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How to Diet Without Feeling Deprived

When you’re a full time or a working mom, you’re busy with work, running errands, and driving kids to school, soccer practice, or play dates.  At home, you’re preparing your children’s meals, and in the morning, you’re packing them colorful lunch boxes. You’re too tight on time because there’s no room to be creative in planning your own meals.  And the result that no one would publicly admit: you probably end up eating your kids’ leftover lunch as a snack, and dinner, you eat the family meal you managed to whip up without counting the calories. Convenient, but on the scale? Not so much. 

We’ve gathered some diet tips that have proven to work when you want to keep the weight down without feeling deprived. 

Kitchen closes at 7

Does hearing the words: Midnight snack makes you hungry? Then train yourself to resist all temptations. Naturally, your body is made to metabolize slower at night. So, try to steer clear of any high-calorie intake before bedtime.

Delegate

Many moms have the same common complaint which is the lack of time it takes them to prepare a healthy meal. If you’re too busy to even think about healthy eating, then maybe let someone else do it for you.  Booming businesses that provide weight loss meal delivery programs exist to help. You can research all the available options until you find the best weight-loss prepared meal delivery services that are suitable for you. Don’t let your busy schedule be the reason that you can’t shed off those pounds. Many companies offer you many menus, and all you have to do is pick what and when. No more worrying about making your own meals and the time it takes you to make them. 

Skip a meal or two

As a mom, you might be doing intermittent fasting without even realizing it.  Intermittent fasting is going on without food for more than 14 hours. Meaning, if you eat dinner at 7 and sleep after 10; then you could have only coffee (black and plain of course) until lunchtime. This, of course, works if you’re on the run, if you have a very demanding job, or if you’re just not a breakfast person.  This goes against everything we learned that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it has worked wonders with many people, and they didn’t feel deprived. You can find more tips like this in this post from Proper Good.

Snacking is Okay

Snacking
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Many believe that snacks are evil. Actually, it’s the opposite; some snacks will boost your metabolism, and keep you full. That way, you will not be tempted to eat at night. Nuts, dates, Greek yogurt, a hard-boiled egg, or tuna salad without dressing are great examples of those lovely, satisfying snacks.  Another plus, they require no fancy preparation time. 

Hara Hachi Bu

Japanese mothers follow this rule, which means “eat until you’re only 80% full”.  Your brain will let you feel that you’re full 20 minutes after you eat. Before that, you might “THINK” that you’re still hungry, but you’re not. So stop eating before you want to stop eating. It worked for the Japanese, so you might as well try. 

Downsizing

We would never tell you to refrain from eating what you love, but we will tell you to decrease your portions. Eating slow, and tricking your brain that a little amount of food is enough might actually be enough. Try using smaller plates and bowls. It will feel weird at first, but after some time you will notice that this is actually the only amount you need to eat. 

Dieting can make anyone feeling deprived, but with a little effort, a change of schedule, getting some help, and cutting portions it won’t be so hard. Try all the above advice until you find something that works well for you. 

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