One of the first things that you will do when you decide to lose weight would be to establish a target weight. For many, that goal will be their ‘ideal weight’, but for numerous, that ‘ideal weight’ might be exactly the wrong weight for them to be striving for.
Many years of dieting or being overweight have the physiological effect of moving the body’s idea of the ‘ideal weight’ from what is really regarded ideal. The ‘set point’ is the weight where your body naturally feels most comfy. If you have been overweight for a very long time, or if you’ve consistently ‘yo-yoed’, your body may respond to your initial weight reduction by lowering its metabolism because it feels that you are starving to death. This slowing down results in discouraging plateaus that frequently knock people off their diets entirely, and bring about regaining all or part of the dropped weight.
Rather than striving for an ‘ideal weight’ that calls for you to shed weight gradually for months or even years, many experts recommend aiming for shorter-term achievable goals. Because the bulk of diet research shows that most dieters lose weight gradually for around twelve weeks, then hit a plateau, that’s the number that they recommend you aim for. The strategy that many have discovered works greatest for them is one of alternating periods of weight reduction and maintenance, each lasting 8-12 weeks.
Select a realistic amount of weight that you can lose in 8-12 weeks. Foreseeing that the most reasonable and healthiest weight loss rate is 1-2 pounds each week, 30 pounds in 3 months is not unreasonable. Diet until you reach that objective, or for twelve weeks, whichever comes first, and then switch to a maintenance diet.
Why change to a maintenance diet at that point? In part, you are giving yourself a ‘breather’, a break from more restrictive eating. The other part, however, is that you are re-educating your body and allowing it establish a new ‘set point’. As soon as you’ve maintained your new weight for 8-12 weeks, establish another weight loss objective, and go back into weight loss mode. By giving your body a break from ‘starvation’, you will get over its resistance to losing much more weight, and be back to dieting for ‘the first two weeks’ – the weeks that most people lose weight more rapidly.
You’ll also be giving yourself an opportunity to ‘practice’ sustaining your new, healthier weight. Experts have discovered that more than half of the dieters who take off significant amounts of weight don’t sustain that weight loss as soon as they go ‘off’ their diet plan. By doing weight maintenance in stages, you’ll be proving to yourself that you can do it, and eliminating a strong negative psychological block.
This will work with any long-term weight loss diet, no matter the target. You’ll find it a lot easier to do if you select a diet that has concrete ‘phases’, like the South Beach or the Atkins, because the weight reduction and maintenance phases are clearly laid out for you to go by. Regardless of the diet plan you choose, though, by switching between weight loss phases and maintenance phases, you’ll teach yourself and your body how to maintain a healthy weight.
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