Beginner’s Guide to Weight Loss

Carrying a surfeit of pounds is something that a great number of Americans, and indeed people all over the developed world suffer from. It is rarely a conscious choice, as few people would deliberately chose a life often characterized by isolation from others, loneliness and very often depression, not to mention the myriad of health problems associated with being overweight, such as heart disease, strokes, diabetes, just to name a few.

Starting from the assumption that being overweight was not a conscious decision, you must have looked at yourself in the mirror at some point and said: “how did it come to this?” Indeed, the weight did not appear overnight! It is the result of months, years and sometimes decades of bad, or at least ill-considered or ill-informed choices.

Acknowledging the Problem

The first thing to do is to realize the problem. For many overweight people, this is not the problem. When you have struggled with not only the social stigma attached to being overweight, but also the physical constraints, lack of attractiveness to the opposite sex, and more, you know you have a problem. For others, it is only a question of getting in the right frame of mind.

Acknowledging that you have not only excess weight, but that this excess weight is causing problems in other areas of your life is crucial to the following steps. Only this understanding can help carry you through the weight loss process, whatever method you choose to shed those unwanted pounds. This brings us directly to Act II of the Beginner’s Guide to Weight Loss.

Establishing Goals

Knowing you are overweight and recognizing that it is a problem is only the first part of the solution. If the secret to losing weight was to wish it away, obesity would not be the scourge that it currently is. What you need are realistic goals, established with long term results in mind. All the weight you are carrying did not appear overnight and it is naïve to think that it will disappear this quickly. You need to establish weekly, monthly and yearly goals that fit the lifestyle that you wish to have. If you set goals that are too stringent, you more than likely will fail to meet them, and this failure could set you on a downward spiral of depression and further weight gain. On the other hand, if you set goals that are too easy, you will simply ignore them, thinking that you can just ‘start tomorrow’ and still achieve your goals. Goal setting is an exercise in itself, and for the purpose of this article, we’ll assume that you manage to set goals that are realistic, achievable and desirable in the long term.

Choosing a Weight Loss Method

There are only a few factors on which you can play to affect your weight. One of the main factors is your diet, or to put simply, the food and beverages you can consume. The second factor is the amount of calories you burn, as influenced by the exercise you do, the speed of your metabolism, and the type of foods you eat.

The third factor is the type of supplement you may wish to take. The best kind of supplements is all natural and will work, as its name implies, to supplement both your diet and exercise. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can take a diet pill that will make you lose weight without you doing any exercise, or modifying your diet. Biology doesn’t work this way! Any diet pill that advertises weight loss without exercise or effort of any kind will have dizzying and sometimes dangerous side effects, and will have no long term results.

Obviously, the best kind of weight loss method will include some elements of diet, exercise, and possibly natural weight loss supplements. It is up to you to decide to what degree you need to adjust the only factors over which you have control in order to have a regular, balanced and steady weight loss that will endure in the long term.