The key to effective weight loss is making changes in your eating and physical activity habits that you can keep up for the rest of your life. As everyone knows, there are many ways to lose weight, some easier than others, but the only weight loss program that is truly effective is one that helps you make changes that you can follow for life. Simply losing the weight then putting it back on when you quit “dieting” is not an effective plan.
Whatever diet plan you choose in your quest for a thinner, healthier you (whether you create your own or follow one of the thousands of diet plans available), you have to choose one that will help you make permanent changes in your lifestyle in both food consumption as well as physical activity.
To be an effective weight loss plan, you must take into account your likes and dislikes—both in food and physical activity. If you like to eat large meals and snacks, for example, you most likely will not be able to adopt a lifelong eating plan that restricts your food intake to small quantities. In this case, you would want to change the types of foods you eat rather than the amount of food you consume. If you dislike strenuous exercise, you probably shouldn’t decide to join a gym. Rather, you should increase your physical activity in less strenuous ways such as walking or yoga or maybe even bowling.
If you want lifelong success with your weight loss goals, you must make small changes and turn those changes into habits. Pick one or two small changes (the smaller and easier the better) and incorporate them into your life for the next 30 days. After about 30 days, you will find that this change has now become a habit. Once that happens, pick a few more small changes you want to make (or one bigger one) and do it again. Don’t get impatient. The changes you are making will be with you the rest of your life. Better to take it slow and easy than rush in and return to your old ways as soon as you give up on the “diet”.
It is important that you understand that an effective weight loss plan will not endanger your health. Plans with extreme calorie restrictions and plans that advocate radical foods or food combinations can be dangerous to your health**. (Not to mention those are not plans which anyone stays on long term). A truly effective long term plan must revolve around the realization that to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your body is burning. You can do that by changing the amount or types of food you eat, by increasing the amount of calories your body is burning or by a combination of the two.
**Note: There are many healthy foods that you can add to your diet which will increase the amount of calories your body uses by raising the body’s metabolism or adding muscle mass. There are also healthy foods which help lower the bodies caloric intake by correcting hormone deficiencies so that the body feels fuller sooner.
If you want to lose the weight, keep it off and become a healthier person, you have to remember that it will take time to make the changes necessary to incorporate all your new habits and remove the old destructive ones. You must look at effective weight loss as a marathon and not a sprint.