Section 8.2: Killer Cravings
So you've had a great week, eaten the right number of calories, and just feel all-around good, when you go shopping and see your favorite chocolate. At first, you're like "That looks good." You go home and you think to yourself "Gee, I'd like some chocolate." and before you know it, the chocolate monster has taken control of your body going "NEED CHOCOLATE! MUST HAVE CHOCOLATE!"

You have a craving.

Our first suggestion is try to ignore it. Many cravings only last about 10 minutes. Drink some water, read a book, go for a walk, do something else. Try to get your mind off the craving. If it's still there after a reasonable time and you can't make it go away, give in to it, a little bit. If you desperately need a piece of chocolate. Have a small piece (such as a hershey kiss and a fun-size candy bar). If you gotta have a burger, go ahead and have a burger, and work that in to your daily meal plan.

It's better to give in to your craving, a little, than to eat everything else in the hopes it will go away.

Section 8.3: The Perils of Plateaus
Every once in a while, you just stop losing weight. Try as you might, a week passes by, maybe two, but the needles on your scale is simply stuck. You're on a plateau.
Being on a plateau is like, pulling your car off the road, on your way down the mountain, and stopping to take a look. Often, it's just your body catching up to all the progress you've made already.  If that happens to you, instead of feeling frustrated and angry, look back at the peak, to see how far you've come in your journey. Take a breather, sit and enjoy, and recognize that you will get started back on your journey down the mountain, with time.

It's important to note that, often, while you may not be losing weight, you may still be losing inches. If your overall goal is better health and better looks, that's still a good thing. Overall inches may help you squeeze into the next dress size!

Plateaus seem to happen when your body has finally gotten used to the new regime. It moves to compensate for the lower calorie intake by slowing down a notch, and reducing your fat loss.  Experience from numerous people suggests that the best to break a plateau is to do something different.. up your calories a couple hundred, or add some more exercise to your regime. Something different that forces your body to react differently. One tried and true method is to alternative your calorie intake.. going up a little for a day or two, and then going back to where you were. This is typically called zig-zagging and it seems to work pretty well.

If despite all your efforts, you still can't get off that plateau, you may have entered Starvation Mode. If this is the case, you should go see a doctor or nutritionist. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge or experience to offer any good advice on how to get out of Starvation Mode.  Please go see a professional and hopefully he or she can get you back on the road to success.

Section 8.4: It's not Cheating if you get caught!
Sometimes the whole lifestyle change thing can get a little frustrating. Especially when you know that Friday, your bud Mark has invited you over to watch the big game, and you KNOW he's making that Chili Con Queso Dip you love! So what's a good little dieter to do?

Despite the unfairness of it all, alot of social events do seem to include food, often food that we know we won't be able to fit into our calorie allowances. Should you shun all these social events, or sit there with a pitiful single chicken wing on your table, because you don't think you should allow yourself this?

It's my suggestion that you let yourself occasionally have a Cheat Meal. Whether you decide "occasionally" should be.. once a week, once a month, or what not is up to you. So long as a Cheat Meal doesn't become a Cheat Week or a Cheat Month, you aren't going to do that much damage to your diet. Remember, it takes 3,500 extra calories of food to create 1 lb. of fat.

One suggestion I like, when contemplating a Cheat Meal, is to try and eat light the rest of the day and/or try to get in a little more exercise than usual. That way, the damage you might do during your Cheat Meal is somewhat lessened. If that doesn't work for you, remember that you can always do better tomorrow and try to undo whatever damage you might have done.

The important thing to remember is.. this is your life you're changing, and while you you may feel you need to deny yourself the enjoyment of Thanksgiving Dinner with the family or a romantic dinner out with the wife because of the caloric cost associated with it, you don't need to do that. This is your life to live, and sometimes living life has to come before losing weight. At least, that's my take.

Section 8.5: Eating Out (Dun Dun Dun)
Eating Out seems to be one of those things that tends to send dieters into a spin. You can control what you eat at home, by reading nutritional information, planning out meals, making sure you eat healthy, but eating out! Oh no!

