Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin
WHAT THE BEST PROGRAM IS NOT.
The best program is NOT about diets, diet pills, faddiets, or even dieting. While it involves physicalactivity...we're all adults here, I'll use theword..exercise...it is NOT about pushing your physical limits,embarrassing yourself in front of the neighbors, joining anexpensive gym, or hiring a personal trainer. It is NOT aboutjoining a cult, avoiding friends, alienating your family, eatingonly disgusting, uappealing and unappetizing foods or feelingguilty and depressed. Most of all, it should NEVER be aboutBEING ALONE in your struggle.
WHAT THE BEST PROGRAM IS!
In it's simplest form, the best program is the oneyou will stick with. Let's modify that a little and say that itis a healthy, doable, rational, flexible program you will stickwith...that works!
THE BASIC FACTS ABOUT DIETING AND WEIGHT LOSS!
Diets don't work. Yep! That simple. Oh, if you want to drop 5 or10 lbs to look good at your sister's wedding, a quick diet mightbe okay. But if you truly have a weight problem, as over 50% ofAmericans do, it is a lifelong condition and requires lifelongmeasures. However, don't consider yourself doomed to a lifewithout pleasure or happiness, and don't give up. Go back andread the first paragraph, and realize that there are things thatCAN be done, and YOU CAN DO THEM. In the meantime however, letme just cover a few facts. Quick and dirty. You can scan throughthem and just get the basics. This article is not going to bebig enough, nor intimidating enough, to include everything.
WHY DIETS DON'T WORK.
Diets don't work for a lot of reasons, physical and mental, butI don't have enough space here to cover all of them. If youwould like to read more on this, I have a webpage athttp://nodiet4me.net/10reasons.html that gives 10 reasons whydiets don't work, and those aren't the only reasons, either. Themain reason a diet will not work is that your body has somereally effective self-regulating mechanisms. If you deprive itof it's expected calorie intake over a period of time, it willadjust itself to need less calories. Although you will be eatingless (and definitely not enjoying it), your body will settleinto a new pattern and your weight will level off with only asmall weight loss. Even worse, when you stop dieting, as youknow you will, the body will keep its new level of calorie needwhile you return to your old eating habits. This brings us toanother point.
THE BASIC LAW OF AND WEIGHT GAIN.
Everybody's body works to it's own rhythm and needs, but theyall follow the same law. If you take in more calories than yourbody needs, it will store the excess as fat. Bottom line. Fact.End of discussion...almost. Using the information in theparagraph above, you can see that when you quit your diet and goback to eating the old way after your body has adjusted itsneeds downward, you now have MORE EXCESS CALORIES TO BE STOREDAS FAT! This is why people often GAIN WEIGHT after a diet...orseries of diets.
SO WHAT IS THE BEST PROGRAM?
As you can see, you are back at the beginning of thisdiscussion, but with a little more information. We can still saythat the best program is the one you will stickwith, and now you know a little more about why. Since we are alldifferent, the obvious fact should be that what you need to findis not THE best program, but YOUR best weight lossprogram...the one YOU will stick with. The biq question in yourmind is...
HOW DO YOU FIND "YOUR" BEST PROGRAM?
There are a lot of things you can do to improve your health,your life, and your personal weight situation, such as drinkmore water, get plenty of sleep, do things that you enjoy, forexample. These can all contribute to weight loss, but let's justlook at two things for now.
1. Become more active: Notice, I avoided saying, "exercise".Whoops! I said it. Look, exercise equals activity. If you wantto do Richard Simmons' tapes and "Sweat to the Oldies", morepower to you. If you choose to buy a Bowflex and in a few monthslook like the grandmother in their TV commercials, that's great!Odds are however, you just need to make some lifestyleadjustments and become more aware of the opportunities thatexist to "exercise" in daily life. Oh sure, a planned andscheduled exercise program is great, but so is a walk, orgardening, or swimming, or cleaning house, or...well, you getthe idea. The only need is to make it regular,at least 4 or 5times a week, and to make it challenging.
Only you can assess what is challenging. What is challengingtoday may simply be walking out to the mailbox and back. Onelady started her "exercise program" with that simple step (nopun intended). Another gentleman started his program by walkingto the end of his block. That first day, he thought he wouldn'teven be able to get back to his house. A few weeks later, he waswalking over a mile. At one point in my life, I regularly ranover 6 miles at a time. However, the first time I ever tried torun, I didn't make it half a block. The key is to get started,do it regularly, and challenge yourself.
Becoming more active not only burns calories during the activity(remember, the more calories burned the less fat stored), butcontinuing the activity over time (you were going to do itregularly) causes your body to shift to a new level where itautomatically burns more calories than it used to. The factsbehind this are not complicated but require a lot more spacethan we have here, and I did say I was going to keep to thebasics.
People drop out of "exercise programs" for a lot of reasons. Foryour purposes, do the activity as it fits in your schedule, pickthe activity that pleases you, and vary the activity...if youcleaned house yesterday, take a walk today. By the way, if Itold you to exercise, to take a walk, you might begin thatavoidance process that makes people drop out of formal, plannedexercise programs. Why don't you take the grandkids to the zooinstead? If that isn't a workout, I don't know what is. Becreative. It's your "exercise program", make it what you want itto be.
2. Eat sensibly: You know how you SHOULD be eating, right! Backto basics. Lots of vegetables, cut down on portion sizes, havean apple instead of pie or a candy bar. Take the sugar out ofyour life. There are all kinds of diet tips running around. Nota single one of them is worth a hill of beans...but a bunch ofthem add up to a lot more than a hill of beans. Changing onlyone thing is probably not going to make a big difference,but...IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE! changing seventeen things mightmake quite a difference, but there's a secret...
Don't try to make all seventeen, or twelve, or thirty changesall at once. Start with one change, and once it is part of yourlife, make the next one. You might want to learn a little bitabout Kaizen. Small steps in the nutrition area will help getyou where you want to go eventually, just as taking that smallwalk out to the mailbox may someday lead to walking one or twomiles at a time.
HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO STAY ON THIS PROGRAM?
Well, for the rest of your life. That's why it is important tochoose activities you enjoy and learn to make better nutritionchoices while still enjoying the pleasure of eating. Also, manypeople have problems because they have personalissues with life. Your personal program, regularactivity plus nutritional common sense, equals a sense ofcontrol over a situation that produces many negative affects inyour life. A sense of control over that situation allows you toremove many of those negative affects and move on to rearrangeother parts of your life that may need attention.
One last point. I have kept this as simple as possible, but itis based on a large body of information. If you truly want tocreate the most effective program for you, you willhave to learn a lot more than you probably know now. The publiclibrary is a good place to start, as is the internet.
About the author:The author's interest in fitness and health began in 1970 whenhe first read Dr. Kenneth Cooper's "Aerobics". Find more weightloss tips at http://nodiet4me.com . You can find additionalarticles on fitness, health, and athttp://nodiet4me.blogspot.com .
