The road to losing weight is filled with distractions, all designed to throw you off course and destroy your motivation. Some people try and give up at the first hurdle, some get bored or get down about their weight and turn back to food for comfort, and the rest, quite simply, do it wrong! To lose weight is actually a relatively straight-forward and rewarding process - once you know what you're doing. So here are a few handy tips to help shed those pounds the right way.
1. Eat regularly
The most common mistake people make when trying to lose weight is to skip meals, spurred on by the mistaken belief that if they eat less they must lose less fat. WRONG! Skipping meals slows down the body's metabolic rate and kick-starts what is known as the body's 'starvation mechanism'. This leads to a loss of muscle due to excess release of cortisol, an increase in the activity of fat-storing enzymes and an increase in appetite. Eating between 5 and 6 small meals a day (2-3 hours apart) keeps your metabolism up, forces your body to burn fat for energy, and makes you feel fuller for longer.
2. Go at a steady pace
Many dieters wanting to lose fat try to go at it too quickly, but it is physically impossible to lose weight just like that. If you think about it, it has usually taken many years to put it on in the first place and it certainly isn't going to drop off overnight. Your body won't allow it. When weight is lost faster than a kilo a week, you are likely to put it straight back on again due to the high degree of stress you have placed your body under to get the weight off in the first place (also this weight is more likely to be a loss of muscle, water and carbohydrate rather than a loss of fat!). Set yourself a realistic goal over the course of a week/month and stick to it. That way, when the diet is finished and you're looking great, you won't have to worry about destroying all your hard effort (and sacrifices) you took to get there.
3. Don't diet - just eat right!
So many people will go on a diet, suffer for it, lose weight and then revert back to their normal eating habits. Then they wonder why the weight just piles straight back on! When this happens they decide that the diet obviously didn't work so they try another and, yet again, end with the same results. The best way to lose weight is actually to never go on a diet again! They just don't work. Make some minor changes to your eating habits that you can sustain for the rest of your life. If you can't maintain these changes then you can guarantee that the weight you do lose will be very short-term and you will continue to feel demoralised and wondering why you bothered in the first place(hence why diets that force you to eat in a particular way for a short amount of time are actually ineffective). It's not as hard as it sounds. Just watch your calories. By creating a calorie deficit each day (consuming less calories through food than you are burning through exercise etc) you will start to lose weight and burn fat. In theory this means you can still eat whatever you want, provided you are burning more calories than you consume. However, you should still maintain a healthy, balanced diet to prevent other health-related problems cropping up and to ensure a steady and speedy loss of fat.
4. Lifting weights
It's surprising the number of people who never consider lifting weights or doing resistance training whilst trying to burn fat and firm up. There seems to be a mistaken belief that lifting weights will increase muscle mass, grow facial hair, make women look more manly and cause their voice to drop! However, resistance training is probably the most overlooked of all the methods of losing fat fast. If you are following a calorie-restricted diet, as mentioned above, it is almost impossible to increase muscle because there are no additional calories for your body to use to build it. Lifting weight under these circumstances will force your body to maintain it's existing muscle which subsequently results in maintaining your metabolic rate and your body's fat-burning ability. You therefore burn fat faster than you would by spending an hour on the treadmill, plus you tone up, tighten up and look better than ever.
5. Get good advice & support
Following that all-important decision to lose weight, those following their chosen diets will normally start asking friends/family and those close to them how THEY think they should do it. Most of the time, these people who start dishing out the advice have very rarely studied anatomy or physiology and probably know very little about losing weight and body fat and getting in shape. They are therefore given incorrect information that doesn't help them and actually starts to hinder their progress. The best thing to do is to speak to someone who has achieved the result you desire and who has managed to burn fat and keep it off. You can then model their actions by finding out what they eat, what exercises they do and what supplements they take. Alternatively, employ a personal trainer or professional who works within the industry who has been successful at helping people to lose weight.
The important thing to realise is that everyone is different, especially when it comes to losing weight, and what may work well for one person, may not be as productive for someone else. However, by following the advice above, you WILL start making some important changes to your eating habits and exercise routines that WILL assist you in shedding those extra pounds, helping to burn fat and, more importantly, keep the weight off - FOR GOOD!
Will is a fitness consultant and personal trainer. He recently contributed to, and helped research, 'The Elite Weight Loss Package' with Craig Woods, renowned Hollywood nutritionist.
For more information on the Elite Weight Loss Package, go to: [http://www.TheWayToLoseWeightFast.info]
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more information on Will's new affiliated turbulence training program
to burn fat and/or build muscle quicker than you ever thought possible,
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