How not to fail during a diet: what to do and how to endure it. How to maintain a very strict diet? Pay attention to serving
Going on a diet is not that difficult. It is much more difficult to finish what you start. Any person who decides to lose weight is interested in how to maintain a diet and not fail. What saves you from constant overeating is, first of all, choosing the right method, that is, exactly the diet that suits you specifically. It is better to coordinate the selection of proper nutrition with a nutritionist and doctor, and then stick to the chosen course.
Motivation
Diet is not necessarily required only for aesthetic purposes. Sometimes dietary restrictions are necessary for health reasons. First of all, decide on your goal.
If you need to get rid of extra calories before the beach season or an important event, write down your initial parameters (volume and weight) and compare them with the achieved results.
If dieting is required to maintain health, keep the end goal in mind. Scare yourself about the consequences of a breakdown.
Visual aids help maintain motivation. Print out a picture with your ideal idea of the outcome of the diet and hang it in the area of your apartment where you visit most often.
Gradual transition
You should not suddenly plunge into a healthy lifestyle. Switching to a diet requires some preparation. Reduce the number of kilocalories you eat per day by 100-200. Thus, the body will adapt to a new way naturally and painlessly.
Don't go on a diet if you're going through difficult times: stress at home, rush jobs at work, illness in your family. A new way of life requires comfortable, favorable conditions.
Keep a diary
Make a schedule and strictly stick to it. A food diary helps you track how much you eat and avoid overeating. Check your notes regularly. Keeping a diary disciplines and helps you stick to fractional meals.
Eating by the clock helps you control your appetite and learn to feel hungry exactly at the time of your meal. By following a diet plan, you will begin to eat 30% less food.
Set the table
Eating while running, at the computer or in front of the TV should be avoided. This way you will quietly eat a lot more. Have lunch and dinner in a beautiful setting, place your dishes on the table and arrange your cutlery. Chew each piece slowly. The meal should be spread out over 20-30 minutes.
It is better to place a little of each type of food on the plate. Colors are also believed to influence the desire to eat. For example, blue color dulls appetite. Therefore, eat from blue plates.
Snack wisely
The body gets a lot of extra calories from snacks: chocolate bars, croissants, donuts, peanuts. You should snack on foods with a high satiety index: oranges, apples, grapes, beans.
Sandwiches should be made from whole grain bread and a piece of lean fish or wholemeal bread and cheese. But it’s better to forget about sausage if you are going to stick to the diet.
Leave the house on a full stomach
A light snack will help avoid overeating in the restaurant and guests. It’s also better to go shopping on a full stomach and carry a list with you.
You should not expose yourself to painful hunger, so as not to break down and start devouring dishes indiscriminately.
Hot meals satiate the body faster than cold snacks. Give preference to hot vegetable and fish soups rather than jellied or aspic.
Avoid appetite stimulants
A number of foods stimulate your appetite and make you eat more. These are alcoholic drinks, sour foods, sweets, coffee, marinades, spices, pickles, seasonings.
Do not forget that each body is individual, and if apples satisfy hunger for one person, then for another they increase appetite. Eliminate those foods that stimulate your appetite.
Drink a lot and move
Clean water helps fill the stomach and remove toxins from the body. Drink at least 2 liters of fluid per day. These can be freshly squeezed juices, herbal teas without sugar, mineral water.
Physical activity lifts your mood and helps you forget about hunger. Exercise 40 minutes a day.
Stay at home less to avoid frequently looking into the refrigerator. When you feel hungry, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and go for a short walk.
Taste food while cooking
By inhaling the aromas of food and tasting food in small pieces, you fill your stomach faster during the main meal.
Cooking is the best way to trick your brain.
Get enough sleep
With chronic lack of sleep, the body does not receive enough energy, which it tries to replenish from food.
Go to bed earlier on weekdays, and wake up on your own on weekends, without an alarm clock. Do not forget that each body has its own sleep norm. For some, 6 hours is enough to fully recuperate; for others, 10 hours is not enough.
Also, give up the habit of eating at night. The last meal should be 2-4 hours before bedtime. This way, you will not have time to get hungry and will fall asleep peacefully.
