I might eat one if it’s the last one available. Or I satisfy my sweet craving with a diet soda, small piece of dark chocolate, or sugar-free gelatin. Just as a recovering alcoholic can’t drink any alcohol, perhaps you should totally abstain from…? You know your own personal gastronomic Achilles heel. Or heels. Experiment with various strategies for vanquishing your nemesis.
If you’re not losing excess weight as expected (about a pound or half a kilogram per week), you may benefit from eating just two meals a day. This will often turn on your cellular weight-loss machinery even when total calorie consumption doesn’t seem much less than usual. The two meals to eat would be breakfast and a mid-afternoon meal (call it what you wish). The key is to not eat within six hours of bedtime. Of course, this trick could cause dangerous hypoglycemia if you’re taking drugs with potential to cause low blood sugars, like insulin and sulfonylureas; talk to your dietitian or physician before instituting a semi-radical diet change like this.
One of the bloggers I follow is James Fell. He says, “If you want to lose weight you need to cook. Period.” James blogs at http://www.sixpackabs.com, with a focus on exercise and fitness.
Regular exercise is much more important for prevention of weight regain rather than for actually losing weight.
Steve Parker, M.D.
Paleo Diabetic 
Hello, Dr. Parker, Thanks for this article. I especially like the comment about not eating every couple of hours — it is bunk. My husband briefly retired a few years back and we went to eating twice a day. Now I will tell you that when he was working, he only ate two meals a day — breakfast and dinner about 5:30 ish. But we noticed a change in the way we felt during the six months we ate breakfast and an early dinner, usually 2:30 to 3:30. If we had a small snack later, it stayed small. We felt fuller, more satisfied eating in the mid afternoon. And we did lose weight! Not a bunch, but it got the ball rolling.
Cathy, I always like to hear those real-world testimonials. Thanks.
-Steve
And then there is hunger and cravings. and what about false hunger, irrational hunger, or what ever it is that feels like hunger, but occurs after eating?
These experiences are common on a high-carb diet, but almost unheard of on a low-carb, high-fat diet.
fredt, thanks for commenting. You remind me of the idea that some folks who are hungry are really just dehydrated. I’v never see the evidence for that. But maybe that’s why drinking a full glass of water sometimes puts hunger in abeyance.
(I rarely use “abeyance”; just popped into my head.)
-Steve
If one has a sweet tooth, it is a good idea to not have sweets in the house, certainly.
But why not analyze a little deeper? Isn’t the body saying “I am running on glucose, but there isn’t enough glucose now.”
Why isn’t there enough glucose? Are you hyperinsulinemic right now? Why might that be?
In other words, turn the situation from one that requires willpower (must avoid excessive sweets) to one that requires learning and discovery (why am I feeling the way I am feeling now?).
I’m all in favor of deeper analysis when it works.
Great post,Thanks for providing us this great knowledge,Keep it up.