How to Make Permanent Weight Loss a Reality

March 12, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

For people who are overweight or obese, permanent weight loss is something that you want more than anything else. It’s not much fun carrying around a lot of weight, is it? In your dreams you imagine what it might be like to be slim and to be able to do what everybody else does. It seems such a far off aspiration sometimes, but it is possible to achieve permanent weight loss. It is possible to get rid of all those unwanted pounds?

It’s not often that you will hear permanent weight loss being trumpeted around by those selling diets, diet pills or diet potions. There’s a very simple reason for this. Diets don’t deliver permanent weight loss. If you want short-term weight loss, then that’s fine…but who wants that?

Food has become a symbol of instant gratification. We want something so we can have it, why not? We all enjoy food and today it is very tasty and tempting. Whether a lot of what we eat is good for us or not is another matter. The size of our waists is testament to our love affair with food.

The key to permanent weight loss is very simple. It’s about making change. The problem with diets is that they don’t deliver change and they don’t deliver permanent weight loss. In fact the more diets you go on the more likely you are to put on weight.

Something for you to remember: change is just another word for learning.

If you want to make successful change you need to increase your self-awareness. In other words start to notice your bad habits. These bad habits are what make you fat. Get rid of them and learn new habits, new slim habits, and permanent weight loss is possible. Once you have committed to make change you have the possibility of opening up a whole new life: a new slim life, one that is free from diets.

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The Best Way to Lose Weight - It Helps To Know!

March 12, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

If someone said weight is all in the mind, what would you say? Yes, the fact that you might be overweight or obese is all in the mind. Does that seem crazy to you? What on earth can it mean anyway? How can weight have anything to do with the mind? Surely it’s just about food and exercise? Or is it? How can the best way to lose weight have anything to do with the mind?

The brain was always thought to be all-powerful for years. The body was at its beck and call and did what it was told. We now know better. The brain and the body need each other. They share and swap information all the time. They work in a mutually supportive environment, both having our interests as their main and only priority.

Is the body intelligent? It’s an interesting question. It certainly is a fount of massive amounts of information which it uses and passes to the brain. Without this information we wouldn’t be able to function.

Here are some examples: When we don’t get enough sleep the body interprets this as an energy deficiency and releases a hormone from the stomach called ghrelin which prompts the brain to make us feel hungry.

What happens when we go on a diet is that we reduce our calorie intake too drastically, the body automatically stores all the energy it can because it believes that there might be a shortage of food. At the same time it sends a message to the brain to make us feel hungry so that we double our efforts to find food.

If we want to lose weight, it helps if we know why things happen. Losing weight successfully and permanently is all about habits. Habits are useful because they allow us to do things without thinking too much, which leaves the brain to get on with more important things. Over time we develop bad habits. To get rid of these bad habits we have to learn new habits, slim habits. When your eating and lifestyle habits are slim habits, your brain and your body will work together, free from the distortions of bad habits, and you will be able to lose weight permanently.

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Time to Call Time On Diets - It’s Goodbye to Diets!

March 12, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

When new studies come out about diets, it’s always wise to see what they say. The latest study is from the Harvard School of Public Health. It found that it really didn’t matter which diet you went on, it could be low carb or low fat, whatever…the result from all diets is virtually the same. There is no diet that is better than the other. So, is it goodbye to diets? What it all boils down to is calories in vs. calories out. It’s that simple…or is it?

This study took place over two years and involved over 800 people so it was a pretty broad study. What all the groups found in the study was that their weight came back again in varying degrees. This is a similar experience to a larger study by researchers at UCLA who found that over 95% of people who went on a diet never achieved permanent weight loss.

The bottom line is that diets don’t work. The other thing that they found lacking was any form of structure. People found that there was no clear guidance or support.

Most diet books, Atkins included are over-complicated and difficult to follow. Not everybody who wants to lose weight has a university degree! Weight loss programs need to be clear and simple to follow.

So the best way to lose weight and supercharge your weight loss is not to go on a diet. If you do, the weight will come back. It’s been proved time and time again.

Losing weight is very much about calories in and calories out, but what’s the best way to go about this? It’s quite simple, you need to make change. You make successful change by learning new habits, slim habits. Some of the slim habits are about eating and lifestyle. They give you the structure and the means to lose weight permanently.

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Skinny Is As Skinny Does!

March 12, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

You do your best to keep to the diet because you are desperate to get skinny, but what happens? The weight comes back again. You are back where you started. It’s enough to make you lose your sense of humor! How on earth do you get skinny?

Choosing a diet to go on can be really confusing. Do you go with Atkins or some new fad diet? They all seem to promise the earth, but it’s very difficult to choose which one to go on. Choosing a diet is all about where you place your trust. Do you trust a diet to deliver? It’s a difficult call.

Too many diets make it look too easy. You can lose pounds in a trice, and you don’t have to lift a finger. It’s very convincing. It appeals to the lazy side of your nature. Do you follow your gut instinct or do you allow yourself to get hooked?

