Realistic and Safe Weight Loss Goals

We have said before that it is important to have goals for your weight loss, just as for other things in your life.

We are much more likely to succeed at something if we set a clearly defined goal, and then imagine ourselves already at that point.

But when it comes to weight loss, it is important that the goals are realistic and that they focus on results, not on time.

Pretty much everybody has a goal weight when they start out on a weight loss program. It might be the weight that they were at some time in the past, or a weight that is within the healthy range for their height.

Other people have goals in terms of clothes sizes or fitness levels. These are useful goals too, and they work better for people who do not want to become obsessed with the scale.

But one mistake that many people make is to link their goal to time. For example, losing 10 pounds in 2 weeks, or being able to fit into a certain pair of pants by Christmas.

These goals sound innocent enough, don't they? But in fact they can seriously undermine your weight loss.

The reason is that this type of goal does not allow for the unpredictable way that the body goes about losing its excess fat.

If we follow a good weight loss and exercise program carefully, we are pretty sure to lose some weight. But there is no way we can know how fast it will go.

So what happens when the two weeks are up and we only lost 9 pounds? We feel we have failed, and quite likely we abandon the diet. Crazy, when we actually lost a lot of weight.

Or Christmas comes and even though we've been losing weight pretty steady, we don't quite fit into those pants. What happens? We feel disappointed and eat everything in sight for the rest of the holidays.

So take a look at your goals right now and scrub out any reference to time. The important thing is to lose the weight and keep it off, not how fast it happens.

How to Avoid Expensive Weight Loss Products which does not Work

New diets seem to be coming out all of the time. If you are anything over 20 years old, you probably remember a few of the different diet fads that have come out.

Most of them are endorsed by a couple Hollywood stars, and seem to promise instant results practically overnight. But when we try them for ourselves, it turns out to be a whole different story.

When you see somebody promoting a new diet food plan you will often find that it's based around some special product or superfood. What you need in order to lose weight is information, not pills or superfoods.

People are spending billions of dollars on diet products. The industry is huge. A new diet (or even a new spin on an old diet) can make millions of dollars for a company producing well marketed merchandise such as meal replacements or low-whatever snacks.

To avoid falling into this kind of marketing trap, it's important to understand something about nutrition and how the body handles food.

Food is required for energy. In nature, food supplies are not usually constant.

Our ancestors didn't have access to 24 hour grocery stores selling the exact same things all the year. They had different things to eat in the different seasons. They also had more food at some times of year and less at others. Sometimes, if the harvest was bad, they might have trouble finding enough to eat for a whole year.

So if we take in more food than we need, our bodies don't just throw out the extra. They store it as fat so that we can use it later. This would help our ancestors survive the bad spells.

For the same reason, when we go on a diet there is no way that we will lose all of that fat in a very short time. The body will use it slowly, rationing it out to help us survive lean times.

We want to lose our fat as fast as possible - but our body wants to keep the fat for as long as possible!

So although it would be great to go from obese today to perfect beach body next week, we have to understand this is just not possible. Even if we eat nothing and exercise all day (NOT recommended!), the body will simply slow down the metabolism to hold on to as much fat as it can.

To lose weight successfully, we need to work with our body's metabolism, not against it.

Handling Slip Ups In A Diet is Not that Hard!

So you messed up. It happens to just about everybody at some point in their diet. For whatever reason, we 'wake up' to find that we just broke one or all of the rules.

But the important thing is to put it behind you and move on. Get back on plan. Right now.

We are in a very dangerous place when we just made a slip up. It's so tempting to think, 'Well, I messed up at lunch, so I might as well take the rest of the day off and get back on the diet tomorrow.'

So what happens? One small slip becomes a huge binge lasting the rest of the day. The next morning, we wake up feeling terrible. We decide not to eat for the whole day to make up for it.

By lunchtime, we are real hungry. We grab the nearest cake. Another binge starts, another day is gone.

And so it goes on. In many cases, people regain all of the weight that they had lost.

Don't let that happen to you.

Slip ups happen for many reasons. Sometimes, it's a simple mistake: we misunderstood one of the rules of our diet, or ate something not knowing what was in it. Sometimes it's a momentary lapse when we are feeling extra hungry or stressed.

The reason does not really matter. The important thing is to get right back on the plan.

Don't try to eat less the rest of the day. Definitely don't skip the next meal. Follow your plan for the rest of the day as if your slip up had not happened.

Remember, it's not what you do once that counts, when you are losing weight. It's what you do over and over.

Positive Support For Safe and Healthy Weight Loss

If you want your weight loss program to be successful, you must focus on the positive.

This means thinking about what you CAN eat and drink, not what you can't.

Thinking about what you can do is important too. As you lose weight, there will be more and more things that you can do, that you could not do before.

One of the best things that you can do right now is to find support. This has the double benefit of making your weight loss program more likely to be successful as well as making it more enjoyable.

When we talk about support, we don't mean boring your slim friends with all of the details of your diet. We mean getting together with people who are also losing weight on the same kind of plan, or people who want to buddy up with you on an exercise program.

Sometimes these people may be in the family. Often it happens that where one family member is overweight, others will be too. If you have a partner, parent, child or sibling who wants to lose weight, why not involve them in your plan?

