How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off

Tired of being overweight? Tired of hearing about all of the "miracle" weight-loss pills and programs that are supposed to work in 5 days but don’t? If you’re tired of this and are really ready to lose weight, it’s time to look at two weight-loss strategies that make sense and really work. Losing weight isn’t one-size-fits-all, but by combining the strategies that you like and that are known to work, you can lose weight and keep it off for the rest of your life.

Exercise

Exercise probably isn’t anyone’s favorite, but for optimum health, we all need it. As you get older, you slow down. As you slow down, it makes your metabolism slow down too. To combat this and to have a healthy and strong heart, you must exercise. Start slowly with an activity that you enjoy for just 15 minutes per day. As you get stronger, you will find that you enjoy the exercise, so begin increasing it until you are doing one consistent activity for 30 minutes per day.

Add Variety

The more you want to lose, the more you need to exercise. You can break up your exercise into several 10-minutes segments if it makes it more appealing to you. To keep it from getting boring, try different activities. A great exercise to start with is walking. You can walk outside on nice days and use a CD to exercise with indoors when the weather is bad. Try different exercise CDs. They aren’t expensive and having a variety to choose from including your outdoor walking will help you from getting too bored.

Make yourself a list of activities that you enjoy: hiking, biking, tennis, bird watching, or swimming. Think of a list of places that you could walk that would be more interesting instead of the same old scenery every day. Keep this list handy to remind yourself of all the things you could be doing for exercise so when you are tempted to skip the exercise on a particular day, you will have something you can do to get you going and off the couch.

Eat Healthy

Yes, it’s more fun to eat out frequently and eat whatever you choose, but this is what caused you to be overweight in the first place. You will have to re-program your thinking about eating. Take some time and see what triggers your overeating or eating unhealthy foods.

Do you eat out of habit? Some people eat because they are bored and eating is a form of entertainment. Make a list of things that you enjoy doing or look at your list of exercise activities when you are tempted to eat out of boredom. Keep this list handy and make yourself choose something off the list instead of eating.

Do you eat because of stress or when you are upset? Many people eat as a result of dealing with stress and being emotionally upset. Learn about different stress relieving strategies and learn to use them when you are feeling emotional turmoil. If you don’t learn to handle your stress in a different way other than eating, you will never win the war of being overweight.

Exercise and eating healthy aren’t new, but they work. The bottom line when it comes to losing weight is to burn more calories than you eat or take in. The only way to do this is to combine exercise and choosing to eat less and eat foods that are healthy for you, staying away from fast food and processed food. Make up your mind that you are going to quit trying the "lose weight fast" miracle programs that don’t work and stick to the two strategies that have been proven to work. Before you know it, the pounds will be dropping off and will stay off.
Source: http://www.healthguidance.org/authors/324/Jason-Ladock