Solutions to common fat loss problems, part 4....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 12-27-2011

We posted on solutions to 3 of the most important problems in part one last Tuesday, 12-20-2011.

1. Effective fat loss plans that do not turn on your body’s famine response succeed and you can keep the fat off. Diet, temporary starvation routines always turn on the famine response and fail. That post has the solutions that make up an effective fat loss plan.

2. Foods and drinks most people now think of as normal that did not exist or didn’t exist at all in their current forms 100 years ago. But they are NOT normal. That post has a bit about how that happened and why virtually avoiding all these foods and drinks makes hunger free fat loss almost easy. People who have been consuming a lot of these can lose tens of pounds with almost no other changes.

3. A key strategy in a fat loss plan that does not turn on your body’s famine response is to exercise. But finding time to exercise can be quite challenging. The post last Tuesday had 3 proven ways to find the time to exercise.

Last Thursday’s post began solutions to 3 more common fat loss problems.

4. Stress triggered eating.

5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat.

6. How to persist, lose all your fat or close to it, and keep it off.

Last Thursday’s post covered 4. Stress triggered eating -- and solutions to keep it from sabotaging you.

Friday last week we covered 5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat --
and how to overcome the effects of that.

If your friends, family, and neighbors are fat, it can be much harder to lose fat yourself. But there are three ways to do it. And, of those there are many ways to keep enjoying your current friends while being more effective influencing them than the other way around. That post had those solutions.

This time we’ll cover how to set up a support system making regular use of such supportive people and information. It will at least double your chances of success. And, if it’s done well and you keep using it, it will virtually guarantee your success.

It’s a key part of

6. How to persist, lose all your fat or close to it, and keep it off.

These basic three principles were in the first post in this series and all the others.

Plan to upgrade your lifestyle permanently to one that protects your health and supports your health without hunger. Instead of a temporary plan, a diet, that gets temporary results if any, focus on doing sustainable upgrades.

Do so in a way that does trim off some calories you were taking in and burns more while doing so in ways that avoid making you unusually hungry all the time.

Always aim to do these things in ways YOU find sustainable. (Not being too hungry all the time makes that much easier.)

6. How to persist, lose all your fat or close to it, and keep it off.

The first part is the focus and controls you build into your life yourself.

The first way to do that and double your chances of success is to keep track regularly.

Exercise is a key part of staying healthy and losing fat without hunger. People who keep a logbook of their exercise they use at each session they do right then as they exercise each time, are more than twice as likely to keep exercising. I use a system that enables writing in mine to just a few seconds for each exercise.

Measuring your waist and hips and chest and your weight on the scale on the same day of the week or the same day of the week once a month and analyzing what went right or less than OK to cause that period’s results also can double your results. (My own monthly report was a post last week.)

If you eat a very varied diet, it can help to keep a similar log for what you eat.

But having planned variation for each breakfast and each weekday lunch and many weekday dinners where you eat what you planned and eating almost only the right kinds of food the rest the time is easier on you. You just have the meals you planned and by adding some variation but often eating the same foods for the same meals each weekday, you know what you ate without having to take the extra time to record it.

Having those planned meals also makes it much easier to shop for your food too.

You do keep control of what you eat that way; but save the time the more complex logs of eating would require.

Controlling your exercise, managing your food intake, and monitoring your progress taken together can ensure your long term success.

But if you aren’t used to doing that sort of thing or your motivation to stay on course is variable, it can more than triple your success chances to have regular support for your efforts.

Such support can help you do this kind of management. It can encourage you to continue. It can provide solutions to the problems that you need help with.

Jillian Michaels is not perfect. But she does have a decent online support system for a relatively modest fee. She does particularly well for women who find her and her successful students inspiring and who need specific exercises and eating plans to get them going.

Weight Watchers has both an online program and a weekly meeting you can attend in person. People who need to add calorie cut backs to exercise and eating foods that support your health can do well with Weight Watchers. And people who need in person support and more productive thinking styles can do well with their weekly meetings. The meeting leaders can give you the emotional boost and the positive way to think about problems and solutions you need.

