Think about that statement for a minute: why is that important in your “journey?”

Because if you think that just eating less and exercising you will lose 100 pounds in the next week…I am sorry to say, you are probably in for disappointment! It’s just not reasonable to think that you are going to lose a bunch of weight, and keep it off, in such a short amount of time.

Now, if you were to take the philosophy of “One Pound at a Time,” as what is suggested within these pages, you are going to have a much easier time adjusting to your new diet/nutrition/exercise program, and you will be more likely to succeed AND CONTINUE TO SUCCEED!

Why Do You Wish To Lose Weight?

Because your spouse wants you to?

Because your kids want you to?

Because your doctor tells you to?

Because your friends tell you to?

I suggest you write down your own reasons for wanting to lose weight. Here are some ideas:

- I want to lose weight because I want to gain a healthy respect for my body

- I want to lose weight because I want to live longer for my family

- I want to lose weight because I want to enjoy life more by doing the things that my weight restricts me from doing

- I want to lose weight because I want to feel great about my myself and my appearance

- I want to lose weight because I want to travel and enjoy all that life has to offer me

- I want to lose weight to have the strength and energy I need to enjoy life like having the energy to chase my children

- I want to lose weight so that I can be an active participant in my own life and not just a spectator
Other Reasons Why You May Want To Lose Weight

No doubt a big reason why you want to lose weight is linked to your physical appearance. This scratches far below the surface than just wanting to lose weight to fit into something or simply hating the way your thighs look.

Excess weight can impact on self esteem. No one wants to be obese because it has so many negative connotations in our society.

Because we believe we are not attractive and appealing to others can make us rethink our own self worth and value. This can lead to social and emotional problems and distort the way we perceive ourselves as well as how we interact with others.

This can become a vicious cycle within itself where we eat because of how we feel to medicate the pain yet often end up feeling worse along with gaining even more weight. The cycle continues.
Take your time and think of something that is truly worthy of you and you will stick with it like glue. While doctors, your family, and/or your friends may tell you that you need to lose weight, the one person that is the most important in your decision to follow through is YOU. YOU must want to lose the weight for yourself – FIRST!

Choosing to lose weight and maintaining your weight loss is going to require a life-change. A change that you must be 100% committed to, because without that dedication, you are already set up to fail.

One way to help you in your Journey is to think about your Journey in very small steps.

One of your very first few steps is making the commitment to succeeding, truly believing you can succeed, and picturing yourself having already succeeded. That is a key component.

So, are you committed to the Journey? Are you ready for a New You? Is that a “YES”?

GREAT! You are well on your way to being successful!

One of the first challenges you will face is discovering how you are going to lose weight. There are thousands upon thousands of places both online and offline that claim to have the “magic” formula to weight loss.

Please realize that weight loss does not just happen overnight.

It will take time, commitment, and effort on your part.
The good thing is that you are off to a great start with having made that commitment on the previous page!

On the following pages are some of the tips and techniques to start your Journey. These are some realistic ideas to help you succeed, as well as resources you can use to help you find or create the best plan for you.

Your plan will need to include a mixture of both diet changes and exercise. While you can lose some weight with only doing one or the other, to be successful you need a good combination of both!

The reason is that once you start losing weight with your diet change, you should include exercise to help tone up your new body.

Don’t worry though … it can be done, and it doesn’t have to be painful…and everything you will ever need is right here in this site!

You have seen all the ads … all promising to help you lose weight instantly.

While some may work, many don’t. Sure, you can lose weight quick and many times you will, BUT…what they don’t tell you is that many times that rapid weight loss is water weight. AND IT WILL RETURN!

So, what we have to do is set realistic and achievable goals.

Remember our “One Pound at A Time” philosophy mentioned in the beginning?

That is our immediate goal. Start with ONE POUND! Then another, and another, etc. Pretty soon, you will be reaching your goals and starting to feel and see the changes happening.

Once you have been successful with your smaller, short-term goals, start setting a little bit longer-term goal. “Today is Monday, July 9th. I will lose 5 pounds by July 31st.” That is not only reasonable, but achievable!