Don't beat yourself up for failures
Feelings of guilt are not the best helper in any endeavor. If a breakdown could not be avoided, analyze the situation calmly and detachedly. Don't despair that your diet is ruined. The next day, behave as if nothing had happened: continue to keep a diary, eliminate sugar and coffee.
But it’s better to reward yourself for results not with a piece of high-calorie cake, but with an inedible purchase: new clothes, a trip to the spa center, cosmetics.
Give yourself some slack
Promise yourself that if you follow all the points of the diet, in a week or two you will treat yourself to a delicacy, a sweet, a piece of pizza. This does not mean that you should devour the entire cake or stick of sausage.
Eat the treat slowly, enjoy the result, make a promise to yourself to indulge yourself again after a while. You should eat a “harmful” product only in the first half of the day.
A properly selected diet becomes a nutritional system over time. A diet that suits you gives you lightness, good mood and well-being, not irritation and dissatisfaction. Small portions will become the norm over time, and the refusal of sweets can be compensated by including honey and small amounts of homemade jam in the diet.
Over the years spent at the university, you will have to make a lot of effort to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills for your future profession. To continue your studies and receive a scholarship (if such an opportunity is available), you need not only to submit all current assignments and coursework on time, but also to monitor your mood and avoid overwork. Otherwise, after today’s success in the exam, it will be very difficult to force yourself to immerse yourself in work again.
We can roughly distinguish 4 periods of study, repeated every year, and especially costly on the efforts and nerves of students. Senior students anticipate their approach, accelerating productivity in time, but freshmen are usually taken by surprise by a sharp increase in workload. Those who are not properly prepared for the increased volume of work may lose not only their academic performance, but also their health. What are these periods, how to get through them with minimal emotional investment and maximum efficiency - we’ll talk about this in the article.
They say that a student is always one night away from preparing for an exam, and there is some truth in this. Most people, and especially those of student age, do not worry too much about the future. Today everything is great, but you shouldn’t think about what might happen in the future. In fact, this is not such a bad life position, because it is impossible to predict what changes may occur in our changing world. Literally all spheres of human activity are now unstable. What you have to carefully study today may turn out to be outdated and useless information tomorrow. But, if you want to succeed in your studies, you cannot do without the skills of planning your work over time and soberly assessing your own capabilities.
So, here are the four most difficult stages for every student.
1) End of October - beginning of November
Here, many people are let down by the lack of a suitable learning attitude. Summer has passed, everyone has returned from the resorts, but the relaxation and serenity characteristic of young people on vacation remains. At the same time, the curriculum bombards students with a stream of knowledge and tasks, which can be difficult to switch to. It is difficult to sit in one place for the whole school day and to capture lectures as fully as possible in notes, not to mention doing practical work. In addition, at this time, due to the onset of cold weather, infectious diseases are especially common. Therefore, you should avoid overexertion, which weakens the body and makes it vulnerable to pathogenic bacteria.
If your health has deteriorated, it will be difficult to make up for lost opportunities to complete current assignments. Consider the likelihood of illness in advance and think about what measures you can take in this case. If you're teetering on the edge of leaving everything at the last minute, a sudden cold will be a very unpleasant surprise. In this case, before the start of the session, debts will hang over you. It is unlikely that the need to work at the limit of capabilities all this time can please anyone. At the end of the article you will find recommendations that will help you avoid difficulties.
2) end of December - January
The winter session is distinguished not only by the abundance of work in all academic subjects, but also by the variety of tasks facing students. During this period, university students actively rely on textbooks, exam papers and additional literature. Passing the exam and defending certification papers, including coursework, requires a different approach to preparation, and therefore students are required to have speed, flexibility and the ability to quickly adapt.
Another difficulty during this period is the general festive atmosphere. Everyone around is preparing for the New Year and winter holidays. At this time, it is not easy to mobilize and discipline yourself to successfully pass the session. Well, possible health problems in the cold winter season, again, have not been canceled.
However, many students are not at all embarrassed by these obstacles. They successfully complete the first semester and pass the exam quickly. The fact is that most students have already become involved in the educational process, and for some students the anticipation of the holidays only gives them strength.
