Weight Loss Tips that Work

How many times have you tried to diet, but only to fail to lose the weight or keep the weight off?  For many people, diets continually fail to deliver results.  Why? Because they are either based on the wrong principles or because they do not address important underlying principles or address needed lifestyle changes.

No matter how compelling the underlying principles for any diet may seem, most people will stay on a diet forever, and eventually will go back to normal eating habits where they not only gain back  the weight they lost, but gain more weight!

• Set realistic goals for diet success. An important component of diet success is setting a realistic goal. Failure to set realistic goals is a sure fire way to set you up for failure.  If you set unattainable goals, such as losing 50 pounds in two months, you are not just setting yourself up for failure but also putting your health at risk too!  You will be more likely to stick with a diet if you create realistic goals based on sensible eating strategies combined with daily exercise.
• Establish measurable goals. I mentioned that it is important to have realistic goals for weight loss so you do not get disappointed and set yourself up for failure.  It is equally important that your goals be measurable. Studies confirm that you have a much better chance at reaching your goals if your success can be measurable. A measurable goal might be to lose 6 inches in your waist in six weeks, lose 6% body fat in 8 weeks, or to lose 20 pounds in 12 weeks, etc. Studies have proven that having measurable metrics is essential for reaching your weight loss goals. Setting smaller, attainable benchmarks, like losing 1 to 2 pounds a week, will reinforce your motivation and give you the confidence to continue.
• Do NOT crash diet. Numerous studies show that the best way to lose fat permanently without muscle loss is to lose weight slowly (1 to two pounds a week) with a focus on exercise rather than severe calorie cutting. Severe calorie cutting is not effective for several reasons. When your body senses a severe reduction in calories, the body responds by reducing its output  of active thyroid hormone. This results in a decrease in your metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories at rest) and fewer calories burned. When you drop your calories too low, your body will also produce more lipoprotein lipase (the body’s chief fat storing enzyme) and less fat burning enzymes. In other words, if you starve yourself, your body will adapt by not only slowing your metabolism but also by changing its chemistry to burn less fat and make it easier to store fat in the future.  When your body goes into starvation mode it also triggers increased appetite and cravings for bad food in an attempt to get you to eat more food with higher calories. This can cause you to binge. Bottom line: When you lose weight rapidly your body thinks that it’s starving and reduces its metabolic rate, which makes it harder for your body to burn each calorie (they burn at a slower pace than they normally would). Then when you start eating normal again your body stores food, burns less fat, in case a “famine” hits it again.

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