Rate your hunger level on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being starving, and 10 being so full you'd explode if you ate another bite (most people should never experience either 1's or 10's). On this scale a 5 would be comfortable, 6 slightly above comfortable (maybe could have stopped sooner), 7 you over ate, and an 8 is starting to be a bit ridiculous, especially if you supposedly want to lose weight. A 9 or 10 is flat out crazy.

A 3 could mean you're hungry. Not starving, not going to come unglued if you don't eat, but hungry. A two is waiting a bit longer than you probably should, and a 1 doesn't occur except when you're simply tied up and cannot stop to eat or you've gotten yourself stuck in a situation where there simply is no food long past when you've gotten hungry. You should rarely feel hunger of a 1 or fullness of a 9 or 10.

You must decide levels for yourself, but I'd suggest making an effort to wait until you are a 3 or lower to eat and making an effort to stop at or near a 5 or 6. Sometimes you may notice sensation of hunger, note your hunger level, and then choose to wait. Don't worry about it whether you eat or not for now. The purpose this week is to make a chart and get used to keeping track of something besides your weight.

Every day you successfully write down what time and your hunger level, you get a gold star, or a smiley face, or some other "fun" reward. Rewards should not be food. Instead make them be nourishing to your soul. Some people like stickers, some like to reward themselves later with a massage, new outfit, whatever you like is a-okay with me. I like to reward myself with a massage once a month (I'd rather get one every day like Bob Hope, but that's another goal).

Your goal is to achieve 5 or more "rewards" for week. If you only manage two is that bad? Heck, no. It's fantastic because it's an improvement over week before. Next week make an effort to at least achieve what you did week before and possibly exceed it. Slowly you'll develop a new habit, until you're achieving 5 or more days every week of waiting for real hunger, and stopping at satisfaction. When you learn to understand your body's various hunger signals, you'll start losing pounds and inches, I guarantee it.

Inches lost, is what matters. I couldn't care less how much I weigh. What if my body was solid gold? It would weigh a lot wouldn't it, and would I care? No, I'd feel pretty darn good about it actually. I'm worth my weight in gold, and so are you.

Putting Hunger In Perspective

I recently read a book by only man to have survived alone on a raft at sea for more than a month - Steven Callahan. In Adrift, Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, Callahan recounted how while slowly starving he dreamt of food, "My body knows what it needs. For hours on end fantasies of sweet ice cream, starchy baked bread, and vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables water mouth in my mind." Reading an account of one man's survival in face of sure death was inspiring. My husband is making arrangements to build a boat designed by Callahan, a 22-foot sailboat so he too can take off on a singlehanded sailing adventure across seas. He believes he could survive as Callahan did, while I'm telling myself I'll die of starvation if I don't eat in next half an hour. Adrift sort of puts things in better perspective, I'd say.

Oh how to break pull of small metal contraption that lies in wait, to tell me my day's fate?

~~ Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP, EFT coach and author of Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss lost 80 pounds over 17 years ago. Learn how she lost the weight and maintains that weight loss at http://www.OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com

At this stage of my Fun Factor Diet, you will make a deliberate effort to take yourself and your expectations less seriously. You will adopt a kindlier stance toward your fears and inconsistencies because you have been much too hard on yourself. The results will be a dramatic lightness (both figuratively and literally) of mind, body, and spirit.

Freed from tyranny of your unrealistic expectations, you will be able to relax and have more fun. Things you have dreaded doing in past will become enjoyable activities because you won't have expectations of perfection. Combined with your commitment to Go Extra Smile, you will find your use of food to calm and comfort yourself almost extinguished because taking yourself lightly helps you see yourself as, literally, less "heavy."

The third step in my Fun Factor Diet makes most dramatic difference in your actual eating habits. The employment of my Fun Commandment, Stay Focused, yet Flexible, keeps you grounded in moment, here and now, because it challenges you to give 100% attention to what you are doing right now. Staying Focused, yet Flexible provides dramatic weight loss breakthrough you've been waiting for because you entire paradigm of eating is about to change!

On Fun Factor Diet you Stay Focused, yet Flexible by not engaging in any other activity while you are eating. Activities that have commonly accompanied your eating are to be shunned while putting food in your mouth - including reading, watching television, or socializing at get-togethers. With exception of reasonable table conversation, eating becomes a focused activity for you, not connected with any other behavior because you are about to halt underlying cause of your weight gain.

Once you begin disciplining yourself to separate eating from all pleasurable and stressful activities with which you have associated it, you will discover a disturbing fact: you will be shocked by how much you've been using food as both a stress reliever and a pleasure enhancer. Your weight loss can be dramatic when you change your use of food from pleasure enhancement and stress relief to simple nourishment. You're ready for this change because, with first two steps, you've already begun to fill your emotional and spiritual void with fun rather than food.

This step of my Fun Factor Diet has two primary benefits: you become more acutely aware of your opportunities for fun away from food, which allows you to become even more effective at satisfying your emotional needs with fun, and by eating with full focus you increase enjoyment and appreciation for your food, which allows you to use food as nourishment rather than pleasure. When you combine having fun apart from food with getting greater enjoyment from food you are eating, you eat less food because you are no longer using it in a contrived and artificial fashion!

The final step in my Fun Factor Diet will make your weight loss permanent because it centers you in unique paradigm of lasting success. My Fun Commandment, Practice Wanting What You Have, Rather Then Getting What You Want, increases your awareness of gratitude because it stops merry-go-round of always needing "more" to feel satisfied. Ongoing gratitude for what you have has amazing benefit of making it possible to get and keep more of what you want.

We all make mistake of taking for granted things we truly value and focus, instead, on all things we want that we do not yet possess. This focus makes us desperate and puts conditions on our happiness, because our success never satisfies us and we only wind up needing more. If you ever want to have more fun in your life (as you're going to be doing on my Fun Factor Diet), you begin by counting blessings you already have because that will make your gains and achievements lasting and real.

Becoming adept at this portion of my Fun Factor Diet does two things: it continually reminds you of many gifts you've already been given and it decreases your appetite for those things you think you want will. Realizing that you have everything you need to be happy today eases stress of not having everything you want because all pressure is gone - you're already a success! The end result of this strategy is that you will not feel as empty, resulting in even less desire to fill your void with food.

Filling yourself up with gratitude is not a platitude, so to speak because it works in real practice. You eat in excess to fill an emotional and/or spiritual void, not because you are hungry; you eat too much to provide yourself with emotional comfort, fulfillment, and reassurance. The strategy of Practicing Wanting What you Have, Rather than Getting What you Want, actually fills this emptiness in a meaningful, lasting manner because your emotional appetite is satisfied by things that really sustain it!

Smiling fools your body and attracts socially fun attention, Taking Yourself Lightly releases you from tyranny of your unrealistic expectations, Staying Focused, yet Flexible teaches you to use food for nourishment rather than fun, and Wanting What you Have allows you to fill your emotional void with fun and gratitude rather than food. There you have it...my Fun Factor Diet. Welcome to a life free from weight worries!

By way, in one of his museums, P.T. Barnum found that he was having trouble getting crowds to leave once they had seen all attractions. So he devised a clever sign, elaborately lettered to draw as much attention as possible, which read "This Way to Egress"

Most of patrons expected to see some bizarre animal that Barnum had collected from one of far corners of earth when they followed sign through door. What they didn't realize, however, was that "Egress" is simply another word for "Exit." Funny...and true.

Today you begin your "egress" from excess weight and from all your worries surrounding it. Start using my Fun Factor Diet right now!