9 SECRETS OF DIETING

If you are ready to drop those extra pounds and adopt a healthier lifestyle, don’t sit on the sidelines any longer. Put yourself in the game and let "weight loss coach" Jonny Bowden help you find the healthy eating plan that is a perfect fit.

 

Once a professional musician who studied piano with Herbie Hancock, Jonny changed his tune and built a reputation as the Vince Lombardi of the nutrition and fitness world. After making a personal transformation, Jonny turned his passion for nutrition, fitness and coaching into a full-time vocation.

Today, Jonny is an in-demand speaker, life coach and best-selling author. He is also a regular contributor to the eDiets Low-Carb Lifestyle newsletter. This Jonny is on a quest to make you a healthier person.

Though Jonny worked as a fitness trainer for high-profile clients like Liza Minelli, James Taylor and Carly Simon, he has built an even stronger reputation as a nutritionist. Even though people refer to Jonny as "the weight loss coach," his mission is actually much bigger than that.

 

However, Jonny knows it is most often the desire to shed a few pounds that brings clients through his front door in the first place.

 

"My clients may come for weight loss, but they stay for the greater health benefits," Jonny tells eDiets.

In fact, Jonny freely admits that vanity was the initial motivation behind his own transformation. It was not his passion for nutrition and fitness so much as the desire to attract women that first brought Jonny to the healthy living table.

"I was the original sex, drugs and rock and roll musician in the '70s," Jonny says. "I understand what it is like to make these changes. I have walked in my clients' shoes."

One of the things Jonny has learned after years of research is that no program is right for everyone. Even if two people are the same size and height, Jonny says, a suit that looks great on one of them may not work for the other.

"We are as metabolically unique as our fingerprints," Jonny says.

However, just because no diet is made for everyone doesn’t mean you can’t find a healthy eating plan that is the perfect fit for you. Continuing with the fashion analogy, Jonny says the process of finding the right plan is like shopping for a new wardrobe.

"Start with a program that appeals to you and then customize it to meet your needs," Jonny advises.

Every time he went on another speaking engagement, people asked Jonny questions about low-carb eating. He finally set out to create the definitive resource for anyone trying to live comfortably in the low-carb cosmos.

Jonny’s book Living the Low Carb Life: Choosing the Diet that's Right for You: from Atkins to the Zone gives you all the information you need to achieve long-term success on a low-carb eating plan. In this book, Jonny analyzes more than 14 popular low-carb approaches in order to help his readers understand the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

 

"This is not a diet book," Jonny says. "I wanted to be a dispenser of information for the reader. I hoped the book would allow people to start a dialogue with their personal physicians."

 

Recently, Jonny published a pocket-carb counter as a companion for his book. He is also the author of Jonny Bowden's Shape-Up! The Eight Week Program to Transform Your Body, Your Health and Your Life and Shape Up Workbook: Eight Weeks to Diet and Fitness Success with Recipes, Tips and More . Jonny is currently at work on a 6-CD set that will help people through the process of adopting a healthy lifestyle.

No matter what plan you decide to follow, Jonny stresses that the transition to a healthy life is never a linear path. You must be prepared for plenty of hills and valleys.

 

"It is like climbing a mountain," Jonny says. "Sometimes you have to go down in order to get higher up."

 

Now, in this eDiets exclusive, Jonny shares his 9 Steps to Effective Weight Loss:

1. Be scrupulously honest with yourself! According to Jonny, you need to be honest about your willingness to change unhealthy habits. It also helps to be truthful about everything you are currently eating.

2. Realize everything is connected! Jonny believes there is a solid connection between your weight and the rest of your life. Taking off those extra pounds is not as simple as eating less food. One of Jonny’s mottos is: "Change your life, change your weight."

3. Fat is not the enemy! Though the percentage of calories from fat in the American diet has gone down over the last couple decades, obesity has gone up. "We demonized fats when what we should have demonized is trans fats," Jonny says. "We literally threw the baby out with the bathwater."

4. Calories are not the whole picture, but they still count! Jonny believes low-carb, high-fiber diets control appetite more effectively than any other kind, but he warns that they do not provide a license to eat anything and everything in all quantities.

5. Keep a food diary! Jonny believes a food diary is one of the most essential tools for making your lifestyle change a reality.

6. Eat protein at every meal! Not only does it raise your metabolic rate, but Jonny says eating protein may also help you lose fat rather than muscle. He recommends consuming at least 3 to 4 ounces of protein with every meal.

7. The more vegetables the better! According to Jonny, high-fiber foods are an essential part of any weight-loss strategy. Not only are vegetables rich in fiber, they are loaded with healthy phytonutrients.

8. Eat without distractions! Jonny believes that unconscious eating is the enemy of weight loss. He suggests training yourself to eat without television or other distractions.

9. Exercise is not the best way to take off weight but it’s one of the best ways to make sure the weight stays off! With the addition of regular exercise, Jonny says you have a much better chance of making your diet effective.