3) End of March - mid-April
Most of all, this time is similar to the first peak of workload, but now, instead of insufficient involvement in the educational process, the fatigue accumulated by students over six months is taking its toll. The successful completion of the first semester and the winter holidays are relaxing, and the weather is more conducive to walking than to sitting through boring lectures. And here is the time to strain yourself, concentrating all your efforts on the goal. The stronger the desire to relax, the more attentive you need to be so as not to lose concentration.
Fortunately, with a problem comes a solution. Spring is the time of awakening of nature and acceleration of all life processes. Together with flowering plants and animals waking up from hibernation, people also receive their boost of energy. The sun and warmth lift your spirits, and along with it your productivity goes up. So the young student body in the spring can endure such volumes of work that at other times would be excessive.
True, there is one more circumstance that needs to be taken into account. During this period, various optional student events are especially active: KVN, conferences, sports competitions, intellectual games. It is possible and necessary to participate in all this so as not to stop the development of your personality. Exercising is especially useful because it helps keep you in shape, improves your ability to work and improves your health. But you need to know when to stop, otherwise you won’t be able to combine extracurricular activities with successful studies. Therefore, participate only in the most interesting and promising projects, without scattering your efforts in unnecessary directions.
4) End of May - June
The final stage of each course is the most important and, often, the most difficult. This is largely due to various distractions. The heat outside is much more conducive to relaxing on some beach than to sitting over textbooks and notes in a stuffy room. If you fail to overcome your own laziness, you won’t be able to go on vacation or practice with a light head. No matter where you go, thoughts about university debt will occasionally pop up.
First peak period
Advice: Get started as early as possible.
You need to get involved in the learning process very quickly, and it’s even better if you get into the mood for work already at the end of August. This will protect you from problems that may occur in two months. Here is one simple method for developing discipline. Sit down at your desk and just write a few lines of text. After a long summer vacation, this simple activity will require some mobilization from you. Lectures in September are not written so quickly, and because of this, the information content and legibility of notes suffers. But if you remember your pen skills in advance, you will be able to capture the key points of the topic in a timely manner. And of course, immediately start doing current tasks as soon as they appear on the horizon.
Second peak period
Advice: Manage your time.
The inability to plan work and distribute time costs is perhaps the most common reason for student failure. A frivolous attitude to one’s time often leads to the fact that the first semester is already over, and many issues remain unresolved. To prevent this situation from arising, put your hobbies aside until all current work is completed. But when the winter session comes, you will be able to prepare for exams with a light heart, maintaining a positive attitude. And calmness and discipline are the key to successfully passing any tests and defending coursework. After all, even material that you have memorized and repeated ten times can disappear from your mind at the most crucial moment if you are too nervous.
Third peak period
Advice: Concentrate on the main thing.
If you have talent in any area, be it sports, science or creativity, offers to participate in additional student activities will not keep you waiting. There are especially many contests and competitions during the third peak period, that is, in mid-spring. Fortunately, you can always refuse those activities that are not very interesting to you or do not offer any prospects for the future. Free attention and effort will be required to overcome your laziness and frivolous attitude left after the New Year holidays. If you don’t feel like sitting down at a desk, start with the easiest and most interesting tasks. Always take breaks while working, even if you don't feel tired. This is how you best conserve your strength.
Fourth peak period
Tip: Make preparation enjoyable.
Summer is approaching, and with it the final exam for the course. If in the spring you still had time for activities not related to studies, now there is absolutely none left. During this period, accumulating knowledge and completing coursework becomes your main occupation, taking up almost all your free time. But, if you followed the previous points and did not accumulate debts during the year, it will be much easier to overcome this milestone. Then it will be easy for you to focus your thoughts on the summer exam marathon.
But one more problem remains - the weather. Preparing to take an exam or defend a course paper in a stuffy dormitory is not very pleasant; you will always be overcome by thoughts of relaxation. Therefore, combine business with pleasure by taking your textbooks and notes somewhere to the park. Don't forget about modern technological assistants. The same iPad is perfect for both reading and listening to lectures in nature. The main thing is not to get carried away with other functions of your gadgets and not lose focus on your goal. By the way, information will be remembered much better in such a pleasant environment. A reluctantly memorized text will be forgotten very quickly, but a text read with pleasure will remain in memory. In general, enjoy your preparation and successful completion!
