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Without a shadow of a doubt, the most common New Year’s resolution in the West is to lose weight. However, it is also the first New Year’s resolution most apt to be broken! Losing weight is not difficult in theory, but practice is oh, so different. This is because it involves lifestyle changes.

Our bodies change as we get older and typically our level of activity decreases too. Maybe, we get an office job with a promotion, whereas we used to work ‘in the field’. But people in general, do not adjust their diet to match their variation in circumstances. We sit behind our desks or in retirement and think we can still eat and drink like we did twenty years ago. Big mistake!

Fortunately, there are dozens of diets available to help us attain our weight loss goals. There are the traditional calorie counting diets, as espoused by Weight Watchers; there are the ‘new era’ diets like Atkins, which have us counting carbohydrates and there are no end of fad diets which are frankly not worth wasting time talking about.

The choice of which diet you would like to follow is all yours, of course, but it is well worth examining the main types of diet to see which one will suit you. Then you must determine whether you will require the help and encouragement of a weekly visit to a club or not, or whether you can get that camaraderie from an online club of slimmers, where you talk to fellow slimmers in the club forum online.

It is also worth fixing in your mind, why you want to diet. Is it to look better? Or to feel more at ease in yourself? Or is it for health reasons? Or all three? Have a think about your reasons and let them motivate you. Whenever, you feel like packing it all in, remember your motivation. Get a book and journal your progress, but first write your motivation in bold capitals on the front page or cover. Keep it in front of you and read it out loud to yourself every day.

Consult some of the slimming sites online and work out a few key numbers like the average weight people are for your height, sex and body type and your BMI or body mass index. Write these figures on the first page of your book too and use them as the ultimate goals.

You could produce a graph and plot your weekly weight to see how you are doing. Set realistic goals and targets. You can get loads of free information from the Weight Watchers and Atkins websites or / and go to see your doctor for advice and leaflets.

Aim to lose something like 10-20 pounds in the first month and eight to ten per month after that. Go slowly and aim to go slowly, because then you will hit your targets and you won’t feel like giving up. When you get within five to ten pounds of your target weight, assuming that you have lost a lot of weight, rein back a little and allow yourself a little more freedom. Drop your target to one pound a week, so that you will get a feel for ‘eating normally’.

The dreaded exercise; you have to face it, you will have to do more exercise, but two times thirty minute walks a day is usually enough. You could swim once a week too or get an exercise machine, if you are tied to the house by family.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

A lot of people do not understand their bodies. That much is clear because they think that fasting will help them become fitter. They feel convinced that their bodies will burn off their surplus fat and that they will lose weight as a consequence. They also appear to think that they will automatically end up with more muscle, just in the right places too. Some take up fasting for fitness because they believe that it will purge them of the toxins in their bodies.

Another belief that these fasters have is that they are will be able to flush out all of the impurities in their bodies by drinking plenty of water at the same time as not consuming food. Even if this is true, it would be a long process that would mean that you would have to fast for at least five to seven days though in order to conclude the detox process, although it is still not clear scientifically whether fasting is the right tactic for those that desire fitness.

There are many other paths to fitness that do work well though. For example, you can cut back the amount of food that you eat. Cutting back is not fasting, it is dieting and it is not only far more effectual, it is also far less difficult. This, together with drinking plenty of water and increasing your amount of physical exercise will help you to get fitter.

If you drink a lot of soda like cola or lemonade, which are full of sugar, like a lot of kids do, or lots of cups of sugared tea or coffee, like a lot of adults do, then just replacing those drinks with water or weak tea will help you lose weight quite rapidly even if you do not make any other changes to your diet or your level of exercise.

It is also possible to damage your body if you embark on a strenuous exercise routine only relying on body fat to keep you going. Your body probably will not be able to deliver enough energy to fuel such a change, because your metabolism will be too low.

Someone going about it in this way, can become very weak and dizzy. It is not a good idea to run the risk of injury because you have not given your body all the energy it requires to complete the tasks you are requiring it to perform.

It is best to consult a physician before you make any changes to either your diet or your fitness program. Confer with your doctor about your thoughts on fasting and fitness. They will be able to inform you whether they feel it is something you can try or whether it is simply too dangerous.

Fasting is all right if you have do it for religious purposes, but do not attempt much physical exertion. Ask a Muslim how he or she feels during Ramadan! Fasting for long periods can lead to high blood pressure and even liver damage. So, be very wary before attempting to starve yourself fit, there are much better ways.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with losing weight quickly. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

The most famous or notorious country in the world for overweight and obese people is the United States of America. Regrettably, it has become one of the things that tourists first talk about, when they get back from a holiday in the USA.