Think of this: if you set a goal of 5 pounds each month, that is a total of 60 POUNDS in a year.

Stick to your goals the best you can. If you find that your goals are not becoming a reality, scale them back. Make them achievable, because that is a key ingredient to your successful Journey!

Scales – Get Rid Of Them!

How many times have you stepped on the scale and been depressed? A bunch!

JUST GET RID OF THE SCALES!

The best way to tell if you are losing weight: are your pants falling down more?! Do you feel better?

Seriously, all the scales do is give you a number and can be very deceptive.
Here is an example: suppose you are dieting and exercising and in your exercise routine, you are starting to build more muscle.

You are feeling better so you step on the scale and OH NO!!! You have gained weight! Well, guess what? Muscle weighs more than fat!!

If you didn’t know that, now you do. But what if you didn’t know that? You would assume that all your work is wasted and you may quit.

So, LOSE THE SCALES! They wont help you to achieve your goals.

Find out if weight gain has an emotional effect on you. Some brief questions.

- Are you conscious of your physical appearance when you are out in public?

- Are you comfortable with looking at yourself in the mirror or do you avoid it?

- Are you concerned with what others think of your body?

- Do you feel that the only way you can truly be happy is to change the physical things you don’t like about yourself?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions then it’s possible that your weight has an emotional influence over you. Your appearance shouldn’t keep you unhappy. Your appearance really should be the icing on the cake to the person you are within.

You have the power to do something about it. You can either continue to live with it or do something about it.

The fact that you are here says a lot about you and proves that you are willing to take action. I congratulate you for that and know you will find answers here. Just remember this book aims to re-educate you and unlearn all of the bad habits you may have picked up over the years. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. You are about to experience some life changing truths so just stay with it and absorb as much as you can.

Health Issues

A big motivation for wanting to lose the weight could also be for health reasons. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that we are living in an obese nation. We are suffering in epic proportions from diseases our ancestors 100 years ago had never even heard of.

You know the effects that carrying excess weight can have on the body even in your joints and your lower back but we often forget what impact this is having to our internal organs.

Did you know that excess abdominal fat is the most dangerous type of fat to have? This is because this is most active of them all.

The fat is packed around your intestines, your liver and heart and interferes with the way those organs work. This fat secretes chemicals and hormones that inhibit proper function of those vital organs. It is also an indicator of Type II diabetes and heart disease.

For women if your waist is more than 35 inches at the belly button and for men if is more than 40 inches than you lie within the high risk category of heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure and stroke and must lose weight.

Excess fat in the body causes the arteries in your heart to become clogged which raises your blood pressure to force the blood to your organs. Having just an extra 30 excess pounds forces your heart to work twice as hard to do the same job it did when you were just 30 pounds lighter.

Excess blood pressure damages the blood vessels in your kidneys and can cause them to fail. High blood pressure is also linked with blindness caused from burst and bleeding blood vessels in the backs of the eyes.

High blood pressure can also cause weakened blood vessels to burst and bleed on the brain causing a stroke. Blood clots can also become lodged within narrowed arteries also causing a stroke.

Diabetes causes the blood to thicken which raises the risk of blood clots forming resulting in strokes and heart attacks from your already thickened arterial walls.

So, as you can see being overweight can cause a cascade effect on our health, it affects everything. Each organ relies upon the other to work effectively to keep us well. Throw any one of those off balance and it affects everything.

The simplest solution is to just lose the weight. We seem to think that having a little less cake or cutting back on saturated fats is a death sentence but not nearly as deadly as the one that plays havoc with our bodies when we choose to eat that foods that put us there.

In a medical trial to test the long term effects of excess weight on individuals, a study of around 600 people was conducted over a 14 year period. The results revealed that participants who were ‘overweight’ had a 34% greater chance of heart failure than someone at their ideal weight. Participants who were obese had a massive 104% increase in risk of heart failure over someone at their ideal weight.

Incredible what a little extra weight can do over a period of time.

