While this story about eggs and weight loss isn’t new, it was news to me! Basically, one group of overweight people were given egg breakfasts and another bagel and cream cheese breakfasts with equal numbers of calories, and the egg-eaters ate less during the rest of the day, felt less hungry, lost more weight, and had more energy!

“Where can I sign up?” you ask. Well, you could do a lot worse than to throw out your cereal and bagels and eat a more traditional breakfast. Grass-fed eggs, for preference. The concept seems to be that protein satisfies your hunger longer, while carbohydrates set you up for renewed cravings a short time after eating.

The Atkins Diet, Grass-Fed Goodness, and Me

High-protein breakfasts (and lunches and dinners) have worked for me, too. I’ve lost 45 pounds [Update, March 5 — Make that fifty pounds!] on the Atkins Diet, which I started a couple of years ago, and it certainly reduced my appetite. I enjoyed food as much as ever, but I ate less of it. Grass-fed eggs, pastured pork, and grass-fed chicken that we raise right here on the farm have been a big factor in my success. My only regret is that no one has bred a pig 50 feet long so it has enough bacon! We always run out of bacon first, and you just can’t buy bacon like we get from our own pigs.

Another thing that helps me is to weigh myself every day and put a dot on a weight-loss chart. This give me daily feedback about my progress. If I start backsliding, I see it and start managing my eating more strictly.

I recommend a digital scale for this — they’re very affordable these days, and they’re a lot more accurate than the old spring-type models. It’s best to buy tools you can trust!

The Most Important Thing is Not to Quit

Probably the most important thing is to make a firm decision that you’re never, ever going to give up. You’re going to keep working on weight loss, one way or another. Your tactics may change, but the goal will remain constant. If you fall off your diet, that’s okay — it doesn’t mean a thing. We all mess up sometimes, and that means that the occasional failure is normal, expected, meaningless. But you’re going to get right back on the diet again.

You can switch diets, too, if you get stuck or get tired of the current one. You can do anything you want, except giving up!

How I Used Self-Hypnosis to Get Unstuck

I’m still not at my goal, and I’ve stalled a couple of times. I got stuck after losing 20 pounds, but used a self-hypnosis recording to get me unstuck and lose another 25 pounds. I was impressed!

I don’t know what you think about hypnosis, but you can’t argue with success, can you? Oh, wait, of course you can — but you won’t, because you’re too considerate. Science has caught up with hypnosis over the past couple of decades, and it’s lot less mysterious than it used to be. This is reflected in the format of self-hypnosis programs that you can buy on the Web. They tend to start with a calm discussion of the problem and its solution (say, weight loss), then walk you through some progressive relaxation to hopefully get you in a receptive state of mind, then they restate the solution again in a somewhat different way, often using anecdotes or metaphors in addition to making obvious suggestions like, “You’re going to get slimmer because that’s how you want to be.”

I’m fond of the products from Hypnosis Downloads.com, which has a huge selection of downloads. Also, they’re use less gimmickry than anybody. No echo chambers, no new-age music — they’re more straightforward and workmanlike than anybody else I’ve run into. Not to mention that their prices are reasonable and they have steep volume discounts if you buy more than one program.

I’m also talking a long walk every day and doing my farm chores, but I’ve done all those things for ages and they’ve never caused me to lose weight. The Atkins Diet and the self-hypnosis are what have worked for me. Two years so far, and no backsliding, though I’m still not where I want to be.

But eating eggs for breakfast is a good start!

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