For instance, my father was a Second World War teenager and had always wanted to go to America. It was the first thing he did when he retired. Three months travelling wherever he could think of by bus and when he came back he was full of tales about whom he had met and what he had seen. but he could not hide his amazement about how many really fat people there were there.

I believe the organizations that say that this is largely to do with Americans’ love of hamburgers, pizzas and doughnuts; foodstuffs that have only recently become popular in Europe. Great Britain was the first country to follow the American lead, as you would expect, because it was easier for the advertisers, both countries speaking English.

Sure enough, Britons are becoming obese at an disturbing rate too. Those adverts and trends are also visible in mainland Europe, but at least there are enough warnings now. Anybody who falls for into the junk food trap these days, only has himself to blame. We have been warned.

I now travel a lot in Asia and it is a crying shame to see rehashes of old adverts promoting junk food. For example, Thai food is one of the best in the world, yet Knorr is trying to persuade family cooks that they do not have time to make sauces or soups; that they should tip the salty contents of one of their boxes into boiling water and that nobody would know.

I can assure you that they would know where I live. However, firms like Knorr know, that if they can sabotage one generation then they have won. Likewise with McDonald’s, get one generation of parents to take their kids there every week and it becomes a family tradition. Bang! They are in!

I saw it happen in the UK and it is so hard to see it happening in Asia too.

If you want to learn the secret of losing weight naturally, I will tell you. The best of all methods is to only eat food that you have prepared yourself. There you are, easy! Or at least easily said. We can moderate that rule if necessary, to include food that has been prepared by people with your interests at heart, people who love you. You can also include good quality restaurants, but that is just about the limit.

Do not eat potato crisps or chips, shop-bought biscuits, cakes, pies, pasties, hamburgers or sandwiches. If you long for that stuff, then get up and cook it yourself! This is how to lose weight naturally. It is called eating well and people used to do it naturally because in those days, there were no fast food stores and people took home made sandwiches and salads to work or school.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

No one has to read a study or a report to know that there are a lot of overweight or obese people in the USA and the UK. You can blame this on the food being sold or a lack of understanding, but the real bottom line is that you are the one who is putting that stuff into your mouth.

Most people do not think about it, but everyone has a choice whether to eat decent food or not. If you are seriously overweight, then you chose to allow yourself to get yourself into that state. No one else, you!

Nevertheless, there is always a way out and it is never too late. There are thousands of weight loss programs, so you should be able to find one that suits you. I made that sound easy and it should be, but people still have trouble choosing one.

My advice is to read the weight loss advert aloud to yourself or a friend. Does it sound like BS? Then it probably is. Dump it. The bottom line is that you can only lose weight by expending more energy than you consume. Having said that there are a couple of ways of achieving that.

The two basic methods are either counting calories or counting carbohydrates, that is Weight Watchers or Atkins. Start by going to their web sites and reading about their philosophies. Choose the one that suits you and stick to it.

One note that I would like to stress here for teens is that at your time of life your body is going through a revolutionary change. You are metamorphosing from a child to an adult and your body is filling up with hormones, you only had a little of before.

Let the change finish, before you start worrying too much. You were a bug, now you are a chrysalis and soon you will be a butterfly. Just wait and your body time to sort itself out.

There really is not much you can do to stop what your body has to do. Spots mean that you have poisons in you and your body wants to get rid of them. Help it by not putting any more junk into it. Keep your skin clean and make sure that everything that touches your skin is clean too. Hands, hair, pillow cases, et cetera.

Exercise! Now is the time to embed an exercise routine into your way of life. Exercise raises your rate of metabolism which helps you burn calories more quickly. If you can burn calories quickly, then you can allow yourself more treats.

The other point about exercise is that if you do not establish a discipline for exercise when you are young, then you will find it harder when you have your next bodily change in your forties or fifties.

The bottom line is not to worry too much about what you look like now, you are a chrysalis. Help your body out by eating healthily and take up a sport you enjoy and stick with it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be slimmer just to have a sexier body. Many people have moulded their physiques to make them look more healthy and more desirable. However, there is no way to attain this new look in a day of two. The problem is that most people do not want to wait, they want it now.

This can lead to these people making rather rash and, it has top be said, rather silly decisions. They are not willing to wait and they are not prepared to work for what they want. This is why so many people turn to rapid weight loss diets. Some ‘guru’ brings out a new fad diet and a good proportion of the ‘I want it now’ crowd jump on the band wagon. Only to be disappointed again within the year or less.

Speed diets or rapid weight loss diets tend to put out great advertising copy that is very hard to resist. However, all diets, no matter which one you choose, Weight Watchers, Atkins or fad diet, depend on overweight people making lifestyle changes in order for them to work permanently.