The Difference Between Being Overweight And Obese

So what is the difference between being overweight and being obese?

It is the BMI (Body Mass Index) that differentiates between the two whereby it is the weight above what is generally considered to be a healthy ideal weight for a specific height.

For example:-

For adults whose BMI is between the range of 25 and 30 are considered to be overweight

For adults whose BMI is greater than 30 are considered to obese.

You can determine your BMI be going here:

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

Sobering isn’t it? The fact that carrying even a little excess weight can have detrimental effects on our health is mind blowing and you don’t even have to be morbidly obese for that to happen.

Most medical professionals consider someone who is 5% to 15% above their ideal weight to be considered as overweight whereas people who are 20% to 30% above their ideal weight are considered to be obese, anything above 30% and you fall into the range of being morbidly obese.

So what weight should you be? Find out your ideal weight for your height by going here:

http://www.halls.md/ideal-weight/body.htm

There is no motivation quite like knowing the health risks associated with excess weight. By now you will know which category you lie within and now you can lose the weight for more than just looking nice in a pair of jeans but to extend your life expectancy and increase your quality and enjoyment of life.

We are creatures of habit. We have amassed lots of habits that have been developed over the years that sometimes become subconscious.

We are not aware of the things we do until we purposely take notice of them. For instance, observing the thought that leads to the action of us reaching for the cookie. What was the thought? Were we feeling upset?, distressed?, depressed?, angry?

If you find you want to reach for the jar of cookies, catch yourself in that moment. Examine your thinking. How are you feeling? What state of mind are you in? What is your mood? Disrupt your pattern by forming a new one.

Rather than indulging your craving, count back slowly from 100. With each number you find yourself wanting the cookies less and less. This is because you are disrupting your usual pattern of behavior and consciously replacing it with a new one. You’ll find that after 100 that cookie won’t be as tempting as it was.

Emotional eating can also extend to happiness too. Childhood habits can see us overindulge for doing something good which can spill into adulthood where we treat ourselves with food for rewards. This is fine as long as it’s periodically.

There are ways to treat yourself other than eating. Why not get your nails or you hair done? Why not treat yourself to a nice hot bath and a facial? Why not have a healthy lunch with the boys or the girls? There are other rewarding ways to treat yourself that are not based around tempting treats. It’s just a matter of thinking a little outside the square and replacing old habits with new and healthier ones.

Boredom Eating

If you find yourself reaching for that tempting delicious high fat food because you have nothing else to do, why not call a friend for a chat? Why not take up a sport and meet up with your friends instead? Guaranteed you’ll have so much fun you won’t even be thinking about junk food.

Mistaken Hunger

It should be a healthy appetite that drives us to eat. When our energy needs replenishing because we’ve depleted our energy stores our appetite signals for us to eat. It is a simple biological reflex. We get hungry, we eat. Sometimes our hunger is more psychological than physical and thinking our body is hungry, we feed it.

If you have eaten your last meal within the past 2 hours more often than not it will be thirst which your body can sometimes interpret as hunger. If you know you have just had your last meal within a short timeframe ago, why not try drinking a glass of water then waiting 30 minutes for the brain to register it. If you are still hungry after this time period then have a light snack.

Sometimes we eat out of boredom. If you find yourself sitting around and instinctively reaching for the fridge or the pantry, catch yourself.

It’s all about replacing bad habits with good ones because that is what will make your weight loss a permanent success. It goes far deeper than losing weight for the sake of it but rather arming you with the tools to make sure you really succeed this time.

Why we need a permanent solution is because we are reprogramming ourselves and our attitude towards our food. Look at this way, it took years to form these habits and it will take a little time to break them and create newer healthier habits in its place.

Nothing is more apparent then when we eliminate all of our favorite foods at once. Our body goes into shock, tries to override our good intentions and sabotages our efforts. Another diet bites the dust simply because we weren’t aware of how we conditioned our bodies over the years.

Our bodies are marvelous pieces of machinery and will stop at nothing to preserve us at all costs. That means that if we drastically reduce our food intake our body will shut down our metabolism to force us to eat. When we do, we binge and gain back all the lost pounds we fought so hard to lose. Don’t hate your body for that, it is just doing what comes naturally.

