A lot of us have seen those quick weight loss diets. They are advertised on tv and on infomercials, and promise to magically melt off those pounds. Losing the weight fast is only a small part of the battle. You need to know why those quick weight loss diets are destined to fail for you, and how to make a plan to win.

In order to not only lose the weight, but keep it off, you need to make some changes. Permanent changes. This is what those quick weight loss diets don’t tell you. You don’t have to sacrifice all the foods you love and exercise 24/7, but you do need to make a plan and stick to it. If you continue to make progress, no matter how small, you will win at the weight loss game.

The first step is a goal. Figure out a realistic amount of weight you’d like to lose. Don’t shoot for the stars, just say to yourself you’d like to lose x pounds a week. 2-3 pounds a week is a good start if you’re stuck. Don’t compare yourself to others. Try taking a picture before you start, so you can see your progress along the way, which can be very encouraging.

Now, on to the work part, exercise. This is the tough hurdle for most people. Most of us have long days at work, and lots to do at home. It’s very hard to fit in time to exercise, and even easier to just pass on it for tonight. Unfortunately, the easy way doesn’t produce results. Even something as simple as doing 25 situps before going to bed is beneficial. Just remember, it doesn’t have to be hours of exercise to have an effect. Granted, 30 minutes or more of exercise a day is the target, but something is better than nothing. Once you get used to it, it becomes more natural and just another task like getting a shower.

Here’s a good tip to make exercise easier. Try setting up either an exercise bike or a treadmill in front of the tv, or within view of it. Now, put on a good movie. TV shows have commercials which tend to bring your focus back to exercise, instead of being a distraction for you. Quite often you’ll exercise a lot more than you planned, without even realizing it!

Now, the other change you need to make is your diet. I refer to diet as what you eat, not what you can’t eat, or are stuck eating. Just take a look at what you eat, and figure out what you can avoid or substitute for something with less calories. Calories are the name of the game. If you burn more calories than you take in, you lose weight. Simple equation. Exercise burns more calories, so you can either lose more weight, or burn off those couple of items you maybe should have avoided eating.

So, quick loss diets do work, but you need to make changes or the weight will come back, and then some. Eating better, and exercise, makes a huge difference. Just start small, and work you way up to where you want to be. Once you get the ball rolling, it definitely gets easier.

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Weight loss is a topic that is often addressed wrong. Everywhere you go, you see the latest and greatest weight loss diet and weight loss programs. I will say this up front right now … there is no fast path to losing weight permanently. You can lose weight fast, but unless you make some changes, the weight will come back.

Now, there are many, many tips that will help you greatly in losing weight, and keeping it off. These are tips the big names don’t want you to see.

The best way to lose weight is diet and exercise. Now, before you cringe, let me explain that a little further. Despite how complex and difficult those infomercials make it sound like, losing weight is a simple formula. Expend more energy than you take in. That simple. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will 100% lose weight. You can work both sides of this equation, by both watching what you eat(no special diet foods, just be sensible), and by exercising. Now, a diet doesn’t mean eating weird foods you hate, it means just keeping yourself in check. If you are eating less calories than you are burning, then you are going in the right direction.

The second tip really ties into the first. You need to make some changes to get yourself on the right track. This does include doing regular exercise, and also of changing how/what you eat. The changes might not be drastic, and you should still enjoy what you eat, or your diet change will make you fail. What you need to do is keep an eye on your calorie intake. This may mean things like changing from regular soda to diet soda. If you change your eating, but are calling it a diet in the bad sense, then you will eventually go back to eating the old way and all the work of weight loss will be lost. So, examine your daily diet, see what changes you can make to lower your calorie intake, and create a new diet that you can live with.

The next thing you need to do is set some goals that are realistic. While you may want to shoot for supermodel thin, and you’ll get there in the end if that is really your goal, you need to set some smaller, more realistic goals. You might decide you want to lose 2 pounds a week, and go from there. There is a psychological reason here too. Most people give up on losing weight when they don’t achieve what they want to. By setting smaller goals, it will enable you to reach those goals and give you more strength to finish the battle of losing weight.

