Recently a friend of mine said to me “I need to lose weight for my wedding day and be a beautiful bride”. In my experience losing weight starts in the mind and not in the food cupboard. It also needs to be viewed as a change of lifestyle and not just something to be done for a special event.

What I suggested she should do is to take time and plan. Work out first how much weight you want to lose and what length of time you have to do it in.

wedding_dressSay you are getting married in the autumn. It’s April now so you have 7 - 8 months to get in shape. That’s about 30 weeks. At a weight loss of 2 pounds a week you could realistically achieve a weight loss of 60 pounds. Don’t worry if you need to lose more weight than that as quite often in the first week of a diet you can easily lose up to 7 or 10 pounds and then maybe 2-3 pounds a week.

OK - so now you have a plan a goal and a target weight to aim for.

Losing weight involves at least 2 things - eating the right foods and exercise. If you hate the thought of exercise think of it in terms of getting more active - sounds better :-)

Before you start, plan your foods. Make a shopping list for the week and get everything in so you can’t ‘cheat’. Weigh yourself once a week - first thing in the morning, same day each week. Do this after you’d had a ‘pee’ and before you eat. (The weighing not the shopping!)

Foods:

Lots of fruits and veggies - these provide vitamins, nutrients and add bulk/fiber to make you feel full quicker and stop you feeling hungry.

Proteins - skinless chicken, fish, low fat dairy products.

Carbs - wholegrains - wholemeal bread, pasta and cereals.

Fats - use olive oil for salad dressings.

Water, water and more water - drink about 6-8 glasses a day.

Aim to eat 3 meals and 2-3 snacks a day. A snack can simply be an apple, small handful of nuts or grapes, couple of crackers with low fat cheese etc.

So, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner, evening snack.

Keep a journal/diary of what you eat and when, what your mood was i.e. were you feeling depressed one day and pigged out etc. Also write down your weight each week and the amount of exercise you’ve done. This way you’ll be able to see your progress over the weeks.

Make sure you kick start your diet with these fat loss foods

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