Something we do or do not do has caused us to be where we are now. We must admit we have consciously or unconsciously developed behaviors that support our “heavy” life style. Usually the additions or omissions are not health based choices. We can have it all. We can be healthy and slim if we change a few eating and living patterns we have acquired over the years. Let’s look back to when we were slimmer. Were we more active? Did we eat out less? Remembering our past can give us ideas on how to direct our future. Taking one step at a time we can alter our behaviors. It is usually too overwhelming to try to change everything at once. If we walked a half hour to and from bus stops when we were thinner we need to put that walking back into our day. Take out the donut and coffee in the morning. Replace with a low fat, smart carbs or real food snacks. Every few days add in a bit more activity and take out a high cal food and replace with the whole grain or wholesome version. This may not help our jeans button for the Fri. party but it will help them button in a month or two. There will also be changes you can’t see on the outside. You will be taking steps to lower risks from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and hypertension. Dr.’s are warning us that our lifestyles are bringing these maladies to us at an earlier and earlier age. Let’s reverse that as well.

When will this weight go away? When did this weight come? It probably came an ounce here, a pound there until you couldn’t hide it anymore. Be realistic and set a time loss goal that allows you to incorporate your new thin thinking behaviors into your everyday life. As healthy behaviors replace the weight gaining behaviors less thought will go into losing and more into living.

Try these easy steps to a thinner healthier you.

1, Never go hungry! Do not skip meals. Better yet, add three small meals (not junk food) mid morning, mid afternoon and early evening. Eating too close to retiring does not give the body time to use the calories and they will be put into storage; hip and thigh storage.

2, Always start your engine with good fuel. A morning started with healthy nutrients will kick start your metabolism and keep you energized all day. Morning foods break your sleep time fast but do not need to be “breakfast” food. Enjoy any healthy foods and avoid fats, sugars and sodium in excess.

3, Eat smaller meals. By down sizing your plate you can fill it and eat it clean while you are in fact eating less but not being emotionally deprived by looking at skimpy servings on a large plate. Frequent meals provide a steady fuel supply and never let the munchies hit as hunger is no longer taking control. The end result is a slow steady calorie burn, the kind that makes a withdrawl not a deposit to your body’s storage areas.

4’ Choose the amount of weight you want to lose. Match your desired loss and the level of calorie reduction needed to get there. Your Dr’ can help with this as you decide on your new level of food consumption. Give yourself time to adjust. Expect to slip up and praise yourself if you don’t. Remember fresh foods, low fat choices, whole grains and your desire to be healthy and thin.

5’ Drink lots of water. Water aids in the fat burning process and keeps cells hydrated.

6’ Avoid excesses. Sugars and salt need to be restricted to healthful levels.

7’ Watch your fat intake. Avoid trans fats, use olive, peanut, or canola oils. Trim meat. Include heart healthy omega 3’s.

8’ Exercise. Leave the car and walk if you can. Park at the wrong end of the lot, clime stairs, walk fido, play with your kids and keep moving. Join a gym; get an exercise buddy. Be consistent, realistic and patient and you will be successful!

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.

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.