This tip is one that every single person losing weight needs to listen to. Don’t compare yourself to others. This is the second biggest reason why people quit losing weight. You look at others, and you feel like you’ll never reach those goals. The best thing is to take some pictures before you start, and compare yourself to those, so you can see where all the hard work is paying off. To this end, figure out what your ideal weight should be, and make that your end goal.

Now you have your starting point, your end point, and your goals along the way. The next tip is to be sure you’re checking your goals correctly. Be sure to weigh yourself at the same time of day, everyday. Your weight varies throughout the day, especially after meals. You absolutely need to weigh yourself at the same time so you have numbers to compare. Don’t forget that while everyday might not be the best progress, look over your progress over the course of a few days to get a trend.

As you can see, there are many things to keep in mind when losing weight, but remember the main thing: expend more energy than you take in. Do that, and you’re losing weight at some level. Combined with exercise, and you lose weight faster. You don’t need anything from those infomercials to do it, just your own will power to lose weight permanently.

Article Source: http://www.dietarticles.info

Visit www.weightlosshq.info for the best in weight loss information from around the net. You can read hundreds upon hundreds of weight loss articles and get both inspiration and tips on losing those extra pounds.

As a certified personal trainer, I have seen so many fad diets come and go. It is truly laughable what some companies will push just to make a quick buck. With over a billion dollars a year spent on people trying to lose weight, there is no shortage of information on how lose weight.

The problem for most people is actually beginning a diet and sticking to it. Most diets get dull and boring or simply are not healthy to stay on for extended periods. Then, we bounce back up again. It is a vicious cycle.

How many different types of diets have you or a close friend tried? How many times have you said to yourself, “I am going to start exercising regularly now” and then 30 or 60 days later you on the sofa watching television? How many times have you done what it takes to lose some weight then fall back to your old routine?

Despite what the infomercials and mega-corporations tell us, losing weight isn’t as quick as they claim. These infomercials, and ads use slick marketing to persuade us into believing their claims that you can just pop a pill and lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks. But how many people do you know had this happen for them? The truth is that our bodies aren’t designed to lose that much weight rapidly in a healthy fashion.

How many times have you seen those ads and infomercials pitching you exercise videos or gym memberships? If you bought those videos, like me, you probably sweated your brains out doing those intense grueling workouts hoping to see the unwanted pounds and inches melt away. But it didn’t turn out the way you hoped, did it?

For over two decades, we have been lied to. We are force-fed to believe we can take a pill to quickly lose 30 pounds in 30 days. This is a fast-food society. We want it now and we do not want to pay the consequences. But, we are kidding ourselves. We can not have our cake and eat it too. Well, not that often anyway.

These corporations and infomercial reps pushing the quick pill know that if they told you what it really takes to lose weight and keep it off permanently, they would not be in business long. This being said, there is one diet that continues to improve and show results. The diet I speak of is The South Beach Diet.

The South Beach Diet is not low-fat or low-carb. It teaches you to rely on the right carbs and the right fats. It teaches you how to eat healthy and not only change your looks, but change your way of life. It teaches you what we should learn in school and how to eat the right foods in moderation. You don not starve yourself and you do not have to sweat in the gym five times a week.

I am no longer taking on clients in the gym, but I do my best to stay in shape and eat right. If you have not checked out the South Beach Diet, I urge you to do so. It is a quick read and makes good sense for all of us, not just anyone in particular. Let us all get back into shape, and I do not mean round!

Article Source: http://www.dietarticles.info

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I think it was an early Smothers Brothers routine that told the tale of a man who fell into a vat of chocolate. To summon help, he yelled “Fire!” Why? Because who would come running if he yelled “Chocolate?”

In our apparently endless quest to shed our too, too solid flesh, we seek help from the diet gurus who populate the afternoon talk shows, the monthly magazines, the tabloids, and the endless infomercials. We scan the latest diet program and research reports on a never-ending quest for the secret ingredient that will inexorably melt that fat while giving us guilt-free pleasure. We may yell “Fire!” for help, but what we really want is chocolate.