The concept of “stress” has long been firmly established in our consciousness. What to do, the “high-voltage” pace of life is associated with overloads. We perceive them as not very pleasant everyday life, and that’s all. Meanwhile, the consequences of stress are far from harmless: they can destroy human life.
Studying the dependence of diseases on various factors, American doctors became convinced that diseases (both physical and mental) are always preceded by some serious changes. The result of their research was a scale well known to experts, in which the main events in a person’s life are rated with a certain number of points - depending on the degree of their “stressfulness”.
Event value in points
Death of a spouse 100
Divorce 73
Imprisonment 63
Injury or illness 53
Marriage 50
Dismissal from work 47
Reconciliation of spouses 45
Retirement 45
Pregnancy 40
Sexual problems 39
Changing professional orientation 36
Loan or loan for the purchase of a large item 31
Change of position 29
Son or daughter leaves home 29
Outstanding Personal Achievement 28
Spouse quits work (or starts work) 26
Start (or end) of classes at an educational institution 26
Giving up some individual habits 24
Problems with management 23
Change of residence 20
Changing eating habits 15
Vacation 13
Christmas (New Year) 12
Have you noticed that there are also joys - celebrating Christmas, vacations, etc. - associated with stress? Maybe other events that were fraught with them, not mentioned here, happened to you? And were all of the above inevitable? Shouldn't it have been worth avoiding some? Or give them a different twist? Little by little, the concept of “stress”, like a thousand-legged octopus, emerges from the depths of our consciousness...
What is stress?
This is the body’s response to some blow, some pressure from the outside. Greater pressure means a sharper reaction of resistance to it. With this understanding of things, it is clear that there is no escape from stress. They are organically inherent in the life of a big city.
Take, for example, traffic during rush hours, when the driver does not have the right to relax for a second. “Exhausted” is an accurate description of the state of a person who has jumped out of two or three traffic jams and is hopelessly late for a meeting.
So is it possible to “jump out” of stress?
In psychology there is a concept of personality orientation. In a nutshell, this is the ability to correctly read and evaluate a situation. Understand whether the latest information (and it is fresh continuously, every day) contains a threat, and if so, respond intelligently to it.
Why is it that where one is climbing the wall, the other is completely calm?
Answer: The personality of this “other” is correctly directed. That is, he freely manipulates experience and imagination. Experience allows him to instantly remember similar situations, and imagination allows him to correlate the present one with them (since imagination is a kind of yeast that “bake” a variety of combinations of events from dough-experience, adapting them to the present and choosing the best option).
Experience and imagination are wonderful things, and yet we perceive information as a threat when it affects us personally, that is, when it appeals to our emotions. What to do with them? How to make them “take the hit” in a stressful situation?
If the totality of a person's feelings is to some extent a model of his relationship with the world, the answer is obvious. We must build our relationships with the world on healthy principles - openness, loyalty, the ability to compromise.
Meanwhile, nature itself took care of our safety. We tolerate even severe stress quite easily if it is short-lived. Long-term stress is dangerous, quietly flowing into depression - the root cause of most of our ailments.
Stress has its own mechanism of action, its own phases. The first of these is called the anxiety reaction. The body resists it by releasing hormones that mobilize its energy. The anxiety reaction can manifest itself as some kind of violent inflammatory process. But then everything returns to normal - the person returns to a pre-stress state.
If you still fail to cope with stress, the second phase begins: adaptation to it. The body tries to adapt to stress, to somehow neutralize it. The activity of the adrenal glands increases, they release more and more corticosteroids, which have anti-inflammatory properties, into the blood. But the process of adaptation to stress, alas, absorbs energy, which at the very least supports diminishing strength. This state of “no war, no peace” can last a long time, but not indefinitely. The end of it is the third stage of stress: exhaustion. And this is already very serious.
How to avoid at least the third stage if you cannot manage the stress in the first two?
