Apr
How many times have you lost weight on a diet only to gain it back again as soon as you went back to eating normally? How many “miracle” pills, supplements or machines have you tried? How many times have you started an intense exercise program 100% committed to making it work only to quit a few weeks later when you found it was too much to handle?
If you are like most people who struggle with their weight chances are you have unsuccessfully tried to lose weight at least a few times over the years - or perhaps even many times.
So why is it that we try diet after diet, take dangerous pills and do extreme exercises but never seem to get the results we want?
In part it is because none of these “quick fixes” do anything to change our basic habits. Not only that, but many quick fix solutions can actually make it harder to lose weight by slowing down our metabolisms.
Perhaps the biggest reason why extreme measures don’t work for long term weight loss, though, is that they require you to make huge, dramatic changes in your lifestyle all at once.
It’s like jumping from point A to point Z and skipping all the letters in between. Making such drastic changes is uncomfortable and it’s unrealistic to think that you will be able to stick with them for any length of time.
The vast majority of diets are not designed to be long term solutions. Instead, they limit what you can eat and do nothing to change your habits when it comes to food.
Most diets leave you feeling deprived so you are much more likely to cheat or binge. Often times diets are so restrictive that you can’t stay on them long enough to even see results.
Extremely low calorie diets can even mess with your metabolism, slowing it down and making it even harder for you to lose weight. Instead of burning calories your body goes into “starvation mode” and starts hanging onto calories and storing them as fat.
Hardcore exercise programs are no better. If you try to hit the gym 7 days a week or do exercise that you hate the simple fact is that you won’t stick with it for long. Instead of looking forward to exercise you come to dread it and give up on it before you see real change in your body.
Diet pills and supplements are definitely not a long term solution to weight loss. First off, in most cases they simply don’t work. Many have uncomfortable or downright dangerous side effects. Some can cause long-term health problems or in severe cases can even kill you. I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather be overweight than dead.
Not only that, but like diets, diet pills don’t help you change your habits when it comes to food or exercise. That means even if you do lose weight taking a diet pill as soon as you go off it you stand a really good chance of gaining all that weight back.
So if diets, extreme exercise programs and diet pills don’t work, what’s the answer? How can you lose weight and keep it off for good?
Simple. Change your lifestyle. Learn new habits. Make small changes that you can stick with. Avoid anything “extreme” or hardcore.
The truth is that losing weight doesn’t have to be as hard as most people make it out to be. The diet industry wants you to believe that losing weight is difficult.
Companies that manufacture diet pills, sell diet plans and build exercise equipment stand to make millions of dollars from people who are desperate to lose weight.
That means it is in their best interest to keep you believing that there is a “secret” to losing weight or that it is hard to do.
The fact of the matter is, though, that you already have everything you need to start losing weight. You don’t need to buy anything or follow a specific diet to make it happen, either.
All you need to do is start making small changes in your life - simple things that you can stick with for good.
There’s a Japanese philosophy called kaizen which was originally developed for use in business but applies equally well to weight loss. Kaizen involves making small, continuous improvements.
Essentially, you make one tiny change for the better, work at it until it is second nature, and then make another small change. Over time these small changes add up and before you know it you have made a large change.
The kaizen philosophy applies perfectly to weight loss. Instead of going on an extreme diet or deciding that you are going to exercise 7 days a week, you choose one small, simple change that you would like to make.
For instance, you might decide that you want to stop buying treats from the vending machine at work. To make the change, you simply start packing a piece of fruit, some nuts, a container of yogurt or any other healthy snack with you each day when you go to work.
You keep doing this until it becomes a habit and you don’t have to think about it anymore. Then, you choose another small goal. Perhaps to start parking further away from the office so you can get a little more exercise each day when you walk to and from work. Again, practice this as long as you need to until it becomes a habit.
Keep this up making one small change after another and before long you will have changed nearly all of your habits to be healthier. As a result, you will start losing weight and you will be able to keep it off for good.
Plus, it won’t really even feel like you are trying to lose weight because the changes that you are making are so small and gradual.
The truth is that our bodies want to be healthy. We all want to be active and feel great. All it takes to make it happen is small, continuous change. The more you change the better you will feel and the more you will want to do. It’s a much more effective approach than trying to change everything all at once.
I would encourage you to learn what you can about how to lose weight in a healthy way. Research things like how to boost your metabolism, how to eat a healthy, balanced diet (check out the food pyramid), practice portion control, etc. Then make a list of things that you can change in your own life based on what you learned.
Choose one thing from your list and break it down into small, achievable steps. Implement one step at a time until it is a habit. When you are done with that, go back to your list and implement something else.
I guarantee if you stick with this approach to weight loss you will become the thinner, healthier person you have always wanted to be. And the best part is that you will be able to maintain your healthy weight for good.
