What's the best
way to lose weight for the summer? practical advice on personal motivation,
food tastes and cravings, what to eat, how much exercise to take, and other
pointers to keep you focused on your diet.
Being overweight in the summer heat is
no fun. And exposing a fat stomach or fat thighs isn't exactly pleasant when
everyone else around you is wearing gnat-sized beachwear and drizzling oil onto
wasp-like abdomens. In fact, for people carrying excess weight, summer can be
an unpleasant trial involving countless opportunities for embarrassment and
discomfort. So let's take a look at how you can reduce some of your fat and
make next summer a happier experience, but first, a warning.
Summer Weight Loss
Trap
One guaranteed way to fail is to look
for a "short cut" weight loss method or diet. You know what I mean:
the type of program that promises "a fast effortless way to reduce
weight". In my experience, none of these diets or pills actually works,
and the medical evidence is quite clear: the maximum rate of sustainable fat
loss is between 1 and 2 pounds per week, perhaps a little more if you are
obese. Besides, if a brilliant scientist did manage to concoct a formula for
rapid effortless weight reduction, overnight he would be more famous than
Einstein. He certainly wouldn't be peddling his program in 30-second TV infomercials
or mail-order advertisements. So for the sake of your sanity as well as your
financial health, don't waste time on weight loss methods that make extravagant
claims. If you don't believe this, think of any of your overweight friends who favour
the short-term "lose 20 pounds in two weeks" type of approach, and
ask yourself why they are still overweight.
Three Month Summer
Diet Plan
You can't lose much weight in a week or
two. You need about three months to make a significant impact on your body
shape. Remember, the human body is interested in survival, not cosmetic
appearances, and since rapid weight loss is a prima facie symptom of disease
not good health, the only guaranteed way to improve your body shape is to adopt
a gradual approach of healthy eating and increased exercise. In three months,
you can lose about 26 pounds - more than enough for most overweight people to
experience noticeable health improvements as well as a much leaner body. And by
reducing your weight gradually in this manner, you have far less chance of
weight regain, so if necessary you can continue losing more with less danger of
incurring a weight loss plateau or other obstacle.
You Need A Motive
No one likes to change their habits. So
if you want to change your eating and exercise habits, you need a strong motive
- something to keep you dieting and exercising when boredom sets in. Whatever
motive you choose, it must be something more powerful than the urge to eat
tasty high calorie foods in front of the TV!
A Good Motive For
Summer Weight Loss
Anything that commits you in advance to
achieving your weight loss goal, makes a great motive. So be bold. Book an
expensive beach holiday, or buy some gorgeous clothes to fit the body you want
to have at the end of your diet program. Both these actions require you to
succeed, and therefore provide constant motivation along the way.
Men And Celebrities
Have Better Motivation
In my experience, both with private
clients as well as dieters who belong to my weight loss forum, men and
celebrities exhibit the strongest motivation. Men, I suspect, because typically
they have a narrower range of daily tasks and responsibilities than women.
Celebrities, because typically they have a powerful commercial motivation to
maintain their physical appearance. I offer weight loss help to a number of
celebrity figures, some of whom are regulars on my forum, and I am always
impressed with their ability to make short-term sacrifices to further their
longer term goals. I guess that's why they achieve so much.
Be Positive About
Short Term Sacrifices
Whether you're trying to lose weight
for the summer, save money or pass exams, an important piece of the
motivational jigsaw is your ability to be positive about making short term
sacrifices. The choice is fairly simple: you can focus on the
"deprivation" involved in giving up certain foods, or you can focus
on the benefits you will get by not eating these foods. Sadly, many dieters
focus on feeling deprived. After a while they see their diet as a burden, a
bore, an evil necessity. This is why so many of them quit. They can't
"see" the benefits that weight loss will bring them. If you want to improve
your body shape for the summer, you must avoid this trap and appreciate the
longer term benefits you will receive by making short-term adjustments to your
lifestyle.
