Dieting – The First Fourteen Days

by Mike Taparell



As every dieter knows, the first two weeks are crucial for starting a diet. Get that right and your diet will run like clockwork, get it wrong, however, and your diet can fall as flat as a strawberry pancake.
The first problem you come across is the one of longing. It's hard not to be aware of all the things you used to eat before you began your diet and to long for the diet to end so that you can eat them again.
Then, of course, you start wondering if the diet is really right for you and if this is the right time to do it and, suddenly, right before your eyes, there are a thousand reasons why you shouldn't be dieting.
Does this sound familiar? Sadly, it's pattern that repeats itself again and again so is there a way to get through those first fourteen days and get your diet off to a flying start?
The key to setting out on the right road is organization. In order to succeed you have to be able to concentrate 100% on your diet and keep your mind from straying back to the pre-diet days.
To begin with, find a diet that has some structure and which tells you precisely what meals you will be eating each day. The diet must also make some sensible provision for snacks.
Now get a diary with plenty of space to write an entry for each day and begin to fill it out from morning when you get up, to evening when you go to bed.
Put in the meals that you will have and the snacks that you will eat and when you will eat them. The idea is that once you start, you will have your day already planned for you and you can concentrate on ticking off the entries and not dwell on what you used to be doing and what you are missing out on eating.
Now add into the plan the things that you normally do each day. Maybe these are chores, times when you have to work or maybe these are fun items, but put in everything that occupies your time and that you do each day.
Of course, nothing in this life ever works to plan and so you will find that you have to adjust it to fit in with circumstances but having a plan will serve you well to begin.
Also it is useful to leave a few lines free at the end of each day so that you can add some comments.
Try to arrange it so that you have a definite routine that takes up the whole of your day. If you
have a family and a house to look after that is not hard to accomplish but try also to allocate some fun things to do as well.
What you are aiming for is to create structure in your life which will ensure that each day has tasks that keep you busy and does not allow you to dwell on the diet and how your pattern of eating is so different from the days before the diet began.
Also, the work and fun tasks will give you something to look forward to and something that you can accomplish and feel good about. This will take your mind off dieting and not make it the most important thing in your life. If you have a computer, this sort of diary can be prepared easily and you can soon have a plan that you can print out.
When the day to begin your diet arrives, simply follow the plan making whatever changes need to be made as you go along. You will almost certainly find that you either have too little time to do what you want to do or, if you are lucky, that you have time over. Adjust the tasks to suit and if necessary make a set of new pages for the rest of the time.
It also helps if you add some comments at the end of each day on how you are feeling and how things are going. The act of honestly putting your feeling down in writing can help you cope with the strangeness and the sense of longing that the early days of a diet can produce.
Following a routine that is written down is often easier than drifting through the early stages of a diet and it enables you to fill each day and feel good about what you have accomplished without unnecessarily dwelling on what life was like in the past.
As the end of the period approaches, consider if you want to extend the diary into the next two week period or perhaps use a cut-down version. Remember that structuring your days adds meaning and purpose to life and can give you a feeling of stability which dieting often takes away.
Beginning a diet and getting established in a routine is hard but if you plan for the diet and plan out your days you can give yourself the start that will often carry you through those first two weeks and onwards to a satisfactory diet conclusion.