It turns out that sometimes the simplest things can help.
Andrey Glikin, psychologist Lyubov Mikhailova
There is no such person who would not face criticism. Everyone knows how unpleasant it is and how difficult it is to endure unpleasant, caustic and hurtful words. Anyone can criticize, and anyone can do it. But the reasons for criticism are different, it’s worth understanding. And also understand how to cope with unpleasant feelings caused by criticism.
You don't have to be worse than someone else or do something bad to become a victim of criticism. Often criticism comes to a person who does not deserve blame at all, but for some reason it still hurts and upsets. In order to do so, you need to learn to cope with emotions and firmly endure any unpleasant words. Moreover, every criticism is a favor on the part of the offender; it is a lesson from which you should definitely benefit and be grateful to the criticizing party. But first things first.
People who stand out from the crowd by unusual behavior or an unusual outlook on life are naturally the most suitable targets for evil tongues. If a person chooses an unusual way of life for himself, if his worldview goes beyond generally accepted norms, then such a person needs to be immediately ready to fend off criticism in his direction. Although rebuff is not the right word, criticism is not a harm, it is an experience.
Bright personalities always attract a lot of attention, some people admire them, but there will always be those who will speak negatively about them. Although, “gray mice” are also not immune from criticism. It also attracts attention, because this is also a little outside the framework of generally accepted views, so why not talk about it.
Be able to accept criticism as a gift
The first thing to understand is that all words can be useful. If there is criticism, it will be useful. You need to understand which of what was said is really, true and would be good to change. This is the principle of development. We need to accept our shortcomings and, if possible, get rid of them.
No, I didn’t dare to be offended and angry, making retaliatory attacks, this is a pointless waste of energy. You need to calm down and listen to your opponent as carefully as possible. Then think about what was said and draw conclusions. At the same time, you need to remember that half, and maybe most of it, does not apply to you; the person projects dissatisfaction with himself onto another person. Therefore, most of the criticism is only the internal problems of the offender, but is it worth getting angry at something that does not concern you at all?
Gratitude is what you should mentally say to the critic, because he spent his energy to help develop someone else’s personality, he taught a lesson. If you realize all this and follow this pattern, then no one will be able to shake the peace that will be inside
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There are a huge number of diets - everyone can choose the right option, but not everyone can tolerate dietary restrictions. How to maintain a diet? We will give you some useful recommendations.
At the first stage, decide on your motives, understand what exactly a miraculous transformation will give you. Some people need a good figure for a career, others to improve their self-esteem, and others to dress in a super fashionable outfit.
Enlist the support of family members and girlfriends/friends. Nothing leads you astray more than a negative assessment of your actions from your relatives. Explain why you need to lose weight and ask them to support you. “Put” your friends on a diet - compete with them (pride will not let you give in).
Come up with a hobby - being passionate about something will help you take your mind off the feeling of hunger.
Assess how much fluid you drink. Your liquid diet should include at least 8 tbsp. liquids. To control your appetite, make it a habit to drink water before meals (it will partially fill your stomach and prevent you from overeating).
Train yourself to eat slowly and chew your food thoroughly. Thanks to this, you will feel full faster.
Once a week, allow yourself to break your diet by eating your favorite food in the morning. Such an indulgence will allow you not to be disappointed in the diet (constant adherence to the fasting regime is exhausting not only physically, but also psychologically).
Choose diets for which you can create a menu yourself, based on the recommendations provided. This will also prevent you from getting bored while on a diet and will help you avoid a breakdown. When preparing food for a diet, try to fully enjoy the aroma of the dish. Scientists say that by inhaling the smell of food, we are already partially saturated. Don't forget about the benefits of essential oils - some of them relieve increased appetite. Pay attention to the essential oils of mint, lavender, rose, lemongrass, rosemary, and fennel.
If you are following a long-term diet, hang a weight loss chart on the wall - update the data daily by weighing yourself after waking up. Such a visual aid will not allow you to relapse (seeing your results will make it easier for you to resist temptations).
If you are close to a breakdown, review your diet, add snacks consisting of vegetables with negative calorie content (pay attention to lettuce, spinach, celery, etc.).