The Good News About
Improving Your Diet
Many of our tastes, food cravings, and
general attitudes to food are strongly influenced by what we eat and drink. I
know countless mothers with families who have reported astonishing changes in
their personal and family eating habits after less than three weeks of improved
eating. Point is, the average modern diet is loaded with sugar, fat and sodium,
all of which condition us to want more of these items. But if you can break out
of this dependence on junk-ingredients for even 2-3 weeks, you'll notice a huge
difference in your tastes, which brings me to healthy eating.
Think Healthy Eating
Not Weight Loss
In my experience, one of the most
effective weight loss strategies is to focus on healthy eating. I'm not saying
you shouldn't stand on your weighing scales, just don't measure progress
exclusively by what the scales say. Be aware that it's just as important to
enjoy your food and feel good about your change of eating habits. And any diet
you hate is guaranteed to fail, no matter how much weight you lose, because as
soon as you achieve your goal, you will revert to your old eating habits and
regain every pound lost.
The Top 10 Healthy
Eating Habits
In a nutshell, a healthy diet involves
(1) More home-cooked food, less eating out. (2) More fresh fruit as snacks. (3)
More fresh vegetables as snacks and with meals. (4) More beans as sides or in
stews. (5) More dense chewy bread, less refined white breads and bread snacks.
(6) More fish, skinless chicken/turkey, less red meat. (7) Smaller servings of
red meat, larger servings of vegetables. (8) Eating low fat dairy foods. (9)
Adding less fat in the form of butter, mayo, sour cream, to the food on your
plate. This is a huge source of excessive calories. (10) Stocking up with
healthy snack foods to keep hunger at bay. If you fill up with healthy
nutritious calories, you won't want the junk foods that hunger makes you eat.
As far as weight management goes, hunger remains Public Enemy Number One.
Exercise Provides
Wonderful Indirect Benefits
Exercise does burn extra calories and
therefore does help to widen your calorie deficit. But it's direct effect on
weight loss is typically quite small. In fact, it's not uncommon to gain weight
when you start exercising. The real weight reduction benefits of exercise are
indirect ones. It raises our metabolic rate, helping us to burn calories at a
slightly faster rate, and improves our mood, which typically reduces our need
for comfort-eating. However, don't overdo your exercise workouts. I've lost
count of the number of dieters who started exercising too vigorously and burnt
out within 3 weeks. Ideally, start with 45 minutes/day of any physical activity
you can easily manage, and very gradually increase the duration and intensity.
Listen to your body at all times, and be sure to loosen up beforehand and wind
down afterwards.
See Yourself As You
Want To Be
If your goal is a waistline you can
proudly display in the sun, then don't wait until it happens to "see"
it. Visualize it from the moment you start dieting. Visualize yourself walking
along a beach, or lying next to the pool with a perfectly flat stomach.
Whatever your ambition for your weight or body, get used to visualizing it in
the greatest possible detail. Because "seeing it" is the first step
to making it come true. As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words.
Very Overweight? Just
Visualize The Benefits!
If you have a lot of weight to lose
(100 pounds+), you may not think that losing 26 pounds in three months is
particularly worthwhile. If so, ask yourself this question. What's the
alternative? No matter what method you choose, you won't lose weight any
faster, so it's only a question of when you start and how long it's going to
take. I can answer the last question right now. Losing 100 pounds takes about a
year - typically a little longer to allow for disasters along the way. Fifteen
months would be a more realistic time span to reduce weight by this amount.
This is nothing. Just visualize yourself walking down the street 100 pounds
lighter, and tell me that eating healthily for 15 months is too high a price to
pay for such a wonderful prospect.
Your First Priority -
Get Support
If you really want to lose weight for
the summer, your first priority is to find support. Join a diet-group at work,
or a fitness class, or go to weight loss meetings. Or join an online forum.
Losing weight on your own is perfectly possible, providing things go well and
your scales keep saying nice things. But when difficulties arise, as they
surely will, having the support of real people can make all the difference
between success and failure. If you experience difficulty finding support, try
my own weight loss forum. It's great fun and very inspirational.
References
