How to Make Healthy Lifestyle Changes Stick

Tips for Sticking to Your Diet When Traveling

Learn what stresses you out and find a way to manage it (without food!). Stress can really pile on belly fat due to the increased productions of stress hormones. It can also increase blood pressure and increase insulin resistance. Unfortunately, you can’t avoid stress, but you can pay attention to your biggest stressors. After you recognize them, see whether you can make any changes to reduce these stressors.

For instance, if you’re stressed every morning because you’re running late to work, would getting up 5 or 10 minutes earlier reduce your stress? If nagging your kids to do their homework at night causes you stress, can you play relaxing music in the background to calm your nerves? Even tiny little changes that can reduce stress slightly have a large impact on your health and belly fat.

Be prepared! Keeping weight off is work. It involves planning ahead to have the right food on hand, keeping food with you to prevent you from becoming too hungry, cooking instead of eating all meals out, and so on.

But you don’t have to devote hours and hours every day to planning. Pick one day a week and cook your meals in advance and freeze them. And try keeping a scrap of paper with you so that whenever you’re running low on a food that can help you stay on track, you can write it down. This way you’re prepared when you go to the store and only have to make one trip. These tiny time savers really add up over the course of a week.

Plan out your meals. In addition to cooking in advance, planning out what you’ll eat each day of the week is not only a great way to ensure you have the food you need on hand, but it also cuts down on those “what should I eat” moments. And, planning out menus in advance is a great way to reduce your grocery bill!

Track your physical activity. Use a pedometer to get an accurate gauge of how much physical activity you do each day. You’ll be amazed at how much your activity can fluctuate, but this way you’re aware and can make sure you pick up the pace when needed.