Getting Started

With a large percentage of the US population overweight, it seems like everyone is on a diet these days. One of the problems with diets is that they require a drastic change to most people’s lifestyle, so they typically fail. They are also only short-term fixes to long-term problems, and the diversity of diets, from the “Beverly Hills Diet”, to the “South Beach Diet”, to “Fat Loss 4 Idiots”, really don’t leave anyone sure which one is the right one that will work for them.

Another issue is cost; diet books aren’t given away free, and weight loss programs, like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, cost continually as long as you are in their program. No one wants to pay for something that may, or may not, work, and nothing in any diet book is revolutionary enough to warrant purchasing when the information in most diet books is knowledge that anyone can typically gain through a little free research.

Any physician or personal trainer will tell you the formula for weight loss is the same today as it was 1000 years ago: calories consumed through food minus calories burned through exercise equals excess calories stored as fat. If the end result is a positive value, you gain weight, and if it is a negative value, you lose weight. Other things can help you achieve a healthier lifestyle, such as proper nutrition, but in truth, for weight loss, the formula never varies.

In my opinion, the reason most people fail at weight loss is they try to drastically change too much of their lifestyle at once, either through some diet plan, rigorous exercise program, or both. It took you many years to develop the lifestyle and habits you have, and they will not change overnight. Moreover, even if you can manage a short-term lifestyle change, because the change is so drastic, most people revert to their old habits once they achieve their goal.

Through little changes, however, big results can be achieved over the long-term, and can be maintained easier.