Achieving Weight Loss In A Healthy Way
What is your ideal weight? Perhaps you are among the small percentage of the populous that is currently at your ideal weight. Or perhaps you are unsatisfied with your current weight and wish to lose weight. If the latter describes you, what should you know about losing weight?
First, it is highly recommended that you find out if you are really overweight or not. In a modern world obsessed with being thin, we are constantly bombarded by extremely thin super models (who are often airbrushed) on the cover of magazines and on commercial advertisements and billboards. Such popular figures hardly present a healthy and realistic image of what being at a proper weight looks like. Therefore, consult your doctor, or even surf the web, to see if your current height and weight falls in a healthy range, or if, indeed, weight loss is recommended for your frame. There may even be a free scale with which you can weigh yourself in the local grocery store, next to the pharmacy section if you do not have one at home.
After determining that your health would be improved by weight loss, the next step is to decide how much weight you need to lose in order to put you in a healthy target weight. Once you have calculated what your healthy weight should be, you are ready to choose a healthy way in which to begin losing the needed weight. While fad diets, meal replacement supplements and the like may be all the rage these days, you need not follow the crowd. It is very unlikely that by only taking a supplement to suppress your appetite you will lose weight.
Resorting to an extreme diet without consulting a doctor is also not a recommended way to successfully lose weight and keep it off. Keep in mind, that if you are currently overweight, it likely did not happen overnight. To expect instant results and weight loss is also, therefore, unrealistic. Extreme diets, though boasting some fast results, rarely are healthy and can be very difficult to maintain overtime.
Your physician will likely be the best person to help you to design your own custom weight loss program, including changes in your diet, lifestyle, and adding an exercise program. These combined elements are all needed to help you lose weight in a gradual, healthy way that, when made a part of your new lifestyle, will spell lasting weight loss results.
Though the results of such a program, as recommended by your doctor, may not have the fastest results, the positive effects on your health and weight can become permanent in a way that is just not possible by following a temporary extreme diet. With the improvement in eating habits and exercise, you will soon find that you have improved energy, moods, and muscle tone. Chart your progress and take pride in each improvement you see, and each pound lost.
While the scale may not read big changes in the beginning, keep in mind that you are gaining muscle by exercising, which is denser and heavier than the fat it is replacing. So, applaud the changes you see in how well your clothes begin to fit you, the improved muscle tone, and finally the happy result of seeing the weight loss you have been seeking!
