One of the questions I get asked most frequently is about how to lose weight fast.
And there ARE ways to speed up weight loss. For example, I posted on my blog this week about research which has been done in Australia showing that you lose three times more weight by doing a short 20 minute session of interval training than by going for a longer, less intensive session.
And there are lots of other ways you can accelerate your weight loss if you wish.
There are book shelves full of diet books which will tell you exactly how.
They will give you "sensible" advice like...
- keep to a strict number of calories - no more or less than 1500 calories per day or 1000 less than you need (whichever is the higher figure). (This will give you a balance of consuming the least number of calories without putting your body into starvation mode and reducing your metabolism.)
- follow an all-round program of exercise including aerobics, stretching and muscle strengthening exercises to burn calories and pep up your metabolism
- keep away from all junk food and calorie-laden drinks including white bread, pasta and rice, chocolate, candy, cookies, cakes and pastry and replace them with water, bulky vegetables, lean protein and pulses to fill you up without filling you out.
These types of change will work if you are prepared to follow them through. The problem is that it just isn't easy making those kinds of changes and after quite a short time motivation tends to dwindle. So we either lose weight and put it all back on or we never get to reach our target in the first place.
Result?
We remain constantly on a diet or about to diet or needing to diet, many of us for the rest of our lives. Never mind the faster weight loss dream, we have been trying to lose weight for over 20 years! In fact the average woman in the UK spends 31 years on a diet...
Now, I always liked that story of the tortoise and the hare where the slow old tortoise ends up winning the race. And I think 99% of people would be quicker tackling the problem of weight loss not as if it had to happen yesterday but as something that you WILL achieve but over a number of weeks or months. Not something that you will try and fail at for the rest of your life, never quite getting there in any permanent fashion.
Because there is no getting away from it. Permanent weight loss needs permanent changes to your habits and they don't happen overnight. But you know that by making permanent changes to your habits you will get there faster than any of your friends who will be going on and off diets for the rest of their lives.
If you go through those diet books on your shelves there will be a whole load of tips in there that do not seem so bad, even if the whole program is one you couldn't do for longer than a few days. Which ones would you be prepared to make a permanent part of your life? Start there and don't waiver until those habits are well-established. Then look again and add a few more. That's the fastest way to PERMANENT weight loss.
Copyright 2007, Janice Elizabeth Small
