How to Develop a Weight Loss Routine | Health

Many of us who struggle with being overweight at some point reach the conclusion that it is a never ending routine. It doesn?t help that everyone seems to be selling some completely different miracle diet, yet our society at large continues to grow larger. The cold reality is that it is never all that simple to develop an effective weight loss routine that you will be able to stick to for a lifetime, but if you?re really determined and you have the discipline to do it the right way, you can successfully develop and follow such a weight loss routine.

You?ll often hear and read a variety of advertisements and testimonials about how some magical new idea in weight loss is better than all of those before it, helping you to lose weight in a hurry. Be particularly wary if those with these great new weight loss routines or products have some way of making money off of you. A good weight loss routine should actually save you some money on food, not cost you extra money. A true, long-term weight loss routine involves developing a healthy lifestyle.

Healthy weight loss routines will put you on a pace to lose between 6 and 8 pounds monthly. If you?re morbidly obese, you may start out at a much higher rate, but should stabilize into this range as you lose weight. Anything that causes faster weight loss is unhealthy. Any weight loss routine that proceeds more slowly than this may cause you to lose patience with the routine. As you approach your body?s ideal weight, you?ll naturally start stabilizing, if you?re on a healthy weight loss routine.

For a better understanding of how much energy your body needs to function, it should be noted that each pound of fat on your body contains approximately 3,500 calories. If you?re losing weight really quickly, you may be losing significant amounts of water, with no calories, or muscle, with less than half as many calories per pound as contained in fat.

Key Steps for a Successful Weight Loss Routine

1. Know how much fat you need to lose.

Weight charts are nice starting references, but different people have different ideal weights based on body composition. Body fat is your enemy, so you need to start with a measurement of how much body fat you have. Even your ideal percentage of body fat will vary somewhat by gender, goals, and height, so do some online research to find out what your ideal body fat percentage is so you?ll have a definite goal for your weight loss routine.

2. Make a commitment to your body fat percentage goal.

You should be able to calculate roughly how much weight you?ll need to lose to reach your ideal body fat percentage. Then you have to decide how important it is to you. Is it important enough to push onward on days when you?re too tired to exercise? Is it important enough to forgo your favorite cake when it?s offered for desert or pork when it?s the main course? There is no point in continuing on with a fruitless weight loss routine without committing to weight loss as the priority in all such situations.

Weight Loss Routine Summary

Weight loss is simple, we just like to complicate it with lose weight quick schemes, followed by returns to the lifestyles that made us fat in the first place. If you want to get off the weight management roller coaster, you?ll have to make a commitment to a weight loss routine that involves a change toward a healthy lifestyle.

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