Do diets work? It would be wrong to say that you don’t lose weight on a diet, but there is a snag. The weight loss that the average diet delivers is short-term weight loss, all right if you want to lose a couple of pounds to get into your summer clothes, but not much good if you want get rid of some serious weight. There’s another catch too. The weight you lose will be back! It piles back on again very soon after you stop your diet. It’s not much fun!

The thing about losing weight and getting skinny is that you have got to want to make it happen. If your resolve is weak, than it won’t be successful. The other thing is that successful long-term weight loss only comes when you make change.

If you really want to get skinny, you have to make change and the only way to do that is to recognize what makes you fat. You need to uncover all your bad habits. Once you have done this, you need to learn new habits, slim habits. This is the key to making successful change. You want to be skinny and stay skinny? This is what you have to do!

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Best Weight Loss Tip? Get Good Advice!

March 11, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

People are always eager to offer good advice - sometimes whether it’s wanted or not. For example, if you decide to lose weight and you foolishly decide to tell people, you’ll be inundated with advice and weight loss tips. Maybe it will be no bad thing, but when you are deciding to lose weight, you should really spend quite a lot of time researching the course that is best for you. Yes, advice can be useful, but it can be confusing too.

One of the first things to consider once you have decided that you are going to lose weight, is ‘do you have the resolve and commitment to see it through’? If you really want to be successful, you have to want to lose weight…no half measures. You either do or you don’t.

Too many people believe that they don’t have to try too much on a diet. They believe that the diet will do it all for them. It says so on all the publicity! Actually it’s totally the opposite. If you want to be successful in losing weight - and at anything else, for that matter - you have to have commitment.

Just remember before you take any decision or take any advice, if you want to lose weight permanently, you don’t go on a diet and you don’t take weight loss pills.

If you decide to go on a diet, then fine - as long as you understand that your weight loss will be short lived. The weight will come back again. Pills have the same effect.

This is good advice! If you want to lose weight and for the weight not to come back again, you have got to make change. This involves you first recognizing the bad habits that make you fat and then learning new habits, slim habits. When you learn new slim habits you will be able to make change, adopt a completely new behavior and lose weight permanently.

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Best Way To Lose Weight? Have Skinny Friends!

March 11, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

Being overweight usually means that you become very conscious of the way you are. There are comparisons to be made everywhere you go, at the office, in the street. But do you take any notice? Do you think that you are different? Actually most overweight people have a ’switch off’ mechanism which (for most of the time) protects them from what they believe are critical looks from other people.

What is interesting is that people who are either overweight or obese like to be in the company of those that have a similar problem. It makes them feel at ease and out of the firing line when it comes to criticism.

Unfortunately what this does is to act as an ‘unsaid’ endorsement of the way they are. There is no criticism, implied or otherwise. In fact maybe it’s the skinny people who are out of line!

Overweight people keeping each other’s company can have other implications. Not only is there a feeling of endorsement, but being overweight can become contagious too. Being overweight can become the accepted norm. This is where it starts to get dangerous because the reality of the very real health risks associated with being overweight get completely forgotten. What to do? You can’t just get rid of all your overweight friends. Being aware of the problem will be a great help.

There is another reason why overweight people stay together. They are at their wits end trying to lose weight. Diets don’t work, so they have just given in and decided to take comfort from people who are in the same boat as they are.

The reality is that diets have caused a problem not solved one. Diets only deliver short-term weight loss. The weight always comes back. Little wonder that overweight people give the whole thing up as a bad job. The fact remain that if you want to lose weight you have to change, not go on a diet. You have to get rid of your bad habits, particularly the ones that make you fat. After that you learn new slim habits. Only then can you be assured that your weight will go away and not come back.

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The Best Way To Lose Weight - It’s About Habits

March 11, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

It’s a hard call. You want to lose weight, but you don’t know which weight loss program to trust. Should you believe all the hype? Should you be taken in by all the promises? Can they possibly be true? It’s very difficult to know.

Making a decision can be difficult because you don’t want to end up like so many of the people you have met who are still as overweight as they always have been despite having been on endless diets.

Despite all the good words in the advertisements you are very suspicious of all the promises. They all seem too good to be true. How do you know if you are being sold a load of rubbish or not?

You just have to use your common sense and your gut feeling. If you don’t think something is right, leave it alone. There is no such thing as a quick fix. If you suspect that is what you are being sold, then you should avoid it.

If there had been some great breakthrough, don’t you think you would have heard of it? Don’t you think the name of the person who invented the pill or potion would be on everybody’s lips? It hasn’t happened, has it? Time has revealed any contenders as being false prophets.

Special programs that promise the earth are not the answer. If you want to make progress and lose weight, you have to make the commitment. You have to show resolve. You can’t buy this, it has to come from you. What it really means is that you have to change. Making personal change is the only way to lose weight permanently.

