Motivate me to eat less chocolate: Easter

With Easter (or any holiday revolving around food) our motivation to diet and lose weight suffers. I know my dieting motivation goes out of the window when I see other people indulge. So my question for you - did you over indulge this weekend in the chocolate stakes? Did you get on the scales this morning and notice a scale creep, OK landslide of gigantic easter egg proportions? Isn't it amazing, when you are trying to lose weight the scale never seems to move, even when you seem to have gone without EVERYTHING for days and weeks on end. But you give up for one lousy day and the scale shoots back up to the starting point with no trouble at all.

Diets are not about a short term fix for a long term problem. Lets face it, if you've been overweight for some time, chances are going to be good it's going to take you a while to get rid of it. So make sure the "diet" you choose can sustain you for a life time, not a long time. Balance is always good. Contrary to myth, you do need to eat certain fats, they are the building blocks for every cell. Just avoid the saturated kinds and the trans fats - these are the hydrolyzed versions that tend to be added to every cake, pie and biscuit manufactured today. So cutting out these "foods" if you can call them that will also assist you reduce your waist line. And you do need carbohydrates, these are the instant energy boosters our body needs to get going. The trouble is we tend to eat enough to sustain an olympic marathon runner rather than the more sedentary lifestyles we actually lead. And of course we need protein in our diets. Protein helps to re-build muscles after sustained exercise. Protein also fills you up for longer, which means of course you're not craving those other foods that spike the blood sugar (carbs).

So don't despair if the scales are not being kind to you this morning. Go back to basics and remember - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle thing.