Weight Watchers does have some problems but has improved in many of those areas. They recommend more of a calorie cut back than is wise for permanent fat loss to ensure people get fast enough results they don’t drop out. (I found that by adding more nonstarchy vegetables, a zero point food, and aiming for a smaller cut back, and continuing to exercise, I was able to lose more fat than the cut back looked likely to deliver.)

Though they have gotten more proactive at encouraging people to delete fattening foods and drinks than they were, they still don’t emphasize that enough nor cutting back on all grains. They also don’t emphasize exercise enough. And, for many kinds of fruit, it may have been a mistake to list them as zero point foods.

But if you join and use either Jillian Michael’s system or Weight Watchers, by adding our information to their system you can do well in improving your health, losing fat, and keeping it off.

We are working to design and make our own online support system available too.

To access that when it becomes available, just keep reading our posts and our fat loss posts in particular. We will announce it on our posts when it’s ready; and it will be available through its own link from our posts.

Solutions to common fat loss problems, part 3....

Today's Post: Friday, 12-23-2011

We posted on solutions to 3 of the most important problems in part one last Tuesday, 12-20-2011.

1. Effective fat loss plans that do not turn on your body’s famine response succeed and you can keep the fat off. Diet, temporary starvation routines always turn on the famine response and fail. That post has the solutions that make up an effective fat loss plan.

2. Foods and drinks most people now think of as normal that did not exist or didn’t exist at all in their current forms 100 years ago. But they are NOT normal. That post has a bit about how that happened and why virtually avoiding all these foods and drinks makes hunger free fat loss almost easy. People who have been consuming a lot of these can lose tens of pounds with almost no other changes.

3. A key strategy in a fat loss plan that does not turn on your body’s famine response is to exercise. But finding time to exercise can be quite challenging. The post last Tuesday had 3 proven ways to find the time to exercise.

Last Thursday’s post began solutions to 3 more common fat loss problems.

4. Stress triggered eating.

5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat.

6. How to persist, lose all your fat or close to it, and keep it off.

It covered 4. Stress triggered eating -- and solutions to keep it from sabotaging you.

This time we’ll cover 5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat --
and how to overcome the effects of that.

This one can be quite challenging for many reasons.

For family members who still think junky foods and drinks are normal and want to keep eating them or who would dislike have being fat uncomfortably brought to their attention who are now ignoring it and those who both fail to support you or make it harder for you for whatever reason, some of these solutions will help.

The good news is that in many families where the person who lost weight is clearly happier and continues to be nice to the other people in the family, the influence goes the other way! You can inspire them to lose fat too!

But for bad family situations you need the last solution we’ll cover next week which is ways to get outside support by people who want you to lose fat.

a) The first idea is to get a firm grip on the fact that if you learn how to keep yourself healthy and lose fat and keep it off AND do it and keep doing it, you join a new and elite group of people.

You’ll keep your family and many of your friends. But you will now belong to a new group of people who include championship athletes, doctors who help their patients prevent diseases, personal trainers, health writers, and health coaches.

You’ll also fit better with groups of people who do the best in life including college professors, successful entrepreneurs and sales people, CEO’s and other executives, other achievers, and other college educated people. That’s because each of these groups is more likely than average to be in the new group you are joining.

People enjoy being members of an elite. And this is an elite you can join by choosing to do so and doing the actions necessary.

b) Find ways to socialize with your friends and acquaintances that support them but do not support their bad eating habits or lack of exercise. And, begin to avoid some situations where they would want you to eat badly with them.

If they are active on Facebook, do some of your socializing there.

Invite them to go with you on short hikes in interesting or beautiful places. Then let them set the pace.

Instead of going to their home, when you can, meet them at a restaurant at which there are food choices that fit what you need as well as the standard fare.

Meet them at potluck events where you can bring health OK foods you can eat and pick out what foods you’ll eat.

If you go to their home to eat, be an unusually friendly and polite guest and make the conversation fun and interesting for them. But take small servings of foods you shouldn’t eat and say if they taste good; but leave some of the most fattening stuff.

But do NOT try to sell them there on why to eat the way you do. ONLY do that if once you do lose enough fat it’s noticeable and either they ask how you are doing it or they say yes when you ask if they would like to do as you have done.

Focus on the things about that friend that you like and make the meal a positive event and focus on the things you have in common.