What’s the solution? Well, it is definitely a big ‘no’ to weight loss pills, to diets and to potions. The single most effective thing that you must to is to identify the bad habits that make you fat and then learn new habits, slim habits.

The purpose of learning new slim habits is that you are then able to change your behavior. This is the key to permanent weight loss.

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Best Way To Lose Weight? Examine Your Alcohol Habit!

March 10, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

‘Alcohol makes you fat’. How many times have you been told that? It’s usually used to warn people off from drinking too much, but is it a true statement? No, it’s not strictly true, alcohol doesn’t make you fat, it actually prevents you from losing weight. It stops your stored energy being used. If you’re looking for the best way to lose weight, it would be a very sensible thing to understand about alcohol.

When you drink alcohol, you give your body a bit of a dilemma. The energy in alcohol can’t be stored because it is not a carbohydrate. What your body has to do is to covert the energy into something called acetate. Instead of then being stored as fat, it stays in the blood stream. Your body doesn’t like this very much, so it uses the acetate energy first, leaving your energy that is stored as fat well alone.

It’s not difficult to see why it makes sense not to drink when you’re trying to lose weight. All your stored energy stays where it is. Your scales will stay put, in fact they will probably start to move steadily upwards!

To most people drinking alcohol becomes a habit. Too much alcohol like too much food is a bad habit. If you want to lose weight and keep the weight off, you have to get rid of all your bad habits.

The most important thing you have to do if you are serious about losing weight and keeping it off, is to make sure you are aware of your bad habits. As soon as you are, you will find the process so much easier. The key to permanent weight loss is to learn new habits, slim habits.

Give up alcohol you will be making change. You will be changing your habit as far as alcohol is concerned. You now have to change your eating and lifestyle habits. You do this by learning new ones. If you can do this successfully not only will you lose weight, but you’ll lose weight permanently. It’s a great goal to have and if you show the same determination and resolve that you will need to give up alcohol, this will be a walk in the park!

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Calories Can Really Make a Difference to Any Weight Loss Plan

March 10, 2009 by Shana Leslie  
Filed under Weight Loss

I bet your thinking, oh no, here we go again another diet where I have to count calories. I hate counting calories, just about as much as I hate weighing all my food portions.

Reducing calorie consumption is key to losing weight and the quickest way to do that is to become more aware of the calorie counts in the foods that you choose to eat each day. Counting calories and weighing food is really not a lot of fun, neither is being overweight.

However the difference between having to count calories and just being aware of your calorie counts, is doable and can easily be accomplished.

Educating yourself on the different food groups and getting to know the calories that are in each food group, will help you to keep within your daily calorie limit in order to lose weight.

If you really hate counting calories and weighing food portions, then make a real effort to have smaller portions of food every time you eat, no matter what it is you eat. Choose items first from a nutritional food guide, and then if you have to treat yourself, make it a reward that you would get once a week only if you have made a real effort to cut down and lose weight.

Now with minimal effort I eat balanced nutritious meals and reward myself with pizza and treats once a week. Pounds just seem to melt off me now and that’s making me very happy.

Learning to eat sensibly doesn’t have to mean that you are deprived of anything. It simply means making better food choices for your body and when you find yourself not being able to make a healthy choice calorie wise, you will need to adjust your diet the next day few days to compensate for it.

It’s not really that hard to do once you get used to recognizing the amount of calories in your food selections. Adjust your calories to the amount of weight you want to lose and how quickly you want to lose it.

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Diets, The Best Way To Lose Weight Or Not?

March 9, 2009 by Henry John  
Filed under Weight Loss

New reports come out all the time, but one that has just been released from the Harvard School of Public Health, has shed new light on how effective some of our most popular diets are. Effectively they found that all the diets ended up by producing very similar results. So whether you go on a Zone diet, a low carb diet, or whatever, it won’t make much difference to the outcome. People still want to know the best way to lose weight.

This study took place over two years and involved over 800 people so it was a pretty broad study. What all the groups found in the study was that their weight came back again in varying degrees.

The experience of the Harvard team is similar to the results from a UCLA study which found that hardly anybody who went on a diet ever achieved permanent weight loss.

Putting it bluntly, diets don’t work. Neither do they supply the structure and support that people need when they try and lose weight. Yes, it’s about calories in and calories out. It’s also about exercise and getting a structure that people feel is easy to follow.

Diets are too complicated. If you look at the Atkins book it is far from simple and it is easy to be intimidated by it. It is certainly difficult to determine any structure for the program

So what is the best way to lose weight and supercharge your weight loss is not to go on a diet. If you do the weight will come back. It’s been proved time and time again.

How much you eat and how much energy you expend is very much down to your current habits. Get rid of your bad habits and learn new slim habits and you will lose weight permanently.

Slim habits give structure. Learning new habits, slim habits is the key to permanent weight loss.

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