
How to Make Dieting Easier
Video | Time Your Eating | Dietary Fat | Sharing Your Goal | Saying “No Thank You”
Weight loss takes time. To reach your goal, you need to find ways to stick with your diet. This blog post shares how to work with your body to meet its metabolic and hunger needs, how keeping your plan temporarily under wraps may give you an edge, and how to artfully say “no thank you” to people who want to love you with food.
Make Dieting Easier – At-A-Glance
- Work with your body’s natural rhythm by declaring an end to your eating day at least 3 hours before bed.
- Keep hunger under control by consuming 50% of your daily calories from unprocessed, healthy fats.
- As you are getting started, consider keeping your goal under wraps. This allows you time to build a solid plan without evoking the fear of change in those close to you.
- When socializing, artfully say “no thank you” to dessert. Let the host know that you feel satisfied and make a non-food request.
How to Make Dieting Easier [Video]
In this video, you’ll learn…
- How to work with your body’s natural circadian rhythm in order to lose weight.
- What a diet of 50% fat looks like!
- Why keeping your goals to yourself may be helpful.
- How to politely say no to food when it is offered to you.
Time Your Eating to Work With Your Body
When your goal is to make weight loss easier, you want to work with your body, not against it. An effective way to do this is to time your eating so that you are giving your body energy when it is more inclined to use it rather than store it.
Your body is designed to be active during daylight hours and to sleep at night. This daily cycle is referred to as your circadian rhythm. However, this master clock is not the only timekeeper inside of you. There are also accessory clocks found in your organs, and they take their cues from your food intake.
When you start eating, you wake up these digestive clocks, and they go to work, helping you digest, absorb, release, and store energy efficiently. However, the clocks in these metabolically important organs wind down as your day progresses. Therefore, if you’re eating late at night, you’re working against your body by giving it energy when it is preparing for rest.

Tip #1: Stop eating at least 3 hours before bed.
The first tip for getting to your goal with more ease is to work with your body’s natural rhythm by declaring an end to your eating day at least 3 hours before bed. Not eating in the evening hours supports weight loss in a couple of ways. First, it allows the level of glucose and insulin in your blood to remain low overnight, which promotes fat burning as you sleep. It also eliminates mindless late-night snacking, which can save you hundreds of calories.
Eat Fat
When you are constantly battling hunger, it is hard to stick with your diet. We often hear that protein is the key nutrient for hunger satisfaction. Protein is important, but I think the hunger satiation that we get from dietary fat is underrated.
Dietary fats are found in whole foods like meat, dairy, fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds. There are also pure fat sources like oil and butter. Fat provides a lot of energy per gram and takes a long time to digest. Because the energy is plentiful and sustained, hunger and craving hormones are not triggered, leaving you feeling satisfied for a long time.
However, we’ve been taught to keep our intake of fat low. There are certainly unhealthy fats to avoid, like trans fats, vegetable oils, and fake fats, like Crisco and shortening. But, those harmful fats are easy to avoid by simply avoiding processed foods. By getting 50% of your daily calories from unprocessed, healthy fats, you can make dieting easier.
Tip #2: Get at least 50% of your daily calories from fat.
Let’s take a look at what a diet of 50% fat calories looks like. Starting your day with two hard-boiled eggs provides more than 10 grams of fat. A lunchtime salad topped with half of an avocado, two tablespoons of feta cheese and walnuts, and oil & vinegar dressing provides 36 grams of fat. And a dinner consisting of salmon and green beans sauteed in a heat-resistant oil like avocado oil adds about 21 grams of fat to the daily tally.

These food selections represent a 1,200-calorie diet, with 50% of those calories coming from fat. And, what I hope to get across by showing you this menu is that a high-fat diet does not have to be a scary diet.
Know When to Share Your Goal
Ending your eating for the day three hours before bed and increasing your daily fat intake will help your body stay satisfied and release fat. That’s the physical side of fat loss. But sticking with your diet also has a mental component.
Change is a scary thing for many people. If you enthusiastically share your goal with those close to you, what you are telling them is that you are ready to change. It is human nature for them to wonder or even worry about how your change will impact the relationship they share with you. There will be a time and place to share your good news with loved ones, but as you are getting started, consider keeping your goal under wraps.
Tip #3: Don’t share your goal with everyone right away
This will allow you time to get a solid grasp on your plan so that when the time is right, you can reassure your friends and family that while your diet has changed, your relationship has not.
Now, this doesn’t mean you need to go into hiding. Ironically, sharing your goal with a person or a group of casual acquaintances can be highly motivating, especially if they share a similar goal. This public declaration builds a sense of accountability and motivation without evoking the fear of change amongst those in your inner circle.

Forums and comment sections under my YouTube videos are great places to let others know about your goal.
Have Ways to Say No
Another mental aspect of dieting that can be challenging to deal with is people who want to love you with food. Even if the intention is kind, you need ways to respectfully and effectively say, “no, thank you.”
Here is one way that you may want to go about it.
Tip #4: Artfully say no by making a non-food request
Let’s say that you’re attending a birthday party. When the cake is brought to the table, you know that it is only a matter of time before you are offered a piece. When this happens, let them know that you feel perfectly satisfied right now and make a non-food request.
A party host or hostess wants to know that you are happy, and they want to serve you. Allow them to serve you by asking for something else. For instance, say, “No, thank you. I feel perfectly satisfied right now. But I would love it if you could grab me a napkin. I’ve made such a mess!” Or “could you pour me a glass of water.” People pleasers want to do something for you. The easy thing is to feed you. But they can feel just as satisfied by giving you anything from water to tea to a napkin.

Takeaway
Reaching a healthy weight is a goal worth pursuing and will pay dividends for the rest of your life. To accomplish that goal, you’ll need to stick with your diet. This blog post provided strategies to help you work around the physical and mental challenges that we all must face when we set out to change.
If you don’t know where to start, I encourage you to download my 0,1,2,3 strategy. It shares four daily rules that I like to say, give your body no choice but to lose weight. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!
About the Author
Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.