Learn from Fitness Failure

Learn from Fitness Failure
Last week, I discussed the concept of looking for a mentor
who has successfully accomplished the same type of goal
that you desire. Time and time again, a new business
becomes successful by emulating other successful
businesses. Why not do the same thing when you are trying
to lose body fat? It certainly can and should be done.

Well, a coin always has two sides. Now, it is time to look
at the other side...and it isn't very pleasant or shiny!

Sometimes, it is valuable and important to learn from
failure. Failure shows us what NOT to do. Failure shows us
what doesn't work. Specific to weight loss, what if we
could learn from others that failed to lose body fat?
Thankfully, the National Weight Control Registry's (NWCR),
located at www.NWCR.ws, has more than just solutions to
weight loss. They also record the events and circumstances
that caused people to fail. Think about how valuable it
will be, and how much time you will save, if you take the
time and energy to avoid the things that have proven to
lead not to success...but to failure.

1) If the point hasn't been drive home enough, already, the
NWCR also found a common characteristic of those people
that FAILED to maintain their weight loss. What was it?
Simply stated: the people that failed to maintain weight
loss failed to continue their behavioral changes that
brought them success in the first place. In other words,
they stopped eating right and exercising.

2) Here is another interesting fact to help motivate you to
keep the weight off. The likelihood that people will regain
weight consistently drops as time passes. So, the longer
you practice the habits of eating intelligently and
exercising properly, the more you reduce the chance that
you will ever gain the weight back. This explains why fad
diets don't work! The change must become permanent, and
"quick" fixes just don't do the trick. Failure tip: stay
motivated to keep the weight off for a long time, so that
you don't fall back into the old, unhealthy,
life-destroying habits that once plagued you.

3) Sadly, life-endangering medical issues seem to be the
best motivator and predictor of successful weight loss. The
study clearly showed that people who made the decision to
lose weight after a medical scare both lost weight faster
and kept it off longer. Do yourself a favor and think
ahead...before your doctor asks you to sit down, so that
she can explain that your excess fat is literally killing
you.

4) Do you need more motivation to keep the weight off? At
the National Weight Control Registry, they also found this
disturbing statistic: for those people who had regained
some of their lost weight, only 11% returned to their
previous lowest weight point in the following year. Let us
give you an example. Let's say that a person has
successfully gone from 200 pounds down to 150 pounds.
However, the person backslides and gains back 30 pounds.
Experience shows that only 11 out of 100 people will be
able to drop the weight back down to 150 pounds over the
next year. Keep in mind that these are people that had
already successfully lost weight and knew exactly what to
do to lose the weight they had re-gained. Logically, much
more than 11% should have been able to return to their
previous baseline weight. They had the knowledge. They had
the experience. They knew what worked for their body.
Sadly, though, logic does not always lead to success.

We can summarize all of these "failure points" pretty
easily, can't we? In essence, people failed because they
failed to continue with the habits that created the initial
success.

Perhaps, though, you haven't yet experienced successful
weight loss. Don't let that be an obstacle for you. Use
this article to motivate you to make a serious
commitment...a lifelong one...so that you develop a true
change in your lifestyle. You learned last week that
several lifestyle changes lead to true fat loss success.
You learned this week that working on fat loss with a
short-term view in mind is not nearly as successful, and
instead, often leads directly to failure. So, decide now to
develop the habits that are necessary to transform your
body into one that you are proud of.

----------------------------------------------------
Jeremy Nelms and his wife, Alissa Nelms, are known as "The
World's Happiest Fitness Couple!" You can visit their
website and read more articles, as well as follow their
personal training journals and fitness adventures at
http://www.TheFitCouple.com .