Over 95% of people who use restrictive dieting to lose weight, gain it all back within one year. Restrictive dieting alone will never solve your weight problem. In fact, many studies show that dieting actually causes weight problems because it forces you to focus most of your energy on food and your weight. Dieting fosters diet mentality which causes us to call some foods “good” and others “bad”. If you’re dieting your feelings about yourself are often dictated by your food choices.

Here are some common statements you might hear people make when they’re on a diet:

“I was really good today, all I had was rice cakes and a protein shake.”

“Wow! That cheesecake is so good I felt like licking my plate.”

“I wish I could be good like you, look at how bad I’m being.”

Notice how the word “good” is used for the diet food and the high fat food interchangeably. Notice also how dieter’s judge themselves based on the food they put in their mouths. Our words and beliefs have power over our feelings and our actions. If we do something we think is “bad”, we will likely begin to feel bad and even make choices to prove how bad we are. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, one of the keys to stress-free slimness is to stop judging ourselves based on food choices. Another key is to change our definition of “good” so that it’s consistent and self-affirming. There is no food that’s universally “good” or “bad”. We all have different tastes and we can eat a variety of foods in moderation without gaining weight. However, it is true that some foods contain more nutritional value than others and therefore are good for our bodies. Some foods give our bodies more of what we need. If you must call food “good”, reserve the label for food that’s: high quality, enjoyable and beneficial to your body’s health.

As a dieter, you are in a quandary when you label “good” food: boring. I’ve seen long-time dieter’s roll their eyes at people who are healthy or “good”. They say things like “I’m not good like her” or snicker at the prospect of eating “good” as if it’s somehow uncool or dreary. We must change our mindset if we hope to have long term health and weight maintenance.

If you’re like many dieters you have assimilated numerous low-fat, low-calorie foods into your diet and you call yourself “good” for eating them. Yet these foods are not good in any way. They don’t taste good, they usually aren’t good for you and they don’t necessarily make you feel good after you’ve eaten them. In fact, many dieters will admit that certain diet foods cause a myriad of symptoms such as gas, bloating, diarrhea, headaches and constipation to name a few. I think we can all agree: these side effects are not “good”. So, to help you reframe the concept of “good” food and “bad” food, I’m going to leave you with a mental image you can carry with you so that you are eating more “good” foods and feeling better. If you keep it up, you will probably lose weight too.

Imagine that “good” food is the kind of food that makes your body say “hooray!!” Imagine the food goes down the “conveyor belt” of your throat, to your stomach. When it arrives; your organs, cells and glands all say, “WOW check out all the new nutrients we just got in! There’s tons of good stuff here. Yipee!!” On the flip side, when you eat pre-processed, preservative and chemical-laden foods, your body says, “Oh no, not again. How does she expect me to exist on this? There’s almost nothing I can use here. The whole thing is waste! I’m going to have to spend all my energy processing this worthless food…for what?”

I hope this mental image will stick with you the next time you’re making a food decision whether it’s at the grocery store, a restaurant or a party. Be good to yourself. You deserve it and your body deserves it.

Have you ever tried to lose weight by simply deciding you are going to stop being a junk food junkie? You finish off the last 4 Oreos in the bag and then spend the next three or four days eating nothing but yogurt, chicken and bland salads. Then what happens? You find yourself opening up a new bag of Oreos because you feel that life is not worth living if you can not be happy about what you eat.

Do not worry. This happens to most junk food junkies because they think they can only lose weight with will power and an abrupt change in their diet. Although this looks great on paper, it does not work for the majority of people because the approach is what we call cold turkey. Change needs to happen gradually in order for it to work long term.

First face the facts. You are a junk food junkie. You have been eating junk food for a long time and it is extremely difficult for you to eat a carrot instead of those tasty McDonald french fries. It has taken you years upon years to get out of shape and become sedentary. If it happened overnight, you would have noticed it. No one can break a long-time habit easily.

In order for anyone to lose weight and keep it off for good, a person must lead a healthy lifestyle. Knowing this is important because it is the ultimate goal for anyone wanting to lose weight. Leading a healthy lifestyle includes exercise, proper nutrition and a sense of well-being for the areas in your life that give you joy. All on a daily basis.

Your first thought is probably that it takes too much work to to kick the junk food junkie habit and lead a healthy lifestyle. Exercise every day? Who has the time and energy for that?! And proper nutrition will just take you back to those bland salads again, right? Wrong! People who lead a healthy lifestyle eat McDonald’s french fries and Oreos. They just do not eat them all the time.

As far as exercise is concerned, all a person needs to keep themselves fit and active is 30 minutes. Walking, running, bike riding, dancing, roller skating, skiing…it does not matter. If you can not set aside a half hour each day to ensure the health of the only body you have to take care of in your life, you need to make more changes than just weight loss!

What does all of this have to do with how you can quit being a junk food junkie? A lot! Now that you know leading a healthy lifestyle is the ultimate goal, you can set up a road map to get there. Everyone wants to be there overnight, but setting a realistic time frame to achieve your goals is a more effective and productive approach.

Your parents probably told you to eat your vegetables when you were a child. Somewhere along the way you decided to eat for yourself and junk food replaced what you have always known was a healthier choice. The shock value of going back to those vegetables without continuing to eat your junk food will not feel right to you. I say keep eating your junk food.

What? Keep eating junk food? Yep, that is my advice. But here is the catch. Instead of eating junk food every time you sit down to a meal or a snack, choose one meal a day that you will change to better food choices. I told you this would be gradual. If you usually eat Cheez-its every day at 3pm for a snack, eat a bowl of granola cereal instead.

After making this small daily change for a few weeks, discipline yourself to take it to the next level. Now that you are OK with eating good once a day, go for two! This could be two snacks, two meals or a snack and a meal. I would go for a meal this time because it will accelerate your weight loss more than changing your snack habits every day.

So after a month of this, you are not really eating junk food all the time are you? You have probably lost some weight but you still get to eat pizza every Friday night. Hmmm…interesting how this works. Now that you are well on your way to eating properly without giving up the foods you love, it is time to think about exercise.

We have already established that you do not have 30 minutes a day to sweat on the treadmill. OK, how about 5 minutes? Everyone has 5 minutes to walk around the block. Spend 5 minutes a day doing this for a week. Once you start feeling better, which you will, you will want to do it more often. I can almost guarantee you will find 10 minutes in your busy schedule.

Keep going at this speed. Increase your exercise time each week by 5 minutes. After a month and a half you will be up to 30 minutes and that is it! Whether you want to continue improving your health is your own choice, but for the most part, people only need 30 minutes of sustained exercise a day to maintain a healthy weight.

Even if you are reading this and you know you can eat better than one meal a day, or exercise longer than 30 minutes, do not do it. You will just burn out like all the other times you have tried to lose weight. Keep it gradual and eventually you will get to the point where you are actually exercising and eating healthy most of the time without thinking twice about it.

This approach worked for me 15 years ago and I have maintained a weight loss of 70 pounds ever since. I had severe asthma and could not exercise at first, but as my body became healthy, I suddenly found myself off medications and outside on a bicycle every day. Words cannot describe how happy I am to be able to do this now and breath properly now.

For things to change, you have got to change. Just remember kicking the junk food junkie habit does not have to be overnight. In fact, the more gradual it is, the more effective it will be in the long run.