When  trying to lose weight, eating out is a challenge.

Restaurants are pretty simple because  you can select the dishes and ask to have them prepared in a certain way.

Eating with family/friends is also easy. You can call ahead and ask if they could prepare a big salad (hold the oil please) or a big bowl of steamed vegetables. You can also bring your own food.

But you won’t, because you’re ashamed.

I’ve gained many pounds because of that shame. I’ve stayed fat because of that shame.

Admitting to myself that I wanted to be thinner, that I wanted to go on a diet, that I wasn’t happy with the way I was – that was tough.

But admitting that to others – that was unthinkable.

I couldn’t possibly negotiate the terms of dinner (dishes and composition) with my host or with the waiter. That would be admitting weakness in front of the people that I value the most.

But I was WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

Truly changing yourself is the ultimate show of power. Deciding on a course of action that would require sacrifice, persistence and change and following up on it, is something very few people do.

So lose the shame. Tell that waiter that you want the tuna salad with the olive oil on the side because you want to add it yourself.

Bring a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber to your aunt’s dinner and make yourself a salad right there.

Some people might give you a funny look. But your real friends will admire you.

I promise.

In following posts I’ll lay out the exact tactics of eating out, but for now, remember…

You have nothing to be ashamed of.

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P.S.

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You stare into the boiling diet desert. As far as the eye can see there is nothing but sand, scorching winds and vultures.

On the other side of this desert, there is a better you. A thinner, lighter version of you. A version of you that can buy and wear anything. A version of you that doesn’t get tired all the time. A happier you.

But you dare not step into the desert. The journey is terrifying. You could not possibly endure the months of suffering (and almost certain death).

And just as you are about to lose hope, your eyes pick up an irregularity in the desert terrain. Specks of gold and brown mark a path across the desert.

You dust off your binoculars and bring it to your eyes…

photo credit: gin soak via photopin cc

You see a view so wonderful, so intoxicating, that you can’t reconcile it with the brutal reality of the desert.

But it is true… a week’s worth of travel from here, in the middle of the desert, there is a haven, filled with chocolate, coffee and powdered sugar. And there’s a second one another week down the road, and a third and a forth and so on, as far as the horizon and beyond.

Those are the ‘weekly indulgence’ havens and they will make your months (or years) of diet possible and even pleasurable.

Here is how you do it

1. Find your indulgence – Think of your favorite food. It could be anything.

2. Eat one portion of it every week – Each week eat one dish of this food. It could be a piece of cake, a plate of spaghetti or dozen sushi roles.

3. Enjoy it to the Max – Make an effort to make an outing out of it. Go to your favorite coffee shop or restaurant and take the time to really enjoy your indulgence.

4. Share it with NO ONE – You will not share your weekly indulgence with anyone. Not your wife or your husband. Not even your kids. This is what keeps you sane. Never ever share it (I use my fork to hit the hands of those that try to rob me of my weekly piece of chocolate bliss – it’s mine and no one will take it from me!).

5. Don’t skip meals – Not before and not after your weekly indulgence. If you stick to your diet during the week and exercise moderately, this one dish will not prevent you from losing weight. On the other hand… being hungry will.

The (BIG) benefits of the weekly indulgence

1.  It keeps you sane – There’s a reason we need to diet – we love to eat yummy fattening foods. Totally denying yourself of your favorite foods will cause you to lose your freaking mind. But when you know you have the weekly indulgence you can stay reasonably sane.

2. It prevents you from snacking throughout the week – You do deserve a sugary pick me up once in a while, but when you know you will indulge royally in the near future, you can avoid snacking here and there (the #1 reason for not losing weight).

To conclude… this is my favorite diet habit, and I imagine you’ll like it too.

To a thinner, happier you,

Yoav

Will power is scarce. And almost everything we do drains it – the job, the kids, trying not to explode in a blinding flash of road rage and killing that idiot that doesn’t even signal before he cuts us off.

And to make things worse, losing weight requires an enormous amount of will power (if using will power is your only strategy). That’s why most diets fail after the first 2-3 Kilos (4-7 pounds). You just don’t have enough will power to sustain it.

The easy way lose weight it is to acquire diet habits.

Dieting through habits does require you to spend a little energy on acquiring each habit, but once you’ve acquired it, you don’t use will power when dieting. It’s on autopilot – like brushing your teeth in the morning.

Here’s a list of diet habits I ‘trained myself’ into:

• Bringing my own food to meals at family/friends
• Asking about the ingredients and making special requests at restaurants
• Reading the labels at the supermarket
• Eating 6 small meals/day
• Indulging myself once a week
• Exercising
• Diet focused shopping
• Feeding myself first
• Planning the day ahead
• The BIG salad
• Spending money on eating well when necessary

This list might seem like a lot to do, but once you acquire those small habits, you won’t need to think about them at all. And as a result, you’ll steadily lose weight every week, without struggling and suffering.

We’ll discuss these habits in details in future posts.

photo credit: Lif… via photopin cc

P.S.

Just to make it perfectly clear … injecting heroine might be an effective way to lose weight but it will kill you.

I’ve always struggled with my weight. If I am not mindful – I eat. And since I am not always mindful I’ve had to learn how to diet.

One of my biggest diet tricks is the BIG salad. I make one every day. This means that I need to cut A LOT of vegetables. A task that made me fall in love with the Victorinox vegetable knife.

It’s not a fancy knife. It costs about 5$, but it cuts through cucumbers like a Lightsaber cuts through empire clones. I love getting it out of the drawer. I love how it feels in in my hand. I love how effortlessly it cuts the vegetables. I would easily pay $50 for it.

This $5 knife has sold me on the Victorinox brand. I now WANT to buy a Victorinox watch and would give any of their products a more-than-fair chance.

If you sell anything, you should be copying Victorinox – make excellent everyday products. They will create your brand, not through advertising, but through experience. And then when the customer decides to buy the big product. He’ll buy it from you – even if it’s a Lightsaber.

I keep forgetting things. It’s not old age, I’ve always been like that.

I want to use a To-do list software, but all the To-Do list tools miss a big feature – they aren’t people sensitive.

For example …  I need to talk to Eran about swimming classes for my son.

But usually when I am around Eran I am doing my best not to drown while performing his increasingly evil swimming exercises. I am not focused on crossing stuff off my to-do list.

But my iPhone could do that. My iPhone should know when I:

• Meet people who are related to tasks on my to-do list
• When I talk to them on the phone
• When I write them an email
• Or when I receive an email from them
• When I send or receive an SMS message to these people

And then, my dear, beloved iPhone should let me know that I have tasks related to that person.

If my iPhone did that, I would become a To-do list machine … diligently writing down, executing and crossing off items from my list. And then I’ll be the grown up, responsible person I should be.

Then again… I’d probably not.

Failure is hard. No matter how experienced you are and how many times you’ve failed before, failure is still hard to cope with.

Last week I launched a website. Most people would have considered it a success. And it is a moderate success, but its current conversion rate and CTR are not enough to take us where we want to go.

And there isn’t a way to tweak it into a success (sometimes there are, but that’s not the case here).

So step one was admitting the truth. Admitting that it’s not good enough, that we need something better.

But step two is taking time to recover. Although I already have a pretty awesome idea about a new approach, I know that I can’t attack it right away. Right now my energy is the murky energy of failure. I need the murky energy to go away so I can attack the new approach with enthusiasm.

I’ll take a couple of days and come back with the warm golden energy of optimism and we’ll rock this boat.

One last thing… if you find a technique that enables you to bounce back from failure, then you are the KING. Each Failure makes you smarter and if you fail a lot and bounce back, you’ll be smarter than every one else and then you win.