But don't be tempted to make it a competition. Remember that different people lose weight in different ways and at different rates. If you can both lose some weight, you are both winners.

It is always easier to be successful with a diet if other people around you are eating healthy too. If you are in the habit of indulging in overeating with friends who don't want to lose their excess weight, you may need to stay away from those people for a while. Instead, choose to spend time with slim friends who eat healthy, or those who are also trying to lose.

If you don't have another family member or close friend to share your program, consider joining a group. This may be an exercise class, an online forum or something like Overeaters Anonymous where you will meet other people who are losing weight.

Be a little cautious when joining these groups because some of them can be rather negative. Some people are so eager to have everybody follow their plan, that they will criticize any other plan. It's better to stay away from people like that.

So make sure there is a positive atmosphere to any group or forum that you choose to join.

Lose Weight Easily and Safe

Many people find that they can lose weight much more easily just by changing the way they eat or the intake of natural acai. For example, it can make a big difference just slowing down the speed that we eat instead of using supplements like paraslim.

Sounds weird maybe but the longer you spend chewing and savoring your food, the more you will enjoy it. This means it will take less for you to feel satisfied.

Eating slow has some other benefits too. First, it takes our bodies around 10 minutes to recognize when we have had enough to eat. So if we eat real fast, we can pack in a lot more food than we needed to feel full. If we eat slower, we are more likely to pick up on this signal before we ate too much.

Second, it helps the digestive system if the food is well chewed before it hits the stomach. The action of chewing and mixing with saliva in the mouth starts the digestive process so everything can go more smoothly from there. We are not so likely to suffer from indigestion or acid reflux if we eat slower.

It is easier to eat slower if you are not distracted while you eat. Do not watch TV or read a magazine. When you eat, just eat.

Also, wait until you finished chewing and swallowing one mouthful of food before you start to load up the fork or spoon with the next. Most people start thinking about the next mouthful before they even started chewing the last. Instead, put down your fork on the table until your mouth is empty.

It takes a little time to get into these new habits but you will not regret it. You will find that if you eat slower you will enjoy your meals much more. It is much easier to stick to a diet that way because you do not feel deprived. Plus you will probably wind up eating less without even trying.

Does Sleep Affect Weight Loss and Dieting?

Yes, sleep affects weight loss and vice versa.

It is true that some insomniacs do lose weight. But those are usually the same people who lose weight when they are unhappy, and they are mostly thin anyway, right?

People who are overweight often gain if they cannot sleep, because their reaction to the problem of insomnia, just like any other problem, is to try to cure it with food.

Some diets advise you not to eat within 2 hours of going to sleep. This is fine for many people, but sometimes this means we go to bed hungry. This often stops us sleeping.

Then either we get up and grab a snack (usually the fastest thing, not the healthiest). Or we lie there all night, hungry and unable to sleep. The next day we are tired and in a bad mood. Result: more likely to cheat.

If this is your problem, then it can be a good idea to plan a snack before going to bed each night. Write this into your food plan for the day, then you don't need to cheat.

It's also important to get enough exercise earlier in the day. Don't exercise right before you sleep, but concentrate on relaxing activities such as yoga or meditation at that time.

Taking a bath often helps too. The warmth of the water relaxes the whole body and prepares us for sleep.

Long term insomnia requires a more thorough approach. If you find that you cannot sleep for many nights in a row, or you are constantly tired, waking early or having disturbed sleep, then you can benefit from a thorough program to improve your sleep.

You may find that if you tackle the insomnia, your eating patterns will automatically improve and you will lose weight without even trying.

Is Your Safe Weight Loss Diet Easy?

Is your diet easy? It should be.

You are much more likely to stick to an easy diet. Difficult diets that involve hours of meal planning, calorie calculations or complicated food rules are doomed to fail for most people.

There are two problems with difficult diets.

First, they lead to food obsession. This is the situation where a person's whole life revolves around what they can and cannot eat.

This is not a natural or healthy state to be in. The more we think about food, the more we will focus on what we cannot have. That leads to cravings and finally to cheating.

The second problem is that complicated diets are not flexible enough to cope with all the situations that we find ourselves in.

Some diets make it virtually impossible to eat in a restaurant. So what do we do on vacation, or when we have to take a client out to lunch?

That is why it is important to have a diet that introduces more foods and more flexibility into the plan pretty soon.

We may be able to deal with a lot of rules and restrictions for a week or two, but that's about all. After that, the diet needs to be flexible enough to handle a meal with friends, a wedding, a vacation, or whatever life throws at us.

So make sure that your diet is easy, and you will have a lot more success with it.

Safe Weight Loss

Welcome to my Safe Weight Loss Blog,

healthy and safe weight loss is a very important thing nowadays. There are a lot of supplements outthere promising to go on a diet without hunger and you can lose weight as easy as 1 2 3 or like 10 pounds in 3 days. Maybe some of these weight loss supplements are working but are they healthy and safe? Well, some yes and some not.In my opinion it is not a safe weight loss way to use only pills.

You have to mix up your diet with a good weight loss, exercise and maybe supplement plan. This was my key to lose substantial weight and it will be yours too.

So, take a look around here and I hope you will benefit from my Safe Weight Loss Blog.

Kathlin