Why the pounds are sticking around: Quick Tip #9

Even with the best of intentions, as well as an admirable amount of effort, the weight sometimes doesn't come off!! Try as you might to get the needle on that scale to budge even the slightest bit, sometimes it's just not having it. This is especially true for people who have already lost quite a bit of weight and are now trying to take off those last ten pounds or so.

To help you shed those stubborn extra pounds, here is a quick tip from an article titled "Scale Stuck?", which appears in this month's edition of Self magazine. I'll be posting one of them a day for the next 10 days.

Hopefully these tips will help you figure out what's causing those pounds to stick around.

Quick Tip #9

Diet Flub: You have too many food options - When you're surrounded by a wide array of foods, your appetite will suddenly seem bigger. This isn't a scientific fact, of course, merely an astute observation. Don't agree? Think about the last time you ate at a buffet style restaurant. Did you eat more than you usually do? Probably. This same logic applies for your kitchen. If your refrigerator is stuffed to its limits with an assortment of foods (especially snack foods), you'll snack more than if you had fewer options from which to choose. According to the article in Self magazine, a study published in the journal Eating Behaviors validates this, stating that dieters who were allowed to eat whatever snack they wanted consumed more calories each week than those who were restricted to one type.

Fix It: Keep one splurge item in the house at a time. Whatever it is you crave the most, go for it -- but only it. For example, if your weakness happens to be Reese's peanut butter cups, avoid having potato chips, cookies, and brownies lying around, too. Chances are, you'll soon grow a bit tired of eating the peanut butter cups all the time, making you less likely to reach for them when you have an urge to nosh. Having other options, such as the aforementioned brownies and cookies, provide you with unhealthy alternatives. As for eating out, your best bet is to avoid buffets altogether, for the wide variety of food choices tend to lead to overindulgence.