Lose fat forever like those who did....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 11-27-2012

One key way to succeed in anything as Tony Robbins and many others teach, is to find people who are actually succeeding at doing that thing, then emulate them.

Don’t just copy them but copy their strategy and customize it until you get a version that works but that YOU can do.

The chances are very, very good if you do this with enough of their strategies and keep customizing them to you and making an extra effort to learn to do them well, you will come to succeed in doing that thing too!

Most people fail at fat loss because the fat never leaves or it does leave but comes back.

There are 3 keys to permanent fat loss.

1.  Gradually create a way to eat and mostly enjoy foods and drinks that you can keep doing that is a permanent lifestyle upgrade -- AND which supports the lean and essential parts of you but WITHOUT the foods and drinks that make you fat, make you hungrier, or harm you.

The people who fail, cut back too much and think of their efforts as temporary.

Those who cut back more strategically and as a permanent lifestyle upgrade lose fat they then keep off!

2.  Focus on avoiding the foods and drinks that make you fat, make you hungrier, or harm you.

a) If you like some of these, it makes sense to stop the very worst ones anyway! 

Why eat heart attack starter when you are trying to eat less!? 

Why drink appetite boosters when you can drink things that also taste good that don’t!?

Both regular and diet soft drinks do just that!

Since the companies providing this stuff know it’s addictive, they make it look normal to consume and ensure they taste good.

But if you KNOW how harmful they are and stop consuming them and replace them with things you also like, the addiction IS beatable.

When tempted, focus on the real and harmful consequences and eat or drink something else.

b) For those foods and drinks that are not quite that dreadfully harmful, find a version that is a bit less harmful or fattening but you still really like. Then gradually eat it a bit less often or in slightly smaller amounts.  Then cut that back some more once you get used to having it less often.

We cover what those are in most of our posts because they cause so many diseases if you don’t know to avoid them!

The bonus in avoiding them is that not only does it make fat loss easier and keeping it off doable, you can know you are benefitting your health even during times when you lose less fat.

That helps you keep doing it -- so you keep off the fat you already lost and only need to add a bit to resume losing because you aren’t adding fat back with harmful foods and drinks.

Since most of these foods and drinks also make you MORE hungry, when you avoid them, you can lose fat without too much hunger!  That’s a big key to success.

AND by no longer eating or drinking these things, your chances of ESCAPING  heart attack, stroke, ED, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, other kinds of mental decline, and many cancers go WAY, WAY up!

The harm this stuff causes is all too real and as bad for you as smoking -- which is saying a lot!

3.  Use the methods people who have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off used too!

There is an ongoing study of such people called the National Weight Control Registry.

“Registry members have lost an average of 66 lbs and kept it off for 5.5 years.”

& both Wikipedia and this link:   Research Findings -  www.nwcr.ws/Research/default.htm

-- list some of their strategies.

Here are some that I think are most helpful and a bit about why they work.

a) Besides eliminating the worst foods and cutting back gradually on those that are just fattening, they found ways to upgrade what they ate so that they ate a bit less.  98% did that!

Removing junk carbs and harmful oils and adding health OK proteins and nonstarchy vegetables and some monosaturated oils, notably extra virgin olive oil all help.

Watching portion size and avoiding triple portions helps too.

b)  They also found a pattern of foods they liked and were OK with that they mostly ate or prepared at home and rarely ate other things.  They ate many of the same foods each week.

This makes shopping and staying with your lifestyle upgrades far easier.  And once you get the portion size down for those, you only have to measure the things you eat more rarely.  And that happens less often, which makes it easier to do!

c)  They also boosted their activity and amount of exercise until they burned an average of over 2900 calories a week.  94% did that at least some most days of every week.

In fact, 90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day or more to do that.

You can’t lose fat with exercise only unless you do twice to four times that much.  But doing what they did enables you to get and stay less fat and still eat more and do it with less hunger.  That makes continuing doable!  AND it more than doubles the health protection you get!

Though it isn’t listed in this study, doing some interval cardio AND strength training every week in addition to more moderate exercise, burns far more calories and protects your health better than just moderate exercise alone.  It also improves your appearance and self esteem more!

d)  Always eat breakfast!

This one is extremely valuable!

People losing fat while always eating breakfast, keep their metabolism up far more than those who skip.  (Regular exercise and eating a higher protein diet also help do this.)

That means they can again eat more and get and stay less fat yet still eat more and lose fat with less hunger.  That makes continuing doable!

Always eating breakfast enables people to avoid harmful and fattening mid-morning snacks and eating too much at dinner because it reduces uncontrollable hunger.

And, it gets even better! The metabolism boost is enough that lean people who always eat breakfast actually eat more calories per day than people who stay fat and skip breakfast!

It’s almost like the breakfast calories are free. 

78% of the people always eat breakfast.  And these facts suggest the other 22% would have lost more fat or done what they did more easily if they had always eaten breakfast.

e)  Weigh yourself regularly.  75% did so at least once a week.  (And, I suspect most of the rest did so once a month or so or when they wanted to check their progress.)

When you stop fattening foods and drinks and add exercise and health supporting foods and drinks, you tend to get good news when you step on the scale.

That helps a lot. 

Then when you have lost the fat, if you let up your efforts a bit too much, you find out in time to correct course.

f) “62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.”

And, my guess is that most of the other 38% watched 15 to 20 hours or less or exercised while watching such as walking on a treadmill at the gym while watching.

This one is quite important for four reasons.

One of the most important is that it cuts back on the amount of commercials for the things that harm you and make you fat that you see.  These things aren’t normal or real foods and do you more harm than good.  But the adds show the opposite to make money for the companies that sell them!  The fewer such adds you see, the easier it is to avoid this stuff.

Second, did you know that you burn more calories while sleeping than you do watching TV?  That means that anything else than sitting immobile in front of the TV burns more calories!

Many people get too little sleep because they watch late night TV.  But if you avoid that and sleep instead, your appetite is much less many studies have found.  Get your local and breaking news online earlier in the day and save the late night shows you still allow yourself for earlier watching.

But the biggest reason is that it’s dramatically easier to get an hour or more exercise most days of each week when you watch TV from no hours to 10 or even 20 hours a week than it is when you watch 28 to 56 hours a week of TV!

g)  Although 45 % succeeded on their own, 55% joined some kind of group to get help either in getting started or in keeping their fat off.

So far, the best group is Weight Watchers.

They are far better than they used to be. And for those who can’t make their meetings, they also have an online version.

They sometimes suggest cutting back a bit too much on total calories and even health OK oils. Cut back less if you need to; but make sure that you keep up that smaller cut back consistently.

They are far better at suggesting vegetables and fruit and stopping soft drinks and refined grain foods than they once were. 

But if you use their methods cut back a LOT more than they suggest on soft drinks and refined grain breads and packaged snacks and desserts and commercial baked goods!

They are far better at suggesting exercise than they once were and their CEO just wrote a book on how helpful it was for him to get into weight training.  But if they don’t make a big deal about exercise, be SURE you do it on your own!