Getting started with any healthy eating plan can be difficult — and often the hardest part of the entire process of focusing on improving your weight and health for those of us who need the help the most! Count me in as someone who in my previous life as an overweight, unhealthy person had always had a difficult time either initiating a new diet or sticking with it beyond the first few days (until I changed my approach, that is).

That first week (or two) is when most of us end up throwing in the towel and getting back to our old way of eating. But if you can make it past the first week, the second week gets easier, the third even easier and so on.

Here are some ways to make it through that first hurdle more easily:

1) Get to the bottom of emotional eating. If you eat for emotional reasons, I highly recommend tackling that in advance of starting a healthy diet — or at least knowing as you go in that this is going to make any dietary change more challenging so that you won’t beat yourself up if you do lapse. It often helps to write out your feelings in a journal and ask yourself before eating, “Am I hungry or simply upset/bored?” (The word you choose depends on your particular reason for eating emotionally.)

2) Forget perfection. It doesn’t exist. Throw it out the window! (Do you hear that crashing sound?) Perfection is a myth, and particularly when it comes to changing to a healthier way of eating, every change you make in the right direction is a good one. Try to consider the fact that every small thing you do right adds up and makes a difference in your health!

3) Plan for difficulties, stress and all-round bad days. I don’t care how charmed your life — sometimes things aren’t going to go to plan. Your car won’t start, your employees will call in sick, your boss will light into you because she’s having a bad day, your child will spill something on your brand new work outfit … or maybe you just don’t get enough sleep, and the rest of the day’s not quite up to par. You name it. It’s going to happen.

On those days when you feel extra frazzled, that’s when it’s most important for you to have a plan B. If you have to race out the door, what will you eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Do you have a salad prepped and ready in the fridge? If you have to dine with clients, how will  you handle this? Don’t leave these decisions till you’re frustrated and vulnerable there in the moment if you can avoid it, and you’ll find it easier to get through even the toughest days.

4) Consider easing into healthy eating instead of plunging in whole hog (no pun intended!). There is a small chosen few who can immediately change how they eat and never look back. And then there are the rest of us. When I personally switched from my previous vegetarian, but otherwise very unhealthy diet to a healthy high-nutrient diet, I eased in for a few short weeks to get accustomed to smaller changes without getting completely burned out and frustrated. This was what helped me make the transition (and it was the first time I’d ever been able to make a major lifestyle change in a little over a month!), and I recommend it to everyone who struggles with making a healthier lifestyle their own.

5) Choose the right diet, which builds you up and makes you stronger, not weaker, as time passes. Most diets, such as Atkins and South Beach, ultimately involve severe calorie restriction and are basically unsustainable over time due to the tremendous lack of healthy complex carbs (which your body needs!) and oh-so-critical phytonutrients (nutrients found in plants). On this blog I will introduce you to the healthiest way of eating, which actually improves your health as it slims your waistline. (Part 2 of my article on my dietary recommendations is coming very soon — likely just after the Christmas holiday.)

6) Stop overthinking things. It makes plenty of sense to think through potential pitfalls and plan ahead, but beyond that, all a healthy way of eating is that — just food. If you find yourself fixating on every calorie, you’ll make yourself nervous. Consider calling a friend or working with a nutrition coach like myself to develop new, more constructive ways of handling this.

7) Remind yourself that it is not easy to make changes in your lifestyle. That’s it. Just remind yourself that what you’re doing is something not everyone can make. If they could, everyone would be thin, healthy and doing the job they always dreamed about. Not everyone has the gumption to do this, but just by trying right now to eat more healthfully, YOU are making changes, whether you start small or jump right in. When you focus on what you *are* accomplishing instead of what you’re struggling with, you feel more capable, leading to more success. Even on days when you don’t get everything just right, you still have more knowledge than you did before, after all, and that’s no small feat.

With these tips in mind, you should have a much easier time changing your way of eating. In particular, if one of these ideas triggers a spark in you about why you’ve gotten stuck in the past, I highly recommend taking some time right away to brainstorm 3-4 solutions (and there is truly always either a solution or something that you can learn to accept — it just takes a little creativity sometimes to find just the right way to go about it).