So how do we get around this? Work in alignment with your body. Introduce changes gradually. Don’t shock your body or it will thwart your best intentions to lose weight.

Medications

There are some medications of which the side effects can be weight gain.

Medications such as some antidepressant drugs can cause you to sleep more and expend less calories making you more susceptible to weight gain. There is also a tendency to snack on more carbohydrate rich foods which also contributes to weight gain.

There are things that you can do to lessen the degree of weight gain experienced by taking these types of medications.

Try to reduce the amount of calories you consume by identifying them in your current diet.

Don’t do anything drastic just eat smaller portions and reduce the amount of carbohydrates you may be consuming, the body needs a balanced diet so don’t be tempted to eliminate carbohydrates completely from your daily eating plan.
Make sure that you get plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, lean protein and whole grains.

Incorporate more exercise into your life to counteract the effect your medication might be having on your weight.

If all else fails, consult your doctor for any alternative medication equivalents without the side effects.

If you are on a diet you are losing weight for the here and now. If on the other hand you want to lose weight on a more permanent basis this is what I would refer to as a “lifestyle change”.

Think long term and permanent change which is what you want to get out of this program as opposed to just wanting to lose weight for the moment.

Because dieting is for the short term once we depart from it we gain back the weight as we fall back into our old eating habits. This leads to “Yo-Yo Dieting” as we go from one diet to the next in the hope that this is the solution to our weight problems we have been searching for.

Just like a Yo-Yo goes up and down so does our weight with each diet we embark on.

Each diet has the same symptoms. We start out and experience quick results, hit a plateau, binge then gain back all the weight plus more.

Why do we gain all of the weight back plus extra? Our bodies have what we call a set point. Think of it as your body’s natural thermostat. It regulates your weight.

When you drop weight after starting your new diet especially on diets that restrict caloric intake, your body goes into shock. Say your starting weight prior to commencing the diet was around 170 pounds.

You lose 5 pounds. Then you lose another 3 pounds. Suddenly your weight loss comes to grinding halt. You cut even more calories in the hopes of keeping the weight loss going but again, you lose zero pounds. By now because you have restricted your calories that your body goes into self preservation, survival mode. This is where evolution as its finest kicks in. Your body overrides you by making you sluggish and lethargic. You have the metabolism of a tortoise. You barely have enough energy to lift your own arm let alone your entire body to continue exercising.

Your body has taken over and thwarted your attempts to lose weight. You can’t work out to lose the pounds you simply don’t have the energy for and to top it off you have an increased appetite.

Your body is stimulating your appetite to make you gain back all of the weight you spent a lot of effort to lose. So not only do you eat, but you eat lots. Your body’s thermostat makes sure that your weight goes back to your original 170 pounds, in fact it doesn’t just stop there.

It makes you add a few extra pounds on top of that to store away for a rainy day. Because you put your body through trauma it thought it was starving so it literally made you store extra fat for times of famine to safeguard you against losing any more weight again.

So there you have it, you just hurt your chances of losing weight by provoking your body into defense mode and making you gain extra weight.

It’s well documented that this happens which is how the phrase got to be coined as “Yo-Yo” dieting. Your weight goes down then it comes back up again and then some.

There is a way around Yo-Yo dieting and the secret lies in not shocking your body into retaliation but rather working in alignment with it. I’ll explain more on that a little later in this book.

Fad Diets

If any of the diets you have ever tried in the past fell into any of these categories, there’s a good chance it was a fad diet.

1. Promises you will lose lots of weight in one week with little effort

2. Fails to mention disclaimers or recommend doctors consultation prior to dieting

3. Suggests you eliminate entire food groups from your eating plan such as carbohydrates or dairy or vegetables

4. Restricts you to a set eating plan without considering what your preferences are, in other words lack of flexibility setting you up to fail

5. Fails to reinforce good and health habits and lifestyle changes

6.Reduces your eating to less calories than you can healthily function on

7. Goes against sound medical information

8. Is dependent upon certain supplements, diets or products to be effective

9. Makes over the top, unrealistic claims

10. Lack of scientific proof that it works and why it does

Sound familiar? Most diets you see fall into these categories. They rely on doing something drastic just to differentiate themselves from other diets whether that be eliminating entire food groups, eating certain foods on certain days, eating only one color of food or eating only one kind of food for days at a time.

