The main obstacles to success when it comes to losing weight are almost invariably psychological, because unless of specific medical reasons, it is your mind that plays a crucial role in determining a natural yet structured resolution to reduce body fat.
There is no doubt that some people have more difficulty in burning fat than others, as the metabolism varies from person to person depending on life style, age, gender, diet and personal genetics. Age and gender we cannot change, but life style and diet yes.
A matter Of Calorie Balance
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Fat loss is nothing else than the end result of a calorie input smaller than the output, or at least this is the main part of it. Our bodies are in a metabolic state when calories in and out are in balance, we start getting fat when we are in anabolic state, that is when we consume more calories than we expend, and finally we are in a catabolic state when we eat less calories than we spend.
There is no way around it. Modern life style with sedentary jobs and readily available food (and worse still bad food) has made it all too easy to be permanently in anabolic state. This is why there are so many people in need to reduce weight, aka fat tissue, which is really possible by simply changing eating habits and optionally taking up some form of physical activity to increase calorie output and metabolism.
Increase Metabolism
Increased activity also carries a pleasant side effect in that it rises metabolism even at rest, increasing fat burning rate beyond the mere workout time. All this sounds so simple that it is surprising why so many people utterly fail in losing permanently weight, or better fat tissue, and achieve only partial or temporary results at most.
The culprit is the mind. Strictly adhering to a new healthier lifestyle is so alien to most of us that we soon fall into our bad habits, eating more and exercising less, no more no less that when we start smoking again after a period of layoff.
Smoking And Over Eating – 2 Different Felons
Old habits die hard. Just like giving up smoking is best achieved by cutting it out completely once and for all, so is losing weight and achieving a better body tissue composition, more muscle and less adipose tissue, and a better overall health.
Common pitfalls in our journey to weight loss are everyday occurrence. We fall into them on a daily basis like mice into the sticky trap. The sticky trap is a very tempting one, one that we have made ourselves with our cunning ability to process food in a way that satisfies our palates disregarding our health.
Man Made Sticky Traps
Our man made traps come in the guise of cheese cakes, chocolate, cookies, pizzas, pasta, sodas, candies and what not. Sure, we can in theory control ourselves and eat just a bit of those temptations, in practice the majority of people eat too much of those and relapse very easily into them while dieting.
Even without those sweet or flavorsome temptations, we just eat too much even of healthy foods. The problem in this case is simply the ready availability of food that out industrialized age allows us. Back in the time of our hunting and gathering ancestors there were simply no overweight people, food was hard to catch.
In Short
It sounds harsh, but that is probably the truth. Even when we know and understand the simple basics of losing fat, maybe adding a little muscle too, we find ourselves surrounded by a world that makes it so easy to relapse unless you change your life style and follow a specific diet plan. If you are a woman, you should take extra care to reset your leptin hormone sensitivity and stick to a leptin diet plan.
Losing weight and keeping body fat low should be a lifetime lifestyle, just like not smoking. We can start making our lives easier by taking practical steps to make relapsing difficult or even impossible.
Step 1 – Keep it slow and steady: crash diets only achieve temporary weight loss due to water and even muscle depletion. It takes 400 calories or so to make a pound of fat. A crush diet, after an initial fat loss, will also result in muscle tissue loss because metabolism will be reduced.
You must increase your calorie intake progressively as you lose fat tissue because your body ability to burn fat storage is greatest when you are the fattest, later you need to re-adjust your calorie intake in a progressive way until a balance is reached. A program like this will take months of application, not 2 weeks of starvation before you hit the beach. Think long term.
Step 2 – Eat plenty of fiber, vegetables and drink plenty of water or sugar free fluids. Not only does water help you (in part) lose fat by helping your liver process your fat storage, fibers and vegs, beside being healthy, will also make you feel full with less calories.
Step 3 – Optionally, but highly recommended, take on working out. Physical activity will boost your metabolism both while doing it and at rest, considerably increasing your ratio and speed of fat loss all over, thighs, bum, belly, arms, your whole body. Not only that, it is just immensely beneficial to your heart, nervous system and generally your whole body.
Step 4 – Abolish treats from your shopping list at least to begin with, as you WILL fall for them more than you should even though your diet and exercising are OK. Only later, when you have reached your goals and have proven yourself of being strong minded, may you have a will strong enough to manage treats and not overindulge.
Step 5 – If anybody else in the house is buying temptations by the truck loads, ask them to keep them out of sight in a locked cabinet or small refrigerator so you cannot access them even if you want.
Step 6 – Anytime you think of a treat of skipping a workout, think of people miserably failing to give up smoking. Extra fat, like smoking, is a self inflicted inconvenience and a health hazard that should not have been there in the first place. Blank indulgence out, be strong, be healthy and you’ll look strong and healthy.
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