Far to easy. You need a plan that works for you, a plan that blends in to your lifestyle. A plan that you can live with. Forever. That’s the real secret to permanent weight-loss.
Most people go on train wreck diets. They follow the latest fads. They start a diet, lose some weight, then go off of it and gain all the weight back. Sometimes even more. That’s why it's called yo-yo-dieting--up and down and back up. You don’t want to do that, it’s bad for your health.
Permanent weight loss requires changes in your lifestyle. Changes in your behaviors. You can’t expect to lose weight by doing the same things like overeating and not exercising.
You can’t expect to lose weight and keep it off by ignoring good nutrition and eating foods that are bad for you. Junk food leads to a junked body. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, stroke and arthritis are just a few of the health problems associated with obesity.
When I say “junk food” I don’t mean just fast food, donuts, or candy, I mean all the foods that don’t seem so bad but are full of sugar, starches and fats. Foods like fruit juice are full of sugar. You’re better off to eat the fruit and drink some water. Foods like pasta, rice and french fries are full of empty calories and cause an insulin response that puts your body into fat storage mode.
Permanent weight loss requires you to be informed about what foods have good nutritional value and what ones don’t. You don’t need to take a college nutrition course but you do need to know about some basic “nutrition 101” principles.
To be successful with your weight loss and management you need to know the difference between proteins, fats and carbohydrates. You need to know how much protein you should be eating, how much carbohydrates and what kinds of fats are good for you.
You need to know the effects of sugar on your body. Most mothers think they’re doing a good thing by giving their children apple juice instead of soda.
Being confused and uniformed leads to weight problems. Weight problems not only for yourself but maybe even for your family. Young children have no control over the foods they eat. Food is either fed to them or placed before them until they're old enough to feed themselves and prepare their own food. Sure they can refuse to eat, but it’s usually not the cookies and cakes but the carrots and broccoli.
Children can be taught early on to eat healthy or to eat unhealthy. If parents recognized this fact and were aware of the habits they were passing on through modeling lifestyle behaviors the obesity epidemic could probably be reversed in a few years. And I’m sure the rates of drinking and smoking in young people would go down as well.
I can hear some well meaning mothers or grandparents saying, "well they have to have some treats some of the times. " Maybe on an occasional birthday. But when the children are older and as people become more educated about the causes of obesity there’s going to be some serious finger pointing.
Remember when the Marlboro Man was cool? Remember when everyone smoked, even pregnant women? Things have changed haven’t they? The social stigma attached to smoking will be dwarfed by the stigma that is becoming attached to obesity. And there's a difference between smoking and obesity. You can smoke in private but you can’t hide the fact that you’re fat.
What about portion control? We’ve become a super-sized nation because of super-sized portions. When it comes to restaurants we rate them good or bad according to how much food is on our plates.
At home, people are too busy these days to weigh, measure and count food units. You need simple ways to eyeball serving sizes for portion control.
A simple, easy to follow, no fuss plan is the answer to your weight problem. Why complicate things and cause yourself even more stress?
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