Fad diets all have the same thing in common. The solution to weight loss they offer is only ever temporary a band aid quick fix to a problem that has been years in the making. Once the diet ceases the lost weight quickly returns. When this happens it is more often than not, fluid not fat that was lost in the first place which is why it is gained back so quickly.

None of these diets are sustainable. You simply cannot survive on them. The thing that makes you weight is the difficulty of adhering to such a strict diet in the first place. You go off your food because of the lack of variety and that is what makes you lose weight, or do you?

Fad diets are extreme ways to drop pounds quickly but the results are not permanent, you more often lose fluid and muscle than fat so not only are you not losing the fat you wanted to but you are damaging your health in the process. Any diet that eliminates entire food groups is not good for you.

We have a variety of foods to eat for a reason, because we need them for our nutrients and it is only those foods that can provide them, to eliminate them means that we can become vitamin deficient. To cut out one or more food groups is setting yourself up for disaster and harmful to your overall health.

The Four Basic Food Groups:

- Grains, whole grains, cereals, breads, pasta
- Vegetables and Fruits
- Dairy , milk, cheese, yoghurt
- Meat, protein, poultry, fish, eggs

Breads, cereals and grains gives you sustained energy throughout the day as well as giving you bulk to help properly clean out your bowels protecting you against bowel cancer. In fact by just adding
35 grams of fiber per day can reduce rectal cancer by 67%.
Eating grains also protects against the risk of diabetes and insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease and lowers cholesterol levels.

In a study of 70,000 women over a 12 year period it was found that women who consumed grains as part of their daily diet weighed less than the women who consumed less grains.

Dairy, cheese and yoghurt helps strengthen bones and protect against future osteoporosis.

Studies have confirmed that a diet rich in calcium, magnesium and potassium which are nutrients found in dairy foods actually lowers blood pressure while reducing the risk of hypertension. It is also an important component for proper muscle and nerve function.

Fruits and Vegetables contain antioxidants which fight against free radicals that age the body. Like grains they also provide bulk for the bowel and therefore reduce the risk of contracting bowel and rectal cancer. Eating oranges and tomatoes also increases the ability to absorb iron from meat. Fruits and vegetables also contain carotenoids which reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke. Fruits and vegetables have been linked with memory improvement and slow mental decline with age.

Meats gives a natural source of Vitamin B12 that cannot be sourced from non meat products. The body can metabolise and absorb Vitamin B12 fives more from meat compared to its pill form. It is a rich source of iron which is needed to carry precious oxygen the organs and muscles and for proper neural function.

You can consume enough from your diet naturally that you shouldn’t have the need for vitamin supplements.

Dark green leafy vegetables are a great source for iron but compared with meat, weight for weight 100 grams of liver contains around 6,000 micrograms of iron compared to 325 micrograms in 100 grams of spinach. So as you can see protein is a great pure source of iron and many other vitamins and you can stay healthy by consuming around 75 grams 3 times per week.

The Recommended Daily Servings For A Balanced Diet

Grains: the recommended daily dietary amount is around 6 ounces per day

The reason why we don’t combine your fruit and vegetable intake is because you need to eat a specific amount from each.

Vegetables: 2 ½ cups per day

Fruits: 2 cups per day

Dairy: 3 cups per day

Meat and Beans: 5 ½ ounces per day

These fats tend to be the saturated fat and of the Trans fat variety. There is a link between saturated fats and cardiovascular heart disease, it is this type of fat that raises your cholesterol levels. It usually exists in diets that are high in animal fats which is why the Atkins and low carb diet models aren’t usually the best kind.

