Most people want to lose that excess weight, but what they do not know when they have that "god send" realization is that it does not come instantly. Like most good things in life, great things are always worth fighting for, persevere, and the reward at the end is great. As this story illustrates;
It is a very glorious Sunday, you watch your kids play in the park. Teenagers skating around with extreme speeds. Children sprinting, running, shouting and screaming their lungs out. As you look upon them fondly, you start to remember the times where you were young, fit and healthy. Looking into the mirror, you see a bulging tire around your waist, or perhaps excess fats dangling on your hips.
You step onto the weighing machine, and behold, your weight shoots up at least 50 pounds since 3 years ago you last weighed in. It has begun, the trigger that usually kills everyone, the urge and surge that makes your decision to want to lose weight fast. You go to the nearest sports store, grab a pair of shoes, sign up for gym memberships and buy a best pair of training suit money can buy.
You start to work out the next day, going all out, sprinting as hard as you can, while jogging at the same time and turning into a crawl. You diet to less than 1000 calories a day. When night hits, you weigh yourself and behold, you lost 8 pounds! You feel like the king of the world!
The next day, you do the exact same thing, only difference, when you weigh in, you look at the weighing machine in disbelief, and you were the exact same weight as you were yesterday. The next thing you know, motivation is lost, you throw away that gym card, that pair of shoes, and the training suit. Your back to square one, you pig out, and decide than your current weight is going to stay forever.
Does this sound familiar?
5 Reasons Why Most Exercise and Diet Plans Fail
1. We want instant gratification
To most people who have read self-help books, this term may seem familiar. But this sentence is as true as how our human nature works. We are unable to put away instant gratification. Therefore, we delve into extreme sprints when we first start get the "god send" realization that we are grossly overweight. Only to back out when there are no immediate results after only initial water weight is lost.
In order to exercise discipline and to have permanent weight loss, you must learn how to avoid instant gratification. To do this, take small steps in your exercise and diet plans instead of huge strides to make weight loss steady and permanent in the long run.
2. Lack of Nutritional & Dieting Education
Into losing weight, 80% is achieved through dieting, 20% exercising. Put them together on a daily basis, and you have what you call discipline. Most people have the idea beginning at the start of a plan that eating so little; less than 1000 calories a day, will get them fast results. What they do not realize is that the body will go into "survival" mode and thus, lower the body's metabolism rate to compromise to the lack of food.
The problem is not for the lack of motivation, but rather, the lack of knowledge and "know -how" of how the body works. Read up on articles providing information on how to actually adjust your nutrition and daily food intake before you decide that you know everything and start to think that less food and more exercise is better. Expand your nutritional knowledge and APPLY it to get long-lasting results.
3. Environmental Effects
The environment is a huge factor in you maintaining your current diet and weight loss plan. If you have all the chips lying around in your snack cupboards, with crackers, biscuits, cookies and cakes lying around in your house, you will bound to one day, after all that hard work, start to decide that one piece is okay. And behold, after that one innocent piece, you start to feel guilty and indulge more and more.
The solution? Substitute them, not eliminate. Toss and throw away all things that are harmful to your health and instead, replace them with stuff that still satisfy your cravings. Like sweets? Replace them with fruits. Like the crispy chips? Replace them with crunchy carrot sticks to get that crunch. Like that carbonated soda? Replace them with isotonic drinks. The trick is, instead of eliminating things which only makes you have the urge to go out and buy them, replace them to keep urges under control. By doing that, you go "cold turkey" without actually going "cold turkey".
4. You don't keep records
In order to see results and see that you actually are making progress, keeping records is essential. Before your weight loss plan begins, take before pictures, both side and front images, write up your weight goals, exercise goals, keep a food journal, exercise log and always be honest and keep updating it daily. There is no point in keeping records unless they are honest, true and unbiased.
After sticking towards your plan for a long time, look into you're before pictures, take your current pictures and compare them. If you look amazingly different, congratulations, you now have reasons why it was a success from all your records of what you did. If there's no difference, you will still know why if you look at the record book if it's well recorded and you can than adjust accordingly. Always keep your journals and records updated and when the time to review your progress comes, you will know how to adjust accordingly.
5. You do not reward yourself
This is a pretty touchy subject. But some people, even after losing that amazing 35 pounds, still continuously do not reward themselves. This may seem healthy, but it will cause major depression and guilt if you do start to indulge one day. Instead, plan your diet and exercise regime in such a way where every week, you give yourself a leeway to reward yourself for all that hard work.
The bottom line is, if you plan to reward yourself within your means without giving into guilt and depression, you will stick to it and will avoid that one "guilt" trigger which causes many slide-backs.
Summary
Well that's it for now. I do sincerely hope that all this advice have helped you folks in terms of your weight loss goal. Personally, I once weighed 272.8 pounds standing at 5'5. I now weigh a current weight of 162.8 pounds. There's one thing to note through my experience and that is, regardless of all that you know, you must understand that you do not know everything. So, constantly read up to improve while at the same time, stick to your game plan.
To your success,
Aaron Leow
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