Is Fast Weight Loss a Good Thing?

Everywhere we look we see advertisements that suggest rapid weight loss is wonderful. They say that if you take their product, limit calories, eat the right foods, and exercise, you'll look wonderful.

However, slow weight loss may be a better alternative for becoming a healthier individual.

Everywhere we look we see advertisements suggesting products that offer quick weight loss solutions. Just use these products, take these pills, drink this shake, or use this program and you will lose 20, 30, or more pounds. All of these ads are endorsed by individuals who have lost weight and yet, if you look at the fine print, every single one of these ads says that these results are not typical.

What is typical? Typically, people who use these products may lose a few pounds of water weight at the beginning, but when they do not find the lasting results they are looking for, they go in search of yet another weight loss quick fix.

The next thing that you discover in the fine print on these ads is that you will only get results if combined with a healthy diet and exercise. Usually, the reason a person has extra weight is that they did not have a healthy diet nor did they exercise. If they had been exercising and eating properly, to begin with, they would have not put on the pounds in the first place. Perhaps if they simply start eating right and exercising, they will shed pounds without the product!

Another issue concerning products and programs sold in ads is that when you stop using the product, the weight will come back on because you are no longer using the product.

Some weight loss products can even be dangerous. I remember a few years ago when there was an MLM product called Metabolife. It worked great. I used it for a while and I felt energetic and the pounds came off. The problem was that the main ingredient contained ephedra, the chief ingredient in methamphetamine. No wonder I lost weight. Of course, again, when the product was taken off the market, needless to say, I gained back the weight.

Fad weight loss diets also offer fast results but are detrimental to keeping that weight off. Usually, when we use a fad diet, we are starving our bodies of necessary nutrients. After a short time, our bodies go into starvation mode and we stop losing. In addition, the weight loss we do have on fad diets is NEVER fat. It is always water weight and muscle that we lose from this type of diet.

Muscle has a higher metabolic rate than fat so when we use a quick weight loss solution and it burns our muscle mass, it slows down our metabolism making it more difficult to lose weight in the future. The next time we use this or any other fad diet, weight loss cannot occur as quickly because we do not have the muscle mass that we had before the diet.

Our bodies will not let us sustain starvation fad diets long and soon we are eating everything in sight. We gain weight back much more quickly because we have slowed our metabolism.

Slow Weight Loss is not a diet or exercise program. It simply makes habitual changes in your current diet and exercise. It is a lifestyle change plan. All you do is make small changes in habits that you can live with for the rest of your life. The plan is as individual as you are.

Here is an example of a small habit in substitution that has made a huge impact. I love ice cream. My parents' first date was going out for ice cream. Before I was a year old, I knew the location of every ice cream place within a fifty-mile radius of our house. Now, I could eat a whole gallon in one sitting if I let myself. That is how much I like it. However, I do pack on the pounds when I eat ice cream, so I have devised a substitute that works well for me. Every night before I go to bed I eat a small bowl of fruit, yogurt, and light whipped topping. Sometimes I will even throw in a little chocolate syrup. I now can eat ice cream once every couple of months without guilt, cravings, and binging on it.

1. Change the way you think about weight loss. Weight loss should be about being healthy, not a specific weight.
2. Eating should first be about nutrition and taste should be secondary.
3. Eat for Health, and only when you are hungry.
4. Learn your triggers for binge eating
5. Begin doing exercise in small amounts every day, then increase over time and keep it consistent.
6. Make lower calorie and lower fat substitutions in fattening foods that you love to eat.
7. You can continue eating the fattening foods from time to time, just control portion sizes.
8. Avoid artificial sweeteners. Your body needs food not fake.
9. Never use the word "cheat" when you know you have eaten more than you should of a specific food. It is more important to understand why you over-indulge than to place blame on yourself.
10. Make healthy changes into habits that last a lifetime.

I began changing my diet and exercise habits last July and so far I have lost 30 pounds. I have gone from 216 pounds to 186 pounds, but I am not done yet. I still have more weight to lose and more healthy habits to gain.

Is this typical? I think that it can be if we disregard all of that hype on the television about rapid weight loss and focus on creating healthy habits, these results can be typical.

Slow weight loss is as individual as you are. Begin today by changing the way you think about weight loss. There is no quick fix. Weight loss requires permanent changes in the way we think, the way we eat, and the way we view exercise.