Although Atkins himself has found no increase in cholesterol levels with his way of eating, we still do not know what the long term effects this kind of eating will produce. Diets high in saturated (animal) fats have been linked to certain cancers.

If your diet is high in cholesterol, fats deposit themselves on your arterial walls restricting blood flow to your heart and to your body. Your heart then has a tougher job of pumping blood to the rest of your body which increases your blood pressure.

Your heart may also increase in size to force the blood through your arteries causing angina a condition known as enlargement of the heart. Through blood pressure increase comes kidney damage and damage to the smaller capillaries in your eyes causing eventual reduction in eyesight and possible blindness if blood pressure is not controlled.

Trans fatty acids are amongst the worst kind of fat to have in high quantities in your diet. Fats or oils that have partial hydrogenation are more than likely to be Trans fatty. This type of fat lowers the amount of healthy cholesterol (HDL – high density lipoproteins) which throws the system out of balance by increasing the amount of bad cholesterol present.
Good Fats

In their basic building block form they are simply known as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. They play several important roles in hormone production and help to aid in proper cell function.

These types of fats contain Omega-3 fatty acids, fish is a source rich in this fat. Omega-3 has been known to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. If you want to preserve your health for the long term then you should make fish and fish oils a regular part of your diet.

If embarking on a diet low in fat the positives are that less fat consumed, less fat stored on your body. You are still able to eat many of the foods you enjoy without the restrictions of the Atkins or low carb diets. You get to have a balance in your diet. Simply restricting foods high in bad fats from your eating plan means you get to eat a wide variety of foods just avoiding the high fat versions.

Just remember, do not eliminate all fats from your diet, not all fats are bad for you. We need a certain amount of good fats in our daily diet for our bodies to function at their peak.

Be mindful this is still a diet nonetheless and you still have to exercise restraint over yourself when selecting foods. This diet is not as restrictive as those calorie counting ones yet you still may be tempted to cheat. If you are to go on this type of diet the control has to come from you rather than from a strict eating plan that does the meal plan for you.

What it comes down to as with anything in life, we have to be self governing and exercise commitment to our goals. Nobody can make you lose the weight or lose the weight for you. You have to want to lose the weight and stick to it until you do.

What We Eat – Our Calorie Consumption

When we consume more calories than we burn our bodies store the excess away as fat. As I mentioned before our bodies are extraordinary creations and tend to store away any excess fat we don’t need in case of leaner times that might lie ahead.

However today those times are few and far between and because we live in the developed world rarely are there ever any times when food is truly scarce so we continue to keep storing at away.

Compared with 100 short years ago, you would be hard pressed to find any of our ancestors stricken with obesity because they worked hard in order to eat. They would either have to grow and harvest their own food or go to great lengths to get it. Because there was a certain amount of effort that went into daily survival they burned more calories compared to our readily accessible society where everything we want is at our fingertips.

Even what was considered luxury items such as flour, sugar and chocolate to our ancestors have become everyday fixtures of the modern pantry. Things are too readily available to us that nothing is a treat anymore and we tend to over indulge ourselves on a regular basis.

As a result of this way of living we are left to find ways to get rid of the fat we spent years gaining. If only we could look at our lifestyle and realize the answer is staring back at us from our pantries and not in the bottom of a jar of diet pills or the next fad diet that blows our way.

Understanding how our bodies operate, how they burn fat, what makes them gain weight is all instrumental in your own personal weight loss journey. Educating yourself on how your body works only empowers you to make better decisions for yourself.

Why We Gain Weight

We are all different. It’s frustrating to see people who eat like a horse never gain a single pound. They probably have very active metabolisms which acts like the body’s natural furnace burning calories effortlessly the moment they are absorbed into the body. These people are like the hummingbirds of society, no matter how much they consume their weight remains perfectly controlled.

But like the rest of us mere mortals, we may be disheartened when we experience the exact opposite by having what is known as a low metabolic rate. As you can guess when you have a low metabolic rate anything you eat seems to be directly deposited on your love handles without much effort.

