Adjusting Your Attitude to Losing Body Fat
The simplistic answer to losing body fat is to eat less and move, or calories in equal calories out. In the end this is probably more or less true, but as anyone who has ever tried losing body fat knows it just aint that easy. I am not talking about the chemistry and physiology of body weight and metabolism but about the mental state needed to consistently lose body fat.
Because if your mental state doesn’t change you are destined to spend the rest of your life losing body fat then gaining it back again. You won’t only gain what you lost; you will gain more than you lost. he very act of intentionally losing body fat sets up a mental and physical state that primes you for fat gain.
It has been found that anyone who is semi starved for a period of time will bounce back like a piece of elastic and eat like mad when they are once more allowed free access to food. Even a reduction to 1500 calories a day caused this reaction in study participants.
This is a normal physical reaction to being denied food. It is also a mental change. Once you have done this to yourself by dieting you are going to need a lot of mental resilience to overcome it; but forewarned is forearmed.
After once losing body fat and then re-gaining you will need to change your mindset completely if you are to lose body fat permanently. And that isn’t easy. Maybe you have reached a crisis point in your life. You are tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a shape you hate. You may be fed up with thinking about food and weight loss the whole time and of never feeling OK about yourself. Are you strongly motivated to make changes in your lifestyle and eating habits?
If so you are ready to embark on losing body fat once and for all. You can be successful if you are ready to put the time and effort into it. But remember success means not regaining your body fat after reaching your desired weight. This is the hard part. Losing body fat is hard. Don’t even start to do it if you are not in the right frame of mind. You need to be completely dedicated to doing it and doing it right. This requires mental fortitude and willingness to keep going for the many months it may take to be happy with your weight again.
The most important thing about trying to lose body fat isn’t the eating plan that you choose to follow. There are numerous diets for losing fat and many of them are healthy and will work. What you need to do is to find one that suits you and your way of life. That is the easy part. The hard part is keeping at it.
You will probably need some support and a diet buddy can be very helpful. In her book “The Beck Diet Solution” Judith Beck goes into this aspect of the weight loss journey at length. She doesn’t give you an eating plan but rather she shows you how to succeed on your chosen healthy weight loss plan. There are other books that take this route too. “Losing It Naturally: A Complete Holistic Weight Loss Program ” is another book that many have found helpful in the battle to lose body fat. All the reviewer/customers at amzon.com gave this 5 stars! Here is what one said
“After reading this book, I finally feel like I have an understanding of my relationship with food. This is not a quick-fix gimmic. The discussion of how we digest food made me realize that I need to pay attention to everything I take in. I’ve already lost 9 pounds in 3 weeks and I feel incredible!”
Whatever you choose to do remember that a dietary change is not an easy thing to do. If you start with this knowledge and use a healthy weight loss plan together with mental help and support you are more likely to be successful and never to need to lose body fat again.