You’ll keep the friendship and be MORE likely to be positive example to them!

So by socializing some by Facebook and email; eating with them at locations that easily allow them and you to eat the way you want; and making the good times you share more important than the food when you eat at their place, you can keep the friendship and NOT have your fat loss derailed or your health harmed.

c) If you need to and can do so, spend some time socializing with people like personal trainers or people who have been going the gym for years and look like it in addition to your fatter friends.

Read books about health and fat loss. Read this blog when the topic interests you.

That way part of your thinking, social input, and social modeling is on people who already are the way you are becoming yourself.

Next time we’ll cover how to set up a support system making regular use of such supportive people and information. It will at least double your chances of success. And, if it’s done well and you keep using it, it will virtually guarantee your success.

Solutions to common fat loss problems, part 2....

Today's Post: Thursday, 12-22-2011

We posted on solutions to 3 of the most important problems in part one last Tuesday, 12-20-2011.

1. Effective fat loss plans that do not turn on your body’s famine response succeed and you can keep the fat off. Diet, temporary starvation routines always turn on the famine response and fail. That post has the solutions that make up an effective fat loss plan.

2. Foods and drinks most people now think of as normal that did not exist or didn’t exist at all in their current forms 100 years ago. But they are NOT normal. That post has a bit about how that happened and why virtually avoiding all these foods and drinks makes hunger free fat loss almost easy. People who have been consuming a lot of these can lose tens of pounds with almost no other changes.

3. A key strategy in a fat loss plan that does not turn on your body’s famine response is to exercise. But finding time to exercise can be quite challenging. The post last Tuesday had 3 proven ways to find the time to exercise.

This post begins solutions to 3 more common fat loss problems.

4. Stress triggered eating.

5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat.

6. How to persist, lose all your fat or close to it, and keep it off.


4. Stress triggered eating.

Some stress is so severe that the shock and adrenalin response completely turn off your appetite.

But most of the stress people have is chronic and mild to severe. The effect of this kind of stress is similar to the effects of the famine response.

People become more hungry for “comfort” foods that may be from the not really normal list and horribly fattening. It always tends to cause more appetite for sugary and fattier foods.

There are two ways to beat it.

Be less stressed. And, avoid this effect when you are stressed

Being less stressed IS possible. It’s not often easy. But there are ways you can have less stress. You can prevent some kinds of stress. You can escape or turn off some stressful problems, and you can turn off your body’s stress response.

The post we did: High leverage ways to live longer, part 2.... Thursday, 12-8-2011 covers these three methods in detail because people who do these 3 things age more slowly, have better health, and live longer.

Bonus for this post.: In that post we forgot three great ways to turn off your body’s stress response.

a) Believe it or not you can get quite substantial if brief stress relief AND wake up a bit too within a few seconds. You don’t even have to learn how because it was already wired in when you were born! Just take a few seconds and yawn and stretch on purpose.

(People you know you or who see you as similar to them in some way will tend to yawn too and get the same stress relief often without even realizing it.)

b) Another blogger reminded me that watching videos or old movies you think are funny and laugh at also can be superb stress relief.

c) Doing a fast set of a relatively vigorous exercise also gives you almost instant if brief stress relief.

Being stressed without giving in to fattening foods also works.

If you follow the methods that cause hunger free fat loss that does not trigger your body’s stress response, your real hunger will be low or reasonable.

Saying no to stress caused eating is dramatically easier when your real hunger is not also high! Women who always eat a filling and health OK breakfast can say no to very fattening treats found in some offices MUCH more easily than women who haven’t eaten since last night as one example.

If you’ve eaten food that turns down your hunger and fills your tummy with some fiber too and some food that you enjoy eating, if you do reach for comfort food, it’s dramatically easier to have just a bit instead of a lot more.

Another way is to know the health harms of the ingredients of some of the worst treat foods. You may be hungrier for them from stress. But focusing on what those ingredients will do to you can make it much, much easier to pass completely.

The last way I’ll list is to refuse to eat treat foods that you don’t really like that much normally. Only eat those you normally really like. And just eat some while remembering that you are aiming to average mostly healthy and nonfattening foods.

Next time we’ll cover 5. Friends and family and neighbors are fat --
and how to overcome the effects of that.