And now they’ve given it to us. Without cheating on our diets or lying to our inner selves, we can now honestly quote recent scientific reports that declare that certain properties of dark chocolate are good for us. What a triumph! Godiva and Nestle and Hershey and Cadbury are not our enemies after all. Their decadent morsels are the dietary equivalent of a work-out – something we do to make us healthy and slender. As Woody Allen promised in “Sleeper,” science has finally proved that junk food is good for us. It is a dieter’s dream, an incredible fantasy transforming diet horrors into orgies of satisfaction.

Wake up and smell the (black, unsweetened) coffee! Does chocolate have a place in a healthy, well-balanced diet? Possibly. Does it merit inclusion in any serious weight loss program? Absolutely no. The key to any of the hundreds of diets out there is to increase activity and reduce the number of calories. No matter what kind of healthful substances it may contain, chocolate carries far too dense a calorie load to be included in any weight loss plan that can expect to have a modicum of success.

We weight watchers are so gullible, so naive, so desperate for relief from the drudgery and boring routine of a diet, that we clutch at any straw that promises an interruption to our misery. We embrace any concept or substance that will make us human again. We erase our guilt with the sure knowledge that we are only following the dictates of objective science.

A co-worker of mine bakes a variety of goodies and brings them in to sell to staff as a side business. She proudly informs her potential customers that she only uses dark chocolate which has been proven to be healthy. The gang goes wild, weekly buying her entire stock of cake and cookies. Munching down on their thousand calorie snacks, they positively purr with satisfaction that what they are eating is healthy and nutritious.

A voice in the wilderness, I remind them that healthy snacks like vegetables or fruit would confer the same benefits but would also avoid that insidious waistline bulge. Happy tubbies all, they assure me that I am not up-to-date on my knowledge of nutrition and that eating dark chocolate is a proven road to health and I should hop to it.

I look around me at women considerably younger than I am, ranging from pleasantly plump to obese. (Okay, there are one or two skinnies who eat anything they want but they are the rare exceptions in any group, even though the objects of all our envy). It is hard to reconcile the sight of a rotund woman, eyes closed in ecstasy, cheeks bulging, with the concept of optimum weight and health.

What are we doing? We are fooling ourselves yet again. We have convinced ourselves that as long as something we eat has some redeeming nutritional value, it’s okay for us to eat it. We conveniently “forget” about the energy-in/energy-out equation that is the basis for stable and healthy weight. We assiduously avoid our secret internal recognition that what a skinny or normal weight can enjoy occasionally, we on weight loss programs can not. We assure ourselves that indulgences are necessary to keep up our morale and help us stay on our diets.

What diet? Any weight loss plan that promises us that we can eat all we want (and we want a lot) of any particular food, and never feel a pang of hunger, is, quite simply, a scam. Restricting our intake of food necessarily means that we can’t keep eating the way we have in the past – remember, that’s what got us fat in the first place.

Losing weight is tough, boring, frustrating and generally devoid of much pleasure. For the few seconds of elation we feel when we step on the scale and detect a definite loss, we must endure hours and days of refusing what we would like in order to do what we must to reach our goal.

Chocolate, like any food that excites and obsesses us, holds the seeds of our weight control destruction within it. Unlike so many foods we can avoid without a backward glance, it carries a toxic temptation that haunts our dreams, crushes our willpower, and murders our unceasing efforts to control our own appetites. It offers the promise of heaven: pure satisfaction for the pleasure centers of our brain.

It is a powerful weapon that we touch dangerously. It is almost impossible to handle it safely – one bite and the restraints fall off. Our taste buds, our tongues, our neurotransmitters, and our very being, all cry out for more. Like the junkies we are, we beg for one more fix.

It is impossible for an alcoholic to stop after the first drink, unthinkable for a meth head to walk away while crystals are still available, out of the question for a compulsive gambler to leave the table while there are still chips to play. For the true overeater, one taste of the sweet, smooth confection is a diet death sentence.

The only way we tortured weight control freaks can handle it is through total abstinence. One day at a time, we must fight the urge for one taste, one morsel, one shaved corner of a forbidden bar. The longer we can avoid the taste, the more its memory will fade but, like the addict, we will never totally eliminate the cravings and must constantly guard against relapse.

