Seeing Weight Control In A Different Light
Naturally thin people do not understand why overweight people struggle so much with weight management. After all, it seems pretty straightforward. If you eat too many calories your body will store what you do not use as fat. If you want to lose weight, just make sure that you are burning more calories than you eat. To stay at the same weight, eat and burn the same number of calories. If "how to lose weight fast" was that simple, nobody would be fat.
Obesity On The Rise
Look around. What do you notice? Yes, there are a lot of fat people walking around. In fact, one-third of adults in the United States are considered obese. That amounts to 72 million people. Kids are fatter today than they were 20 years ago. Children are contending with high cholesterol, type II diabetes and other diseases formerly limited mostly to adults. A full 16% of children are obese. Today's kids are not expected to outlive their parents, something that has not happened in more than 100 years.
Smacking Ourselves Into Line
Even with those glaring statistics and the fact that we know we need to get healthy, that being obese may shorten our lives, so many people still struggle with weight management. Some people develop bulimia, anorexia, or laxative abuse problems in an effort to maintain fat burning. Why is it so hard to keep our weight at a reasonable level? The answer to that question is complicated.
Resigning Ourselves To Our Fates
Is the struggle worth it? Should we just eat whatever we want, enjoy our food and accept the fact that we will probably go to an early grave or should we continue the battle with weight management? The answer lies on the middle ground. Stop for a moment and consider this before jumping on yet another diet plan. What are your expectations of yourself on your new diet? You expect to lose weight, right? You intend to be 100% faithful to your eating plan, exercise religiously and just lose weight once and for all. If that is your expectation of yourself, you are already dooming yourself to failure before you even start. Nobody can be perfect at anything.
Looking At Things Differently
What if we re-framed our expectations to something more reasonable? Let's look at the issue from another angle. Percentages. Could you eat healthy foods 50% of all of your meals in a day or a week? What about 60% of meals? 75%? Could you eat healthy for 90% of your meals? What is the highest percentage of meals you think you could reasonably achieve with a minimum of stress and anxiety? Start there. Increase that percentage over time until you are eating healthy 90% of your meals. That means you ultimately have 10% wiggle room built right into your eating plan.
To boost weight loss, approach exercise in the same manner. Would it be possible for you to exercise 10 minutes a day three times a week? Start there and work up to 30 minute sessions five days a week.
Take Care Of Yourself
Negative consequences and that critical little voice in our heads have not worked to help us manage our weight. Let's try something radically different: kindness and understanding towards that part of ourselves that is really afraid of being deprived.
Let that part of yourself know that you will take the whole fat loss issue one step at a time and that, while you may not be able to indulge every food whim you have, you will make sure that deprivation does not become part of the plan. Then if you keep that promise, you will have truly recognized how to lose weight fast.
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