Low Metabolism

Our metabolisms are sensitive to our activity levels and the proportion to lean muscle tissue we have in comparison to fat.

Our muscle tissue burns calories for energy. The more muscle tissue the more fat we burn. The less muscle tissue we have the more fat escapes into our bodies and gets deposited into fat cells for storage. Think of your fat cells as storage space where the excess fat is deposited if not burned. Everything has a destination it is either stored or burned.

If we live sedentary lives and we are not physically active our metabolism reacts by slowing down. When our metabolic rate is slow we lose the ability to properly burn calories and we store the unburned energy as fat. This is why we gain weight if we are not regularly exercising.

People that are more physically active have a greater muscle mass which burns more calories and hence more fat. Some people however are genetically predisposed to having a higher metabolism and will always be able to burn calories effortlessly. I know, it doesn’t seem fair but just because you may not have been genetically blessed with a fast metabolism doesn’t mean you can’t have one.

Little fact:

Did you know that 2 people one with greater muscle mass than the other can be sitting side by side enjoying a movie together. Although they are undertaking absolutely no physical activity for that time period, the person with the greater muscle mass will actually burn off more calories than the one with the lesser muscle mass. Incredible what having a little more lean muscle mass can do.

Here’s How You Increase Your Metabolism

Start exercising more, no matter what type. Any form of exercise will impact on your metabolism. You will burn lots more calories than doing no exercise at all.

Instead of having larger meals, why not try portioning? Smaller meals at regular intervals will keep your metabolism burning steadily rather than weigh it down with heavy meals. Ever feel lethargic after a large meal? Energy is diverted away from the extremities and put into digestion which makes you tired. Don’t weigh down your metabolism with large meals, small is the way to go.

Avoid crash dieting and restrictive calorie control. Starvation will only throw your body into survival mode and will derail you from your weight loss program completely. Remember fad diets only work temporarily, any weight loss is almost guaranteed to return once coming off these programs. So if you want to lose weight, you have to feed your body. Don’t drive your body to the point where it’s so fed up it will force you to binge to get some food.

Try the miracle exercise almost anyone can do and best of all it’s free. Walking is fantastic for exercising all of your large muscle groups while getting your heart rate up. Just walking for at least 30 minutes per day for 3 times per week can greatly increase your metabolism and your weight loss efforts than from just dieting alone.

This is often a hot topic of debate however most doctors believe you should always start the day with breakfast. The results have shown that those who skip breakfast are more inclined to overeat later on during the day which of course diverts precious energy into the act of digestion. It also gives you the energy you need to get through your day. Did you know that you still burn calories as you sleep so that you need to replenish them when you wake? This is why the meal is called “Break” “Fast”.

Even the speed at which you eat can have an effect. Being aware of how much you eat at a meal and being aware of every bite will decrease the need to top up your plate.

How many times have you sat down to a meal and ate so fast you wondered where the food went? Being aware how you are eating will make the food last longer and seem like more. You will be less likely to get extra portions and will be more satisfied on less.

Remember it takes at least 30 minutes for your brain to register that it is full so give it time. I also mentioned earlier that sometimes we mistake hunger for first, instead of eating more food try having a glass of water instead.

Your Genetics And Your Metabolism

Your genetic makeup may have an effect on your metabolism but only a minor one. Don’t think that because your predisposition to being obese is a death sentence and that you can’t lose weight. You absolutely can, there are several things that are within your power that you can do so don’t think for a second that you are doomed by your genetics because you are not. Because genetics only counts for a small amount when it comes to your weight loss the tools you have at your disposal lies within what you eat and how much you move.

How Much You Move

Let’s face it. If you want to lose weight exercise is an integral part of the process. You simply cannot get around this fact because it is by this process of exercise that you burn fat. It is the only way for your body to shift the rolls of fat or the love handles that were deposited over time.

Exercise can be something as simple as walking. Don’t feel you have to hit the gym to burn the pounds or step onto a mechanical treadmill while being subjected to blaring music. With walking you can enjoy the outdoors, breathe the fresh air, enjoy the view and get real benefits from genuine hill climbing. And best of all it’s free.

