I am just going to be blunt about this – if weight loss for 2023 was your New Year’s resolution, what makes you believe this will be the year that you will find success?
Every year around the world, as people are celebrating the holidays, they begin thinking about their New Year resolution which very often revolves around weight loss. Just think of the times that even on New Years Eve you have sat and listened patiently as your portly friend talks up the brand new diet that they are going to begin on January first, as they are stuffing their face with junk foods and drink. Conversely, that rotund friend spouting the fairy tale about the new fad diet they are going on might have even been yourself.
Just stop with this non-sense every year of false promises to yourself!
If weight loss is important enough to you to begin at a future date, then it should be important enough to begin that day instead of later. We get this all of the time, people inquire about weight loss, and a sizable percentage almost always wants to put it off for a few days. Personally, this tells me the individual is hedging on just how serious they are – do I want to lose weight today, or do I want to indulge in some treats this weekend at the big family gathering…
This is the time of year we especially hear of new fad diets and gimmicks for the dieter!
I can’t tell you how many fad diets and gimmicks that I found in the last few days. To be honest, I actually seek them out in order to debunk them. There is nothing that makes me more angry than to see scammers taking money from people desperate to lose weight with their fraudulent devices and snake oils. And then, there are to stupid fad diet plans where the marketers make all sorts of boisterous claims of dieters being able to lose ten, twenty, thirty, and even 45 pounds in a month. Please, do not allow yourself to ever be gullible, or desperate enough to fall for these kinds of frauds. The scammers are out for your hard earned money and could not care less about if you actually lose weight or not.
If any plan promises that you will experience quick weight loss, do not fall for it. First, quick weight loss is never good, healthy, nor sustainable. It is a given that with any plan you will rapidly lose up to ten pounds in the first week or two. However, what you need to make yourself aware of is that weight is always going to mostly consist of water weight. If you are serious about losing weight, then you need to understand that just as the excess body fat did not come on overnight, you are not going to lose it overnight.
In fact, it is not healthy to attempt to lose more than one or two pounds of body fat per week. Anything quicker than that will result in loss of lean muscle tissue which will cause you to still have a higher than desired body fat percentage even if you achieve your desired weight goal. When your body fat percentage is too high, your metabolism will remain low. That is just how it is, and nothing is going to change this fact.
Weight loss does not involve doing anything special!
I do not care who has told you about how much weight you can lose on this special diet plan or the other – the truth is losing weight is only a small part of the equation. I could tell you to eat a combination of pineapple and brussels sprouts glazed in Grey Poupon mustard between each meal, and you might lose a few pounds from being sick to your stomach. The only thing required to lose body fat is to eat a nutritious diet consisting of whole healthy foods that provide a good balance of complex carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats while not consuming processed foods, nor those with added sugars.
When you have a healthy nutritional lifestyle without processed foods and those with added sugars, it is actually difficult to not lose weight to a healthy body fat percentage. It does not matter what anyone has ever told you in the past, if you consume fewer calories that you burn in a day, weight loss will come easy for you, this I can guarantee.
Beware the Corporate Weight Loss Giants!
Many weight loss businesses will tell you that you can still eat anything you want as long as you track what you eat. These businesses are lying to you, and are more interested in your money than they are with your well-being.
Some of these businesses will even encourage you to have a cheat meal once a week. Still, the bottom line is, if that one cheat meal drives you over the amount of calories you require to lose weight each week, you need to forgo it. Forget about if that is fair or not, life is not fair. If you want to lose your weight and then keep it off, it requires that you recreate your life to where it does not center around food. This is not difficult at all when you only consume healthy, whole foods. In fact, your habits might even impact your rotund friends when they see your success at weight-loss and weight management.
Weight loss businesses will usually give you an allowance to eat more food when you have exercised. Don’t even get started with that non-sense. Almost everyone will over-estimate how many calories that they need in a day, and will also grossly over-exaggerate the total amount of calories they have burned while exercising. The reality is that people who have never been the type to exercise really do not know the difference between moderate and intense exercise. You will see them log one hour of intense exercise when they really might have been at an intense level for about five minutes, if even that many.
Intense exercise means you are having a hard time breathing and cannot talk, while moderate means you are breathing harder than normal, yet still capable of maintaining labored conversation. My personal fitness tracker and heart rate monitor app are set at the professional athlete level, and although I can exercise at a moderate level for a couple of hours at a time, intense exercise only lasts a few minutes because I can barely breath.
The bottom line is there is no way you will have exercised at an intense level for an hour to justify the amount of calories that would be burned at that level and amount of time.
Weight loss is easy – it is keeping it off that can be tough.
Yes, you can lose weight on many diets and with many gimmicks. But if you want that weight loss to actually matter and to be beneficial, then it is the ability to keep it off that really matters in the long run. Diets always have an end point, and when that end comes, the lost weight will always pile back on with a swiftness. Diets are the reason that 95% of dieters fail. If you want lasting results, then you will follow us at David’s Way to Health and Fitness where you will learn how to change your lifestyle with good nutritional practices that will make a difference for the rest of your life, if you stick to it.
Weight loss and management requires a lifetime commitment out of everyone who has ever lost weight and then kept it off. If you need to lose weight, you might want to consider how committed you will be to yourself.
If you have more commitment to unhealthy food and drink, no one can help you.
If your excuses for not losing weight outweigh your commitment to your own wellbeing, your priorities are wrong on many levels.
Everyone can lose and manage their weight, even you. Instead of thinking about what you are giving up, you really need to focus on the life you can have when your body is at a healthy weight and bodyfat percentage.
A healthy body will always provide you with more joy than a slice of cake and a bowl of ice cream ever will.
Weight Loss: First Understand Yourself