Lose Weight Slowly!

No, the title is not a mistake –this article is not about how to lose weight fast, but slowly!
Have you stopped reading yet? Nobody wants to do anything slowly nowadays, certainly not something as crucial as losing weight! But the fact is, how long have you been trying to lose weight fast? Let’s consider a quote by the author and self-help guru Wayne Dyer – “Infinite patience yields instant results.” This isn’t just a clever, Zen-like saying. It reveals something important about the way our minds and bodies work.

When you are in a hurry to accomplish something fast, you tend to overlook important details. When it comes to losing weight, you are likely to latch onto the latest fad diet or start an overly ambitious exercise program. In the first case, you may lose a few pounds by starving yourself for a few weeks. Most likely, however, your body will compel you to make up for this calorie deficit by gaining back all that weight in the near future. When it comes to exercise -an important part of any weight loss program, to be sure- if you try to do too much too fast, you are likely to burn yourself out and quit. Or worse, you could injure yourself.

Why don’t you put your situation in perspective. How long did it take you to reach your present weight and overall body condition? The answer will vary depending on your age and particular circumstances, but I’ll bet it was more than ten days, or even ten weeks. Yet people who may have been eating an unhealthy diet or living a sedentary lifestyle for decades expect to change all of this in a matter of weeks!

I am not trying to discourage you. Just the opposite, in fact. I’m trying to persuade you not to approach weight loss with an unrealistic attitude that will leave you feeling like you’ve failed. Here’s something it’s very critical to keep in mind -what’s important is not where you are but where you’re headed. If you think of losing weight as not a goal of the week or month, but as a long-term goal that involves permanent changes in your attitude and lifestyle, you will be heading in the right direction.

Losing weight need not take a long time. One of the problems with modern life is that our technology has us brainwashed into thinking in terms of seconds. Emails, tweets and text messages come to us instantly. So anything that takes a little longer seems to be out of reach, beyond the furthest horizon. But this isn’t reality.

Let’s assume, for example, that your goal is to lose fifty pounds. Do you find it depressing that you may not be able to accomplish this in a couple of weeks or even a couple of months? Well, why not think about what would happen if you could lose one pound per week. That means you would achieve your goal in about a year’s time. Too slow, you say? But remember that you will start seeing and feeling results much sooner than this. It’s just the final goal that will take a year. If you change your diet and start exercising -in a reasonable manner- you will start to feel better almost immediately. In six months, you will have lost twenty-five pounds. In a mere two months, you will have lost eight!

The above is an admittedly random example. You may need to lose more or less weight, and it may take you a little longer -or maybe a little less time. The point is to change your mindset and stop being in such a hurry. Time passes quickly these days, usually too quickly. So something that may seem far off will be here all too soon. You can take this sometimes uncomfortable aspect of life and use it to your advantage with a goal like losing weight. Try to lose weight slowly, and you will shed those pounds before you know it!

Maire Brody writes on many topics, from cultural issues to health and how to Lose Weight

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/weight-loss-articles/lose-weight-slowly-1288164.html

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