Exercising just 30 minutes per day 3 times per week or more has so many benefits that have far reaching consequences long after you’ve done the exercise.

Exercise reinvigorates and energizes you.

Exercise releases your natural feel good chemicals known as endorphins. In fact even the 30 minute walks 3 times per week can greatly lower your stress levels and make you feel euphoric, calmer and relaxed.

With exercise also comes the repairing and building of muscles mass which in turn increases your metabolism. Don’t think that you have to look like The Incredible Hulk muscular to burn fat, even the slightest extra muscle tissue can greatly increase your fat burning efforts. The kind of muscle mass will be the shapely and attractive as the fat burns away. So don’t think for a second when you are building muscle mass that you are building bulk. You are simply creating more lean muscle tissue to burn more fat.

Through education and sound knowledge on knowing how your body burns and stores fat means that you are in a strong position to finally shed the weight once and for all.

Knowing how to recognize fad diets and how to avoid them means that you are so much more ahead of the game than you were before. You won’t be tempted to fall for these fly by night diets that promise the earth and deliver nothing but disappointment.

You have also learned that it is a lifestyle that you are pursuing and not a quick fix. It was years of habit forming eating that got you here in the first place and it would take more than a week’s worth of dieting to undo it. It can be done, you can do it. The thing that you should be excited about is that now you finally have the answers to really do it this time and not some band aid temporary solution to a lifelong struggle.

As you can see, weight loss is so much more than just the weight itself. It’s more than just looking good or being able to fit into something, although those things have their importance. Weight loss is a holistic thing because it goes deeper than just the issue of the weight itself. It encompasses the drives and motivations as to how we got there in the first place.

So to get rid of the weight once and for all it requires some serious thinking on your part to identify the root cause of the matter and as you have read in previous chapters, it’s more often than not more than just the physical weight itself that is the problem. Once you understand this, the weight will not only come off but it will stay off for good.

Inches or Pounds?

Which is more important? When we start a weight loss program we become obsessed with the scales where we weigh ourselves several times a day to see of that pesky little needle has shifted. Suddenly our entire diet’s success teeters on that one measurement. We weigh ourselves before we eat and after we pee. We weigh ourselves 2 or 3 times a day to see if we have dropped any additional weight throughout the day. Don’t let that scale turn you into a basket case.

Weighing yourself is important as a starting point but what I would do is weigh yourself initially then weigh yourself after every 1 to 2 weeks.

I know, sounds like torture but it will prevent you from becoming a slave to the scale because before you know it, the success of your diet will rely on the number that scale spits out. That’s too much power for a little inanimate device to have over your life. You need to realize that your weight will fluctuate all day every day, that’s a natural thing. Sometimes you hold more fluid on certain days than others and this will reflect itself through the scales. Seeing this fluctuation even after half starving yourself will only make you feel defeated.

The best indication for your weight loss is the way your clothes fit.

You can have 5 different weight fluctuations throughout your day which makes you feel as though you are not succeeding in your diet when in actual fact it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Fat is lighter than muscle. Ever notice when you’re cleaning out a pan filled with fats that it floats to top of the dishwater? That’s because fat is lighter, so then doesn’t it reason to stand that fat will also be the lighter of the two?

So imagine to your horror when you’ve gained 2 pounds on the scale yet you are swimming in your clothes. That’s because you have gained more lean muscle mass, the attractive, toned type not the Arnold Schwarzenegger kind. This is great because the more lean muscle you have the more surface area it covers and the more fat it can grab and burn as energy because that’s really all fat is, unused energy just waiting to be burned.

So just remember when weighing yourself, muscle weighs more. Don’t get worried if you have gained a little especially when you know you are eating right. It just means that your body is changing and reshuffling itself as your body eliminates fat from your body.

My advice, weight yourself once every week or every two weeks, then hide your scale out of sight until the 2 weeks are over. Let your clothing be your indicator as to how much fat you are losing because fat weighs less than muscle yet takes up more space which is why you will notice your clothes getting bigger, or rather you getting smaller.