Here are 8 tips to help you lose weight:

• Eat a good breakfast and don’t skip meals: It is important to have a small amount of protein (nuts, eggs, and yogurt) and a variety of fruit and hearty whole grains for breakfast in order to carry you through until lunch time. If you skip a meal, you increase the likelihood that you will be excessively hungry later in the day and more likely to eat too much of the “wrong” type of food.

• • Eat slowly: take at least 20 minutes to eat a meal as it takes this long for your stomach to send the “full” message to your brain. By rushing your meals, you can eat too much before you realize you are satisfied.

• • Shop smart: Nutritious foods are found around the perimeter of grocery stores, not in boxes in the food aisles. Do not go shopping when you are hungry and avoid buying obvious high-fat junk foods. Learn to read labels and do not buy items that have the following words listed as ingredients: refined, sugar, glucose, fructose, sucrose, hydrogenated, corn syrup, sugar alcohols (sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol) and artificial sweeteners (saccharin, aspartame, Nutrasweet, Equal).

• • Prepare for times of weakness: recognize times or events that signal you to eat, such as an argument, hard day at work, talking on the phone. Plan activities that don’t involve food for these times, such as exercising, taking a long bath or reading a good book.

• • Be your own best friend: if your friend makes a mistake, you don’t call them a failure or tell them to give up. If you stray from your eating plan, don’t be hard on yourself. Treat each lapse as temporary, not a sign of failure. Simply resume your program and don’t look back.

• • Drink plenty of water (filtered with minerals remaining): water flushes toxins from your body and helps keep your appetite under control

• • Exercise: You put on weight if your daily caloric consumption exceeds your caloric expenditure. By exercising, we influence an important part of the weight formula – so let’s get moving!!!

Contact your Naturopathic Doctor to customize a nutritional plan for you today – www.cand.ca and click on “find a practitioner”.