Many of us have known someone who dropped a huge amount of weight quickly. Perhaps they shed 15 pounds in one week by doing the Atkins diet, or perhaps they lost one hundred pounds in just a few months following bariatric surgery.
However take a look at those exact same friends 1 year afterwards. Did they keep the excess weight off, or did it slowly creep back on them? What about 2 years afterwards?
If you shed unwanted weight, you want it to stay gone.
Here are five helpful secrets for losing weight and keeping it off - once and for all!
Secret #1: Diets do not work.
People often joke that "diet" is a 4-letter word, however, there is actually a great deal of truth to that particular statement. Some diet programs can wreck your metabolism, and they don't lead to sustained weight loss unless you are willing to alter the habits that made you overweight in the first place.
If you're a habitual dieter, you may have discovered that some diets make you heavier than before. That is mainly because your body looks at a diet to be a time of starvation, so it holds onto its fat reserves and milks each drop of nourishment from the foods you eat during that time.
Instead of a diet, what you need is a permanent lifestyle change. This means making food and physical exercise choices that can conveniently fit into your day-to-day life. Stay away from radical plans that you simply cannot follow forever, and opt for steady improvement over immediate results.
Secret #2: Slow weight loss is long term weight loss.
It took time to gain weight, and it will take time to lose weight. If you're a female, or if you are over the age of 50, you might really feel discouraged while watching for the scale to move. Keep in mind that fast weight losses are nearly always short-term.
Fast weight loss is normally achieved through hunger, dehydration, or both. When you eat and drink again, those dropped pounds will come back.
If you modify your eating in a healthy and balanced way and seek to lose just 1 pound each week, you will accomplish permanent weight loss - and that is well worth the wait.
Secret #3: You must change your habits - permanently.
Look at your habits. Do you go hungry all day long and binge in the evening? Do you eat two servings when one would be all you need?
Are you a junk food junkie, hooked on the calm feeling you get after eating high-carb foods?
Do you drive around parking lots until eventually you get a parking space near the entrance?
It's not always easy to see ourselves for what we really are, or to acknowledge that we have fallen into bad habits, but it is an essential step.
Once you recognize the habits that stop you from losing weight, you can do something to improve them, and take control of your body once again.
Secret #4: Your friends can keep you fat.
The fantastic thing about real friends is they love you for who you are. The downside is that they may not fully grasp you are attempting to alter your lifestyle, therefore they let you keep eating and living as you always have.
Make your friends and family aware about the brand new habits you are attempting to adopt. Odds are they will be very supportive if you ask them not to provide you with an additional helping of your favorite dish.
If somebody continues to coax you after you've made your wishes known, it might be time to consider whether or not they are a real friend.
True friends would like you to do well. Fake friends may make an effort to sabotage you out of a feeling of envy or dissatisfaction with themselves.
Secret #5: You need to really, really want it.
Of course you would like to shed weight. Millions of people do. But wanting it is not enough. To shed weight permanently, you need to consider how badly you want it.
The sad truth is that, sometimes we don't wish to lose fat as badly as we would like that piece of cheesecake. Sometimes we don't wish to reduce weight as badly as we wish to relax while watching television.
The secret to long lasting weight reduction is to want it more often than you want short-lived comforts. For example, if you realize that you want comfort food more often than you wish to work at losing weight, you need to get at the root reason for your emotional eating. There could be a simple solution that will help you stay on track.
Take these secrets to heart, and do not become discouraged if you find them hard to follow. Permanent changes are not simple to make, but when you accomplish your goal, you will be happy that you did.
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