While you are constantly flooded with information about weight loss, the same diet mistakes continue to be made anyway, over and over every day.  I am not talking about the little lapses you will make occasionally on any diet plan, like the 3 slices of pepperoni pizza that you swore you would not eat, but huge mistakes that will ultimately lead to your failure to lose the weight you want to lose.  Understanding these errors can help you develop the attitude that will lead to permanent weight loss for you.

1. Attitude of All or Nothing

If you decide to be an all or nothing dieter, you will choose a complicated diet that is almost impossible to maintain.  You will launch an all-out attack on your kitchen, searching for anything that does not fit the plan and tossing it.  You will be the perfect dieter, following your diet plan to perfection – and you will – for one day, three days, seven days, or even a couple of weeks. But, of course, something always happens to lead you astray. So when you cannot keep to the diet one time you immediately decide the whole thing is ruined and the diet is over.  You head to the store and purchase everything you had recently tossed…and more.  Since you are now feeling like a failure, you eat more than ever, plus all those extra goodies you bought, and you proceed to gain back all the weight you lost as fast as possible.

If you are this kind of dieter, stop and ask yourself some tough questions.  Doyou have the right attitude to start your weight loss program?  Do you really want to lose weight permanently, or do you just want lose a few pounds (again), so that you can enjoy putting them back on (again)?  The correct attitude is to decide to find a plan that allows you to make small changes to what you eat, gradually making the changes that result in a slow but steady weight loss.

2. Attitude of Sacrifice

Another common mistake is to choose a diet that requires a long period of sacrifice.  You are asking  for failure if you do not allow yourself the foods that you enjoy most while you are on your way to your target weight. Your diet plan may be great and allow you to be very successful in losing weight, but what happens when you reach your goal?  If you have not learned new eating habits, like making better food choices, watching your poritons, and eating ‘bad foods’ in moderation, you will likely go out of control as soon as you reach your goal weight and start eating “normally” onc more.  It is better to choose a diet plan that allows a little of everything and teaches you to enjoy it in smaller quantities. Yes, even pepperoni pizza!

3. Attitude of Failure

Setting realistic and achievable goals is vital in any weight loss plan.  Your goals must be clear, realistic and put in writing.  While you no doubt have an ideal weight in your mind, unless you only have a few pounds to lose, that goal weight is probably too distant to feel achievable.  So keep your goal manageable, such as to lose two pounds per week for the first five weeks, then one pound per week after that.  Some weeks you will lose more and some less. Some weeks you will even gain, but by tracking your progress – on a graph or in a daily journal – you will see that ups and downs are natural and do not stop you progressing steadily toward your major goal.

But wait!  If you have been making these mistakes, do not panic.  The most important point in dieting, as in most other things, is to move on.  Forgive yourself.  Learn from your failures as well as from your successes, and do not use a mistake as a reason to give up.  The only way to achieve your goal permanently is to make a commitment to become a healthier person.  Remember that eating normally includes eating a variety of foods, making healthy food choices, and eating more some days and less others.  Learn to enjoy food in moderation and you have every chance of avoiding these bad diet mistakes.

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