Why Losing Weight is Hard

I know from experience. Being stuck with too much weight is almost as frustrating and stressful as trying to lose it is. The climb to a better body needs to be filled with discipline and vast amounts of patience. And, as it was for me, a lot of hungry nights. To this date I do not have any weekly exercise schedule that I fiercely adhere to. Although very important for one's health, my weight loss success was not due to exercise at all. I now consider physical activity a minor stepping stone in my health improvement goal. Simply put, it is difficult to burn enough calories if you do not first have control over your diet. Without changing or lowering your intake, your attempts at exercising to keep fit are greatly hindered. This is why diet is the first thing every person should look at and improve before starting any fitness program.

It is important to point out that when you first begin to exercise your body is clumsy and therefore unable to work out for extended periods of time, you just get too exhausted. This leads to a lot of New Year's Resolution busts. Even worse, as your efficiency grows, you then have to take steps to increase the challenge your workout poses for you. If you do not, your body will burn fewer and fewer calories each time. For weight training, this means adding more weight or resistance to your lifts. For aerobics, this means increasing the amount of time of an intense interval (Interval Training Hub to come.) The good news is that with exercise, you are building muscle. And muscle nixes fat even when you aren't hard at work. Although physical activity is not the main focus for people looking to lose weight, it is the focus of those who would like to maintain their slimmed figures. Muscle gain is why, when you first begin to work out, you may find you've gained a few pounds! That is the goal of exercise, not weight loss.

I find that there are two main culprits in every disaster diet. They are sugar, and fat. Some people try and avoid sugar and fat altogether, which eventually sabotages any control and determination they had when they first started. There are good fats and good sugars that are important in a healthy diet. It is not necessarily good to try and deprive our bodies of them thinking no fat or sugar will make one slim down extra fast. When we eat artificial sweeteners, which are in a lot of popular diet products, we are tricking our brains into thinking it's getting a load of energy. When that energy is a no show, our bodies are hungry again. Also, as we eat more and more sugars and fat, our brains expect as much sugar and fat the next time it gets food. We are hungry if we eat less than what we are used to, this is the basic reason most people eventually give up. However it is always good to keep in mind that there is a definitive line one will cross, and after the stomach has shrunken and the brain is used to a new regime everything suddenly becomes easier.

The best way to lose weight is by choosing one change and diverting all of one's energy to that. It would be excellent if one can properly balance diet and exercise to become healthy. For most people this is a difficult plan to try and stick to, and is an unrealistic goal. Focusing on diet first will give you results, and it only takes a little self control to begin. Exercise is not the miracle cure for all of your fat, even though it does burn it and is completely possible to see improvement with. For the folks like me, suffering through eating less and hard physical activity is a little overwhelming and very tiring.You are what you choose to put into your body, and good food can actually support a productive workout. Don't be discouraged if you are on the path of a new diet and aren't exercising as much as you believe you should be! Just stick with a diet, and the pounds will gradually disappear. After you have your feet a little wet, you can easily integrate some activity with little to no added stress.