There is a very apposite saying: if you always do what you always did, then you will always get what you always got. That says it all. You can lose weight with all but the stupidest of diets, but if you go back to your old ways when you hit your target weight, you MUST slowly, but surely creep back to your old weight.

If you give your body more calories than it needs, it will store them for when it does need them. The problem is that that day never comes for too many people, because they never exercise themselves. This is especially true of fad diets like the ‘cabbage water’ diet. Yes, you will lose weight on it, but you would lose weight by fasting whatever you did. For a while, and then you might get sick. For a diet to work, it has to be adaptable and enjoyable enough for you to be able to stick with it for the rest of your life. Make no mistake, dieting is long-haul.

Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. The problem with short term dieting, is that you let go of the sponge underwater.

This is why serial dieters first lose weight and are happy; then finish dieting, go back to their old weight and become depressed. In that state of depression they are suckers for the advertisers of the next latest craze diet. In other words, they are being manipulated and literally squeezed dry, but of their money too.

These silly rapid weight loss programs also include fat loss pills. They are not making you lose fat, well, maybe a tiny amount gets washed out with all the excess water you are carrying. They are only diuretics under another name. How many pills would I sell if I called them diuretics? How many more would I sell if I called them miracle fat loss pills?

Type the word diuretic into a engine and learn more about them. They are all around you in mild healthy forms. A diuretic will essentially cause your body to lose more fluid than was in the diuretic. Tea is a diuretic, for instance.

This list of these dopey dieting aids to rapid weight loss goes on and on, but someone must be buying them and you can bet your bottom dollar that it is the sad, depressed dieter who let go of the sponge.

Slimming soap! Slimming soap is being advertised as being a rare Eastern remedy for corpulence. Well, let me tell you, I live in the East and I have never seen it here. Asians are slim because they do a lot of physical work and do not come under the pressure to eat junk food that Westerners do, although that situation is changing rapidly too.

Magnetic weight loss earrings, I ask you! Even being drunk without a present for your wife ten minutes before Christmas Day is not a good enough excuse to fall for this one, surely? The advertisers say that the secret of this set of earrings is that they are magnetic.

Well, if you believe this, why not get a pair of $1 children’s toy magnets or even a pair of fridge magnets and put one in each hip pocket? Two? Well, after all, you would not want to lose weight from only one side, would you? You would be lop sided.

Just remember, when you are looking for a rapid weight loss diet: there ain’t one ( that will work for life). If you are putting on weight, then your lifestyle is wrong and it is up to you alone to change it.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

A fad diet is a trendy diet plan that promises to help you lose weight more often than not in a relatively short time. A fad diet usually attracts a lot of media attention, which then attracts a large number of overweight people to try it in order to get back in shape. Fad diets are frequently soon discredited, but they go on raising their head from time to time.

The grapefruit diet was or is an instance of a fad diet. People wanted to accept as true that you could lose weight solely by eating. The food in this case was grapefruits, but there is also a cabbage diet. The problem with these fad diets is that their slimming effect is only short-term, because you cannot eat only cabbage or grapefruit for the rest of your life, so the weight comes back as soon as you go back to normal.

‘If you always do what you always done, you will always get what you always got’ is a true saying. But what is worse is that a lot of of these diets can be injurious to your health.

However, do not think that fad diets are a new phenomenon. Fad diets or fad treatments have an ancient history going back to fake witch doctors, medicine men and quack doctors who doubled as barbers! Fad practitioners have a long and scandalous history and they are still alive and doing very well, thank you very much, today.

These days, medicine is too tightly regulated for them, so they have turned their attention to susceptible, despondent dieters. Most of those that take up a fad diet are overweight teens longing to look like their favourite film star.

Fad diets usually concentrate on reducing or completely cutting out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about the rapid loss of weight. In fact, this rapid loss is due to the quick loss of water that these low-carb diets stimulate. Much of the fat might still be there, so that when you stop the diet, your body regains its normal amount of water and the lost weight is put back on just as fast as it was discarded.

In the normal course of events, carbohydrates are the source of energy for work and exercise, but with these fad diets, the carbs are no longer there, so the body begins to break down its store of fat. This may seem advantageous but it is not necessarily so. The ketones resulting from the breakdown of fat are excreted via urine and often increased volumes of urine, which can result in dehydration. People with certain medical conditions have to be very cautious too; diabetics, for example.

Fad diets are popular, but they can be very detrimental to your body and when they do not work in the long-term, it can be very depressing leading to comfort eating. This is why many people begin a fad diet, lose weight and are radiant for a month or two, but then slip back when they are approaching their ideal weight. They go back to their old ways and the weight begins to return. They become depressed, certain that they will never be able to lose weight; they comfort eat some more, maybe giving up any hope of achieving a normal weight permanently.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?