The scale is frozen!

That's right. Sometimes, that scale won't budge.

If you're counting calories, or doing low-carb diet, or whatever diet you're into right now, it's going to happen. You're going to step on that scale (I recommend just once a week, I'll explain why later), and that number will be the same from last week. 

What happened!?

Your body weight fluctuates throughout the week. It's normal. Sometimes we retain more water than usual. Maybe you ate that double-cheeseburger and didn't log it out of guilt. Or two? The point is, it doesn't matter. You heard me--It doesn't matter! As long as that scale is not moving upwards, you're OK! It's called a plateau, and it happens to everyone.

As a matter of fact, it happened to me. This morning, I stepped on that scale, and saw a very identical number from last week. At first, I was devastated. For a split second, I wanted to give up. I wanted to just throw away the scale and eat bad food. 

Well, I didn't throw away the scale. Nor did I eat bad food. I kept at it today. Healthy Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Well, I might have had some plain m&m's from work, but only a handful. I know, that next week, that scale is going to be lower. Because I KNOW, that I'm not going to cheat myself. 

Seriously, I know why the scale didn't move. It's my fault. Not anyone else is responsible, but me. No outside force caused me to eat nachos last night. No one put a gun to my head and told me to go out with my coworkers at lunch break and eat burritos at the local Cantina. Those were my decisions and my consequences. 

Was that food good? Sure it was! But I could feel that grease, that sugar, those triglycerides forming in my body! When you eat good food, you feel great -- full of energy. But like anything else in life, if you put bad food in, you get bad results. Garbage in -- Garbage out. That's not an analogy for pooping. It's referencing that if I put bad food into my body, my body will treat it as such. 

We were never designed to eat the foods we commonly eat today. Our body, for the most part, can't handle heavy starches, refined sugars and saturated fats. We evolved from eating roots in the ground and hopefully some meat we hunted, to eating a Big Mac? No. As human kind, we have let ourselves get lazy and let corporation spoon feed us food that we think we need. 

Society hasn't helped either. We are overworked and over stressed. We work awful hours, raise children that we don't have time for as it is, and then are expected to try and cook healthy meals between all of that. It's not realistic. Not everyone has a member of the family making six figures a year so the other can stay home. The MAJORITY of households, everyone works. That's the truth of it and we need to be able to take that control back. 

Designate a day to make your lunches for the week. For me, and most others, it is Sunday evening. I will spend a good hour to two hours making all the lunches for the week. This is how you take back control. 

• Do - Designate an hour or two to make your lunches for the entire work week. 
• Don't - try to throw something together last minute the night before or that morning, half-assing it, and then saying screw it-I'll-Just-Get-Fastfood-BECAUSE-IT'S-EASIER!

The point is, it's not easy. It's never just easy. Don't elude yourself to thinking that it's going to be easier. What will happen, is that it will become doable. It will become a habit. And that's all following a diet or lifestyle change is all about -- forming new habits. 

If your habit right now is to rush out the door, grab a breakfast sandwich and a sugary coffee concoction, eat snacks until lunch and guzzle crappy office coffee, then go out to eat at a buffet for lunch, then crash by three pm, hoping you'll stay alive long enough to make it home, then eat whatever comes to mind when you're home -- you're probably are in the wrong habit. 

Form new habits. Get a refillable water bottle. A stylish one so you don't look like a mountain man. Drink up to two of those a day, to start with. Water can even satiate small hunger pangs. If possible, leave for work earlier. Not having to fight traffic and arriving for work earlier reduces stress, which helps prevent stress-eating! 

There are all sorts of ways to change your habits for the better, and those habits will make that scale move down. Down, down and down.

Up next, I'm going to walk you through how to make your lunches, and maybe even throw in some breakfast ideas.