It sounds simple enough doesn't it? You burn more calories than you take in in order to lose weight. To gain weight you burn fewer calories than you take in and to maintain weight you balance calories eaten with calories burned. If only weight management were that easy in real life. But it is not. So how do you find out how to lose weight fast?

Obesity On The News

We have all heard the statistics that one-third of adults, 72 million people, are obese. We have probably also heard that 16% of children are obese, that more and more kids are getting lifestyle diseases like diabetes II, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol at younger and younger ages. It has been said that today's youth will be the first generation not to outlive their parents in more than a hundred years.

The Struggle

Even with those glaring statistics and the fact that we know we need to get healthy, that being obese may shorten our lives, so many people still struggle with weight management. Some people develop bulimia, anorexia, or laxative abuse problems in an effort to maintain fat burning. Why is it so hard to keep our weight at a reasonable level? The answer to that question is complicated.

Giving Up, Getting Fatter

Should we all resign ourselves to being fat, live as long as we can and enjoy it or should we keep up the struggle to be thin? The answer is somewhere in the middle. Before we go on one more diet program with expectations that we will be perfectly able to follow the diet 100%, stop. We are already setting ourselves up for failure and we have not even begun yet. Nobody does anything to the level of perfectly for 100% of the time. Would you expect your best friend to do that? No? Then why do you expect it of yourself?

Re-framing Expectations

What if we just accepted the fact that we are human and that humans do not do anything 100% of the time for very long? Let's look at the weight management issue differently than we have done in the past. Would it be possible for you to eat healthy foods 50% of your meals in a day or a week? Could you do it 60% of the time? How about 80% of the time? Do you think that you could eat healthy foods for 90% of your meals? What percentage of meals could you actually eat healthy foods without stirring up a lot of anxiety in yourself? That is where you need to begin. Gradually work your way up to eating 90% of your meals with only healthy food. This way you have 10% of your meals left for indulging yourself while still losing weight.

Now think about exercise in the same way. Could you see yourself actually doing some exercise for five minutes a day? What about 10 minutes or 30 minutes? Could you do this two or three times a week to begin with? Begin at the point you can physically and mentally handle and work your way up to exercising 30 minutes five days a week.

Paying Attention To Your Feelings