Losing Weight and Loving it

Would you love to lose weight but hate to go on diets? Would you
love to be fit but hate exercise? Then you’re in good company.

The majority of us would love to find a magic wand which would
take all the effort out of losing weight and getting in shape.
Yet it’s unlikely that there will ever be a pill, potion or
patch in our lifetime that is healthy, safe and delivers on
hyped-up promises of effortless weight loss.

It seems that there’s a simple choice here – learn to love your
shape as it is now (and continue loving it as you get bigger) or
learn to love a new healthy lifestyle.

But that’s not the whole story.

Most weight loss programs expect you to embrace huge lifestyle
changes almost overnight. But it’s pretty hard to learn to love
a complete lifestyle overhaul so quickly. It’s just like
deciding to get married on a first date.

You’d have to be lucky to be a good match. It’s more likely that
eventually the cracks will show, you’ll regret your decision and
you’ll agree to part ways.

And so it is with a new weight loss program. You join a gym, try
a new tough regime and abandon it with a sense of failure in a
couple of weeks. You start a new meal plan, can’t cope with the
hunger, miss your normal foods and give up on that too.

The problem is that we want instant success (ironically so that
we can go back to the lifestyle that made us fat in the first
place!)

But let me make a plea for permanent weight loss rather than
speed. Get to know the new lifestyle, diet or exercise program
you’re considering before you decide if it’s for you. Try out
the diet, sample the activities and decide which parts you can
live with and which you can’t. Try out different approaches,
different foods, different ways of fitting exercise into your
life and gradually adopt the ones which feel good.

The more gradually you build new healthy habits into your life
and the more you choose the ones which suit your preferences,
the more they will feel comfortable and have a chance of
becoming a permanent part of your lifestyle. Build up those new
habits one by one, add more and more healthy delicious meals
into your repertoire and add a little more activity week by week
to your schedule until you have gradually transformed your way
of life into a healthier version.

As you adopt the new healthier habits you will be delighted with
the changes in how you look and how you feel and this will
motivate you like nothing else to make further improvements.
That is the easy way to fall in love with losing weight.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

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