Weight Loss And The Issues Of Being Overweight

Weight management ought to be a simple, rational, and straightforward undertaking. After all, it is a simple formula. Eat more calories than you burn in a day and the extra calories get stored as fat. Eat the same amount of calories you burn and you maintain your weight. Eat fewer calories than you need each day and your fat gets used and you lose weight. That does not seem too hard. Does it? Unfortunately, humans have a complicated relationship with food and it is not that easy to get how to lose weight fast.

Obesity Epidemic

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.

Beating Ourselves Up

It is no secret that being overweight sets you up for a myriad of health problems. We know in our heads that it would be best if we achieved some fat burning. Still, many do not even try. Others try and regain the weight. Some people develop eating disorders and laxative addictions. Why does it not seem to matter that we can die at an earlier age? Part of the answer is that food is more than just something we eat to stay alive.

Giving Up, Getting Fatter

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.

Re-framing Expectations

What would happen if we adjusted our expectations of ourselves before we even ate that last piece of chocolate cake before we start our diet? We know that berating ourselves does not work. Re-thinking the issue and looking at it from another point of view is what we need to do. Do you think that you could eat healthy meals 50% of all of your meals in a day or a week? Could you do it for 60%, 70% or 90% of all of your meals? At what point does the thought of not having unfettered access to your favorite foods start to cause anxiety in you? Start right at that point. If you start getting anxious at eating healthy 60% of meals, begin eating healthy for that percentage of meals. You make it okay to eat less healthy foods and so you do not feel deprived. Over a few weeks, work your way up the percentage ladder until you are eating 90% of your meals based on healthy foods and 10% whatever you want to eat.

Now think about exercise in the same way. Could you see yourself actually doing some exercise for five minutes a day? What about 10 minutes or 30 minutes? Could you do this two or three times a week to begin with? Begin at the point you can physically and mentally handle and work your way up to exercising 30 minutes five days a week.

Acknowledging The Fear Of Being Deprived

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 weight management 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.