Is Your Weight Loss Resolution Working?

It has been a month now since making that New Year's resolution to lose weight in '08. How are you doing? If your answer is anything short of "Great!", read on. Just as an around-the-world trip begins with one step, successful weight loss begins with one day. A day-to-day commitment to any goal, whatever it is, can make a formidable task manageable and achievable. It is no secret that losing weight is difficult. Making it even more difficult is the fact that achievement is measured in pounds. Pounds cannot healthfully be lost at a rate of one or more per day so weekly weigh-ins have become the routine reckoning. Maintaining focus and staying on task each and every day takes a lot of effort. A rewards system, a daily pat on the back if you will, is essential to sustaining resolve during the seven long days between trips to the scales. Realizing these daily mini-successes translates into achieving weekly and monthly success, ultimately leading to the weight loss goal.
There is a simple, positive way to manage this daily tally. Create a 4-week chart, as I did, with four empty blocks for each day. Have these blocks represent the four actions necessary for healthy weight loss - eating right, exercising, drinking water, and steering clear of your biggest stumbling block. Each night at bedtime fill in the blocks that you accomplished that day. Filling in four will feel really good and filling in three or more solid days in a row will feel fantastic! Now you are human and therefore not expected to be perfect every day. That's okay. As long as you perform at 85% or higher the pounds will come off. That converts to 95 of the 112 blocks on your 4-week chart, leaving some room for those times when you just can't exercise or you want to celebrate with a piece of birthday cake.
I have successfully lost 35-40 pounds twice with this method (shame on me for not utilizing the chart for maintenance). My sister has lost 58 pounds and is still losing! Further explanation of this plan, which I've dubbed DEWS, along with a complete charting packet is available at my website, www.dewsplan.com. After decades of fighting the bulge this, for me, has been the safest, simplest, most positive way to healthy weight loss. I am convinced it can work for you too.