A mere 40 or 50 years ago, people went out occasionally, as a social occasion, to celebrate important events or just to spend quality time with good people. This is before the Frantic Nineties and the New Millenium when no one had time to make their own dinners. Eating out, socially, is a lost art. One that it's high time to reclaim.

The important thing about going out is Planning. See if you can find nutritional information for the restaurant you're interested in and find out what the best dish for you to eat is, and then plan around eating there. If you're going to go to Ruby Tuesday's to spend good times with friends, see if the websits has nutritional info and plan, plan, plan. Barring that, remember to eat more good, healthy foods and stay away from cream sauces, anything deep-fried and the like.

Eating out can be and should be a pleasurable experience, for everyone, though it is my suggestion that you, working on living healthier lives, don't eat out TOO often, just as an occasional thing.

Section 8.6: Crash and Burn - Why Repetition is NOT always good good
For many of us, it's a fact of human nature that we get bored. Without putting it overdelicately, for many people you can only do a salad so many ways before you can't even CONSIDER having salad again. This is the main fallacy of a number of fad diets like the Cabbage Soup Diet. While Salad and Cabbage Soup can both be healthy, low-calorie and delicious, people need variety.

From experience, you should be looking to change things around every 10 to 15 weeks. Make sure to incorporate different exercises, different intensities, different challenges, any sort of variety that can make exercising fun and challenging again.

The same is true for food. Do not be afraid, as time progresses, to try new foods, new recipes, different combinations. It's good to have favorites, but variety is the spice of life, and there are only so many times you can have bean chili and ginger stir-fry!

When you find that what you're doing is tedious, that you just don't see the point to continuing, sit down, plan out a way to switch things up, and do so.

Section 8.7: Eating Disorders and other Mental Diseases
There is, sadly, an increasing number of people who suffer from some sort of Eating Disorder. Eating Disorders are a mental disease typically characterized by an obsessive need to lose weight and an intense fear of gaining weight. There is a huge number of Eating Disorders, such as Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, Exercise Bulimia, and ED-NOS (Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified).

Many people suffer from obsessions regarding weight loss, such as an obsession with counting calories or weighing in. While probably not healthy in their own right, these obsessions do not mean that you necessarily suffer from an Eating Disorder, however. Unfortunately, it is impossible for anyone else but a trained professional to diagnose you or someone you know with an eating disorder, however, if you think you may have one, please take this self-test and present the results to a professional.

Chapter 9: Useful Links

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/article/experts.html
http://caloriecount.about.com/ask
http://www.mypyramid.gov
http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php
http://www.kidsnutrition.org/bodycomp/bmiz2.html (BMI and Caloric Allowance for Teens)

BUMP

Happy 2 years, HK!!!!  There ya go...read away everyone!  Good stuff in here!

Woohoo!  I didn't realize we could reply.

Thanks for the update!

Wow! Cool. :-)

Happy 2 years, it is officially official!!!!! Thank you again

Wow, this is a wonderful resource, hk!  Thank you for the time and effort I know it cost you.  :)

EDIT:  Just wanted to let you know, the link in Section 7.4 was broken.

Original Post by sundari:

EDIT: Just wanted to let you know, the link in Section 7.4 was broken.

Got it. Thanks! :)

What a wonderful read! I'm so motivated, thanks :)!!

I gotta put this in my profile so I can finish reading it later.

This is really informative!

Thanks!  Happy two years and a day!  :)  xoxoxo

Congratulations on your anniversary and well done on a fabulous "new and improved" C diet. It's a GREAT resource for everyone

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!  And thanks for the "new and improved" CC weight loss plan!  Well done!

Suzigirl

Thanks for great article and inspiration!

Wow, I just shared this link with a new CC; Member.  This is so informative with a sense of humor. I like it I like it.  Thanks for the time you put into creating this reference guide.  It   truly is motivational and inspirational.

Happy Anniversary!   Take care and God Bless you with much health.