Have you seen the commercials on television or heard them on the radio about how you can lose up to X number of pounds in just 2 weeks with this diet plan or that machine?  The one that I hate the most is the one from Nutri-system that entices you to buy their meals, meals that are meant to help you lose weight, by offering you more food!  Isn't that part of the problem?  I've been too motivated by food in the first place?

I understand why people are in a hurry when it comes to losing weight.  It's a amazing how weight gain can "sneak" up on you.  With the extra weight, you might not be able to sneak up on a dozing house cat, but the weight can sneak up on you without you ever noticing it.  It's not until you go to put on a certain article of clothing or you look in the mirror and it dawns on you, "I've gotten fat!"

This is probably when you're the most susceptible to one of these ads, right after those jeans won't button.  "Oh my God!  It's only two weeks until the class reunion and look at me!" Or something like that.

Well, as a person who has been heavy all of his life, I'm here to tell you something.  You didn't put that weight on over-night and if you want to take it back off in any kind of permanent fashion, you're not going to take it off over-night either!

Losing weight is actually quite simple in theory.  If you consume less calories than you burn, you will lose weight.  This fact can even be utilized to lose large amounts of weight quickly, as the commercials suggest. 

The problem comes in that we are human.  That even if you starve yourself and exercise to beat the banshees and are successful in dropping that tonnage by the time of the reunion, chances are you will gain that weight, plus more back in the long hall.  

The only way to permanently lose weight is to take an honest look at your current lifestyle (it's the lifestyle that made it possible for you to have gained the weight in the first place) and to make doable changes in your lifestyle that will allow you to drop the extra weight in such a manner that your body doesn't think that it's starving.  

This can't be done in two weeks!  It can be started today.  As a matter of fact, why not start it today?  The first steps don't have to be drastic.  The first step is:

1)  Examine your current lifestyle.  How much exercise do you currently get each day?  When and how much do you eat? Write it down!

You don't have to change anything yet, you simply need to know where you're currently at.  I would venture to say that if you've read this far into this post that you are interested in changing.  I'd also venture to say that unless there is something stressing you out big time that you've probably not that far out of balance.  What I mean by this is that even if you've been gaining weight for a while now, that it hasn't been overnight.  Your calories in have been exceeding your calories out, but not by that much.  Am I right?

The challenge now is to change this ratio around to where it's the other way.  To where your calories out exceed your calories in by a small amount.  If you do this, you WILL LOSE WEIGHT!  This method may not get you into those jeans by next Tuesday, but you will be in them by some point.  Does the when really matter that much in the long haul?

I'm not sure how much interest there will be in this post.  If you would like to hear some of the other things that I have found out about losing weight and getting into shape over the years, leave me a comment saying so and I'll write more about what I've learned.

Bob Mitchell

ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.