Substituting a low calorie chocolate alternative is tantamount to starting a methadone maintenance program – we no longer get high (gain weight) but we need a constant dosage to maintain a sense of well-being. As long as the taste of chocolate is a fresh and vivid memory, even if a low calorie version is used, the lure of the precious stuff remains and will eventually overwhelm our “no” power and lead to the dread of all we yo-yo overweighters: diet suicide.

Article Source: http://www.dietarticles.info

Dr. Bola is a psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic, specializing in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. Visit her at: www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the shocking news headlines from the year 2050: “New study reveals that exercise and proper nutrition is the key to successful weight loss!”

It seems that we’re always looking for a quick and easy way to lose fat, but those darn studies and that reputable research just keeps getting in the way of our dream!

There’s always someone out there telling us we can lose fat without watching our diet and without any exercise. As much as we’d like to believe that’s true, deep down inside we know better. The ads promising that we can ‘get slim quick’ remind us of the ‘get rich quick’ infomercials we see on late-night television. Still, there’s no shortage of ‘get slim quick’ products out there.

A YaHoo search of the term “Easy Weight Loss” yielded about 10,600,000 hits.

A Google search of the phrase “Quick Weight Loss” showed about 14,300,000 recommended sites to visit.

Looking up “Easy Fat Loss” on YaHoo revealed about 4,290,000 answers.

Finally, running a Google search for “I want to lose weight but I don’t want to exercise because I don’t have the time, money or will power” will bring up about 633,000 sites. We’re not kidding!

Compare that to the Google results for “Weight Loss Truth”: only about 2,760,000.

PERMANENT FAT LOSS REQUIRES EFFORT:

Let’s face it, there really is no good way to lose fat without any effort. Successful and permanent weight (fat) loss takes some time, it takes some effort, and it certainly requires some exercise. Consider what Dr. Gabe Mirkin had to say on the subject: “There are many products on the market today that promise to help you lose weight. None will help you unless they get you to exercise more and eat fewer calories.” (Source: The Sportsmedicine Institute, Inc. – DrMirkin.com)

DON’T BE TEMPTED BY SHORTCUTS:

So is it possible to lose weight quickly? Sure, but weight loss achieved quickly and/or by ‘cheating’ will never be permanent and is usually not healthy.

Remember the phen-fen pills that were popular just a few years ago? While they certainly helped you lose weight, they were withdrawn from the market in September of 1997 after being linked to the occurrence of serious cardiac valvular disease, and primary pulmonary hypertension.

Ephedra, another weight loss pill, was pulled from shelves on April 12, 2004. After a careful review of the available evidence about the risks and benefits of ephedra in supplements, the FDA found that these supplements present an unreasonable risk of illness or injury to consumers. The data showed little evidence of ephedra’s effectiveness, except for short-term weight loss, while confirming that the substance raises blood pressure and stresses the heart (Source: nccam.nih.gov).

Please note that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that ephedra was effective for only short-term weight loss. Does that sound like a permanent solution?

There are lots of other ‘shortcuts’ out there, from laxatives to harsh stimulants. There are also some honestly good products that can help us lose fat if they are used in conjunction with regular exercise and healthy nutrition. Green tea is a good example. Clinical studies conducted by Dr. Abdul Dulloo, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland brought the conclusion that green tea weight raises metabolic rates and speeds up fat oxidation (Source: green-tea.dminternational.biz).

THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE:

So what’s the take-home message? The bottom line is that there is no ‘get slim quick’ miracle out there. The only way to achieve permanent fat loss is by following the same advice we’ve been hearing for years: exercise regularly and watch what we eat.

Let’s watch out for products that claim we can achieve the body we’ve always wanted without diet or exercise. We know that’s not true, so let’s not be tempted by the empty promise.

Article Source: http://www.dietarticles.info

Tracie Johanson is the founder of Pick Up The Pace, a 30-minute exercise studio for women focusing on fitness, health and nutrition for maximum weight loss. Please visit www.letspickupthepace.com/ for more information.