Weight Loss You Will Keep off Forever

I knew there had to be a better way to lose weight. I was one of those people who would do well for a few months and lose a lot of weight only to gain it back and in a few weeks after the diet ended. Yo-yo dieting, diet pills, and exercise equipment that promise quick weight loss, never seemed to deliver.

In 2015 alone, Americans spent more than sixty billion dollars fighting the battle of the bulge. However, since 1980, the obesity rate has shot up from 15% to as much as more than 35% in some US states. Many studies blame this on the dieting phenomenon. The average dieter may lose 5-10% of his or her weight while on a diet, but time after time, studies on the subject have shown that 5 years after the diet, 50% of the people who have gone on diets weighed more than they did before they started dieting.

It is time to consider changing our tactics. It is time we stopped buying into the idea that we are going to lose weight fast and somehow miraculously going to keep it off after we quit the diet. We need to develop healthy habits that trump dieting.

The first thing we have to do is to change the way we think. We have first realized that diets are like get-rich-quick schemes that don't work. We may as well call them scams. They are simply ways of making other people rich. Have you ever noticed that most diet aids tell you that they will work only with proper diet and exercise? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the diet aid did nothing and that the proper diet and exercise were what was taking the weight off in the first place? Therefore if we want to get to a healthy weight, the first way that we have to change our thinking is by realizing that we didn't gain all that weight overnight and it isn't going to stay off if we lose it overnight.

The second thing we have to change is the way we think about our food intake. We need to focus on the fact that food was originally designed to provide us with nutrition. Therefore, nutritional food value needs to be our focus as well.

Third, we need to change the way we look at our weight. Instead of saying "I need to lose weight, instead say, "I need to recover a healthy weight for my height and build." So, consider this program of change as "Healthy Weight Recovery, not weight loss."

I have been on many diets in my time, and one aspect that I have always noticed with the diets I have been on is that as soon as I decided to go on a diet, my every thought was on the fact that I was depriving myself of something. Whether it's low-carb, low-fat, or low-calorie, every diet has a list of foods that I can or cannot eat or limits the number of certain foods. I like most people if I am told that I cannot do something, my every thought will be on that food that I can't eat. It has been that way since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And we're still saying that the devil made us do it.

Therefore, instead of creating a diet where I am depriving myself of food groups, I have decided that I am creating a healthy eating plan where I will not deprive myself of any food. I simply will have to eat healthy foods before I eat other less nutritional foods.

• Drink a glass of water first thing in the morning, before meals, and then drink only water with meals. Stop drinking water after 8 pm to avoid sleep disturbances.
• Take an organic formula vitamin three times per day (the type of vitamin where three is the recommended daily dose). Take with meals for the best absorption.
• Eat some protein with every meal. Protein does not necessarily mean meat, it could mean nuts, beans, grains, or milk products as well.
• If you're going to eat meat, eat lean meat.
• Eat a variety of vegetables per meal at least servings of two different types per meal. At least one should be in raw form.
• Treat yourself to two servings of fruit every day.
• If you're going to eat grains, make them whole-grain foods.
• Make this your mantra "If my great-grandmother recognized it as the food she grew, it's food that's fit to eat."

Small changes in exercise patterns can bring great health benefits. Increase the number of overall steps that you make in a day. Add small changes like parking away from a store in a parking lot so that you have to walk more. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Another tip that I find very valuable in maintaining health is that doing a little light exercise after a meal is very beneficial. Remember, I said light exercise, you don't want to do vigorous exercise. immediately after a meal because it can make you feel ill. Five minutes of light exercise is really all the time needed to reap additional health benefits of light exercise after meals. A few minutes of lifting light weights after breakfast, taking the stairs at work after lunch, or a stroll around the block after dinner helps burn the readily available sugars from your meal so that insulin in your system doesn't convert into fat stores. This is especially helpful for anyone who has type II diabetes or is borderline diabetic.

With any exercise that you do, gradually increase exercise time and intensity. Don't try to catch up on years of neglect all in one day. Take it slow to prevent injury.

Regaining health will not happen quickly. However, changing to healthy habits will improve not only the number on the scale but will improve any individual's overall health. By applying healthy habits instead of dieting, you will win. Healthy habits trump dieting every time.