One thing that plagues many people on diets is dealing with the “what do I want to eat? Syndrome”. You can start your diet with a big bang and be totally motivated until…You come home one day after an exhausting day at work and the last thing that you want to do is figure out what you want to eat, so you grab something easy, quick, and probably unhealthy. In order to effectively get past this hurdle that you’re bound to deal with a million times you need to do some preparation upfront. While I wrote this with dieters in mind, this can be applied by those who aren't on a diet, but want to be able to deal with the "what do I want to eat? Syndrome".
Do your preparation and planning when you have the energy and motivation. A big part of being productive is being motivated and having the energy to do it. This holds true for dieting and weight loss too. While you’re motivated and have the energy, you can work on building success into your diet. When you’re tired and unmotivated is generally not a good time to do things, from a productivity and diet stand point. You’re not likely to be creative and you’re more likely to fall into the easy traps. So try to do your preparations when you have higher energy levels and are motivated, or at the very least the day or night before. You can harness the smarter, thinking, and awake part of your brain as compared to the autopilot mode that we’re often in when we have a tough day.
Maximize your use of left-overs. Many of us are turned off by left-overs, maybe you had some meatloaf surprise or strange mixture of items that were sitting in your fridge that you probably didn’t like when they weren’t left-overs as kids and this has resulted in a dislike or dread of left-overs for many people. If you find a recipe or meal that you like, why not double or triple the portions and put it in your freezer. When you don’t have much energy or motivation it is pretty easy to thaw something or to reheat. Plus, if you let enough time pass from when you made it originally, the meal won’t seem like a left over.
Plan your meals ahead and shop accordingly. When you’re motivated and have the energy to do it, why not plan your meals out for a week or so? You can look through your favorite recipes to be inspired or maybe list some meals that you and your family enjoy and think about what day you would like to have what. Maybe you could ask your family for suggestions of things that they would like to have. One word of caution here, the energy and motivation idea applies to them, so if you ask them at the wrong time they might be challenged to name a single thing. After planning the meals that you want, be sure to look for all the necessary ingredients and buy them. It is really frustrating and a motivation killer to start cooking something and find that you’re missing some that is a key ingredient and that can’t be substituted with something else.
Buy or prepare healthy snacks for those snack-times. You know that you’re probably going to want to snack at sometime, so why not make sure that you have some healthy snacks that you can eat when you’re in a snacking mood. That way you can avoid those unhealthy foods that many of us eat when we’re in a snacking mood.
By using those times when you’re motivated and have energy, you can build success into your diet and be ready for those times that you don’t feel like making a “real” decision about what to fix for dinner. Do you have any tips that work for you in dealing with the “What do I want to eat? Syndrome”? If you have any other comments, I would love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)
On Deck…
I’ll be publishing posts about…
- The next in my series of weight loss strategies
- My next Spotlight on the web.
- More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.
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