Monday, February 11, 2008

The Golden Rule of Weight Loss

The Golden Rule of Weight Loss
To successfully lose weight and to keep it off for the long
term, there is one rule that must be followed. The rule is
a very simple one but it is rarely followed by most people.
This rule is that to lose weight successfully it requires
Time. That is it, there is nothing complicated about that
whatsoever. Unfortunately the majority of people that want
to lose weight ignore this golden rule.

Most people want to lose weight as quickly as possible.
However following this pattern almost always results in
failure. People are always on the lookout for a quick fix
that will enable them to shed the pounds and get the body
that they want in a couple of months. This would be great
if it was achievable in a safe and sensible way. The truth
is that quick weight loss is a gimmick. If it wasn't why do
so many people have so much trouble losing weight? People
never learn and they will continue to jump from one quick
fix to another, leading to one failure after another, until
they just give up.

The problem is that we now live in a society where we want
everything as soon as we possibly can. Patience is no
longer considered a virtue. This is true in our working
lives and in our own personal lives. When it comes to
losing weight people are not interested in what they are
going to look like 12 months down the road. They want to
look good now; they don't want to waste time in reaching
their goals. This is why people spend their hard earned
money on anything that promises them what they want to hear.

There are many diets and weight loss products that claim
you will be able to lose anything from 20-40 pounds in a
month. People see these claims and common sense just flies
out of the window. This happens because the products appeal
to your emotional senses and when that happens, logic
becomes irrelevant. Now on the face of it many of these
claims will sound wonderful to you, but unfortunately your
body will not share this joy. Any sudden and drastic
changes to your lifestyle will lead your body to fight you
every step of the way. This is why after a short initial
period of weight loss, any results you may have been
getting will slow down to a crawl or more than likely stop
completely. This is such a common story amongst people who
try to lose weight.

Let us look at a couple of facts. Fact number 1 is that 1
pound of weight roughly consists of 3500 calories. Fact
number 2 is that if you wanted to lose 30 pounds of weight
within a one month period, then you would have to find a
way to remove and burn 26500 calories a week from your
current diet. This equates to 3500 calories a day. No mean
feat when you think that the average intake of calories for
a woman is between 1800-2400 calories a day. It would mean
a massive reduction in the food that you are eating and
taking part in long periods of intensive exercise. Do you
have any idea what this will do to your body, especially if
it is not used to such a lifestyle?

The human body is a hugely complex entity. Many people are
not aware of the fact that the human body is one large
defence system. Its main role is to protect you and to keep
you alive any way that it can. Everything is geared towards
this goal and it will not care in the slightest if you
think that you are overweight and need to diet. Your body
while very adaptive is also a creature of habit. For
example if you have lived life of poor nutrition and
little activity for a number of years, then this is what
your body has become accustomed to, and it will cater for
this lifestyle for as long as it can hold out.

When suddenly out of the blue you cut back heavily on the
food that your body is used to receiving and impose a
rigorous exercise program on it what do you think will
happen? Your body will think that it is under some sort of
threat, and it will try to defend against this attack. It
will do this by completely slowing down your abilities to
burn calories. Because it is not getting the food it is
used to, it will put your metabolism into starvation mode.
This means it will do everything it can to hang onto any
calories, simply because it thinks you must be starving.

On top of this as this new regime comes so suddenly, your
mind will also try to prevent you from continuing what you
are doing. It will do this by sending you constant messages
telling you that it is too hard, you cannot do this, let us
go back to the way it was, and so on. This is why after a
short period of time you will give up. How can you succeed
when both your mind and your body are fighting against you?

People must come to grips with the fact that a quick fix is
no fix at all your body and your mind needs time to adjust
to any changes that you make to your lifestyle, and it will
adapt more easily if you do things slowly and in stages,
instead of rushing headfirst into it. As time goes on add
more activity, but do it steps. Do it this way and your
body will accept the changes because it is capable of doing
so.

So Time is the golden rule for weight loss, and remember
that you are where you are today because of the choices
that you have made. If you want to be in a different place
then make different choices.


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thousands of others have at http://www.easierwayz.com
Successful Weight loss is much more than just exercise and
diet.

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