Need to lose weight? Thinking about starting yet another diet? What will it be this time? The Carbohydrate Diet? Colon Cleanse? The Cookie Diet? Meal Replacements? Think again. While the latest diet craze might help you to lose a few extra pounds, as soon as that diet is over and you return to your regular eating habits, you may find yourself gaining those extra pounds, and even a few more, back.
If you really want to lose weight, and keep it off, there are essentially only two steps to achieving your goal.
- Change your eating habits.
- Add some form of regular exercise to your lifestyle.
Believe it or not, these two things, when done correctly, are the only two things most people need to do to reach and maintain their target weight.
How can that be? And, even more importantly, how can you do it? Actually, this is an extremely easy process. Start out by keeping a food “diary” and counting your caloric intake. Then, simply begin reducing your caloric intake to a lower level. You can do this several ways, but, by far, the least painful method is to start substituting those high calorie foods with other, low calorie, low fat options. For example, instead of whole milk, or even 2%, buy the skim milk the next time you’re at the grocery. Instead of Crisco, learn to cook with olive oil. Instead of fish sticks, pick up a salmon fillet. And, instead of those greasy chips, pick up a box of the 100 calorie sized popcorn.
Once you get the hang of substituting healthy, low calorie, low fat foods for your normal diet, it is easy to find a replacement for most anything you like to eat. Plus, as you exchange fattening foods for healthy ones, you’ll find your daily caloric intake decreases into that “diet” range, without experiencing the hunger and cravings that derail most diets.
The second part of the plan, adding some form of regular exercise to your lifestyle, takes a little more effort, but is equally as easy once you actually start exercising! And, no, this doesn’t require you to join a health club, buy a home gym, or anything else…unless, of course, you want to. The regular exercise that you choose to add to your lifestyle needs to be something that you enjoy doing, period. It can be as simple as taking a brisk thirty minute walk every day, to something as complicated as joining a health club and using a personal trainer. The most important thing about the form of exercise that you choose is that it is something that you can do regularly for the long term.
Once you have chosen that form of exercise, just do it, for whatever length of time needed, every day. Make exercise as much a habit as the substitution of healthy foods into your diet, and depending on the amount of weight you need to loose, over a period of a few weeks to several months, the excess weight will disappear. And, the best part is, it will disappear almost painlessly and almost effortlessly.
So, what are you waiting for? Check with your doctor, and start this new “diet” so you will never have to DIET again!
Back to topTammie is the owner of The Connections Group and has been in business since 1993. The Connections Group owns and operates nearly 150 websites, including http://www.TheDietConnection.com, and http://www.CompareTreadmillMachines.com.
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