Sticking with a Weight Loss Program is Difficult
Sticking with a Weight Loss Program is Difficult for most people, because it fights the mind and the metabolism. The first pounds might come easy because there is determination. Then what happens?
Three major battles are fought in dramatic weight loss of 10% to 20%. We hit plateaus. We fight the mind’s effort to sabotage the discomfort. We fight the metabolism’s effort to maintain fat stores against emergencies.
If you have great discipline and determination, you will find ways to win the battles. Since they are battles, we need good strategies. Strategies require tactics. We have a good idea. We need to implement the steps to be successful.
The first important step is the why. Why are we beginning this endeavor? What is the goal and why is it meaningful? If it is not meaningful, we will lose the enthusiasm quickly. Are we trying to reverse diabetes so we can live a normal life? Have we had a major event and weight loss is the strategy to stay alive? Do we have a strong desire to experience all the benefits of a healthy, lean, and fit self?
Setting Out the Strategies for Weight Loss and Fitness
It is common knowledge and scientific knowledge that weight loss requires negative calorie balance. This is where the debates begin on how to do it best. How do we change eating habits to achieve negative calorie balance? How do we include other life factors to support the effort?
The first step can be evaluation. Those who spend some time evaluating their eating habits have been found to stick to programs for a longer period of time. Strict immediate restrictions often backfire with binging. Consider when you eat and whether it is always because you are hungry. Consider whether you only eat things you like. Consider whether there are triggers such as emotions or boredom that begin mindless eating. Do you know when you are full? Do you ever stop eating before you are full? What are your addictions?
A second step can be to take action on the problem areas. We want to eliminate addictions. We want to eliminate eating when we are not hungry. We want to notice when emotions or boredom are triggering the desire to use food as the solution. We want to only eat food we like.
A third step is to start including more quality foods. Quality foods are often bulky without the calories or sharp tastes of sugar and salt. That means we have to get used to eating bland and not getting the stuffed feeling that is often our goal at meals. Bland can be offset with spices but substituting an apple for a cupcake might be a chore for some. Substituting a salad for a cheeseburger might not be attractive.
Along with evolving into healthier foods while eliminating the fat creating foods, we want to start moving. Getting the consumption side of the equation is more important, but at some point, we will want to support the negative calorie building with calorie burning. Moderate movement and weight training are acceptable. Move is first, muscle building is second.
Selecting the type of diet is an arena with many opinions. There are diets for every taste, so to speak. The diet with the most athlete supporters is the Keto or Atkins diets which favor more protein and less carbohydrates. There is good scientific evidence that this is a good strategy.
Fighting the Mind and the Metabolism
Our two major opponents in this endeavor are our mind and our metabolism. Our mind will immediately fight our effort to eat healthier. It likes calorie dense sweet and salty foods to which we might have become accustomed. It enjoys getting stuffed at every meal. Eating less calorie dense foods and stopping before we are full will create resistance in the mind.
The metabolism will begin to fight our efforts with dramatic weight loss. Its job is to preserve energy for the body’s important functions. When it senses resources (food) is dwindling, it becomes alarmed. It decides it better hold on to what the body has stored as fat and reduce services to certain functions. Our weight loss may therefore plateau.
I have successfully fought this metabolic resistance with meal substitutes and intermittent fasting. The meal substitutes supply needed nutrition, and the intermittent fasting allows the body to reduce the need for the metabolism to find energy for digestion.
At a certain point, we stop having cravings. We stop having driving hunger. When we have lost our addictions, we start enjoying healthy substitutions. The mind jumps on board and starts supporting our efforts to health. It realizes we are not trying to kill ourselves, but putting us on a better path.
After a while our habits become our lifestyle. We start enjoying it. We start becoming ambitious as is in our human nature to achieve more. The main strategy is to get to this point.
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Plan your behaviors. Start to plan your meals. Start to plan your exercise. You can lose weight and build strength, flexibility, and aerobic fitness at the same time. It will be a new you. Get a perfect start combining these behaviors with reading the Free E-Book The 3 Week Plan. The idea is to get your behaviors into routine so that health becomes your mode of operation.
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See Coaching for Weight Loss and Building Fitness. I suggest you read The 3 Week Plan. It is a no fail plan if you stick to it.
