If you’re someone who truly wants to lose weight, then my hat goes off to you. You are a person with a mission and you can and will accomplish your weight loss goals if you stop making excuses. That’s right. You can lose the weight but you have to alter your lifestyle and dietary habits and say goodbye to excuses for good.  Heck, if I believed that you could make excuses and still lose weight, I would say, “Go for it.” However, excuses give you nothing. They don’t give a slimmer or healthier body, they don’t prolong your life, and they certainly you help your self-esteem. In addition, they don’t help you reach your weight loss goals. Instead, excuses cause nothing good to manifest, so get rid of them. 

I know…losing weight is hard and you use excuses as a protection mechanism. Well, stop. If you’re really serious about losing weight then drop the excuses, take action and get rid of those pounds.   No one can do it but you. You have to change your lifestyle and dietary habits. You have to exercise. You have to stick with your weight loss plan. Your best friend can’t do it for you, your spouse can’t do it for you. Your trainer can’t do it for you. You have to do it for yourself. By changing your mindset, you can achieve success. Here are some tips to help you on your weight loss quest:  

1. Become passionate about your quest. As I said before, losing weight is hard. It takes commitment and determination. It takes planning, too. It also takes you not belittling yourself. Instead, you must become passionate about your weight loss plan. You must visualize success and see yourself achieving your weight loss goals. You must alternate negative thoughts with positive ones whenever you feel bombarded with excuses. For instance, let’s say that you need to exercise 30 minutes a day, but you don’t feel like it. Instead of saying that you don’t have the time, make the time. Walk for 30 minutes after you eat lunch. Pack your gym shoes and take them to work. Form a lunch walking group at work. Just do it.
2. Whenever you find yourself making excuses, determine why you keep making them. Is it because you’re scared of not reaching your weight loss goals? Are you sabotaging your efforts because you don’t believe that you’re worthy of losing weight? Do you simply have no faith in yourself? Whatever the reason, get over it. Realize that you’re sabotaging your efforts and must stop.
3. Concentrate on the positives. Stop thinking negative thoughts. Instead concentrate on the positive. Visualize success. Expect success. Surround yourself with successful people who have similar weight loss goals. By doing this, you’ll realize that making excuses just isn’t going to cut it and that action will!
4. Just do it. If you hate a certain type of exercise then you have to find one that works for you. If you can’t find any exercise you like, you’re not looking hard enough. In fact, take walking, for instance. It is the single best exercise around. It’s free and you already know how to do it. Just remember that if you really want to lose those excess pounds you will have to exercise. You must become committed to exercise.

In conclusion, stop making excuses and get to work on losing weight. With the right mindset, you can stop making excuses. Now get out there and get it done!

With numerous fad diets coming out in recent years, it’s no wonder a lot of people get confused on what to follow. Data had shown that the average American is getting heavier and it’s understandable that most of them would want to shed off those extra baggage. After all, who wouldn’t want to be fit and trim? But following these fad diets blindly is just as dangerous as staying obese. A person considering on joining a fad diet program ought to be armed with sufficient knowledge on proper nutrition so as to aid in the diet selection process. Sadly, most of the fad diets available in the market today do not include the achievement of balanced nutrition in their repertoire.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recently released its guideline for improving diet and lifestyle with the primary goal of reducing the risk for cardiovascular diseases. In a nutshell, it promotes the achievement of your ideal body weight, control of your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol and triglycerides, normalizing your blood pressure, maintaining a healthy level of blood glucose, being active, and avoidance of smoking. Though the guideline did not specifically mention any fad diets, it recommends the intake a lot of fluids, fruits and vegetables along with high-fiber foods, whole grains and fish at least twice a week. It suggests the reduction of saturated fat intake and eating only lean meats and low-dairy products. Beverages and food with added sugars must also be limited.

The recommendations made by the AHA are certainly sensible but the fad diet industry still has a huge following due to its promise of almost instant gratification with absence of demand for lifestyle changes. The willingness for some to try some of these diets often leads to disappointment, waste of money, and adverse effects on health.

The American Dietetics Association dispels several myths associated with dieting with the release of their own guidelines. Here, the organization rejects the notion that there is a type of food that will make one lose weight, like grapefruit or cabbage. A person still needs variety in his diet to function properly and all these fad diets ever do is lower your caloric intake. The same can be said on diets advocating the increased intake of protein-rich food while reducing all the others. Caution should also be exercised if one is taking fiber supplements as this can lead to dehydration and constipation if one doesn’t drink plenty of fluids. One must also bear in mind that low calorie liquid diet was formulated under strict physician supervision and must only be used under the same condition. Use of these products indiscriminately will cause some unpleasant effects on your health.

So, before you decide on taking on a dietary program, make sure you completely understand its concepts and its proponents really know what they’re talking about. Always include enough exercise in your daily activities, as this is the only proven way to lose weight. Do steer away from fad diets that make overblown and fantastic claims of weight loss as more often than not, it’s just pure air.

A lot of fad diets out there claim to give dieters the needed weight loss in short time. Needless to say, the 3 day diet offers the shortest time possible, 10 pounds off in 3 days. Wow! Now, if only that is true. Still, for those of you interested in this short-term program, let me present the full menu plan.

Day 1 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1/2 grapefruit or juice
• 1 toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter

Lunch

• 1/2 cup tuna
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 3 oz. lean meat or chicken
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 apple
• 1 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 2 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1 egg
• 1/2 banana
• 1 toast

Lunch

• 1 cup cottage cheese or tuna
• 8 regular saltine crackers

Dinner

• 2 beef franks
• 1 cup broccoli or cabbage
• 1/2 cup carrots
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 3 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 5 regular saltine crackers
• 1 oz. cheddar cheese
• 1 apple

Lunch

• 1 boiled egg
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 1 cup tuna
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup cauliflower
• 1 cup melon
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

The above recommended meal plan entails that the dieter would be restricted to about 600 caloric intake per day, well below the amount needed by the body. The dieter would probably experience dehydration, as water is not part of the diet plan. The weight shed during this period might just be attributed to the body fluid you lost. Carbohydrates, the source of calories, contribute to the necessary function of retaining body fluid. Furthermore, the meal plan is strictly controlled and doesn’t allow variation. This is ideal only for those who don’t easily give in to hunger pangs, which might be the continuous state you’ll be in during the prescribed three days.

Following the days of strict diet, one might be prone to food bingeing to answer the body’s clamor for more food. Needless to say, this would just put those three days of gastronomic torture to waste. Then you would undergo what others would term the “yo-yo” diet. You put back on the weight you needed to lose in the first place, which would spur you to diet again, which would cause you to binge and gain weight again, and thus the cycle goes on and on…

Nobody can really say just how effective the 3 day diet is (or the other fad diets, for that matter). There might be even some out there who would testify to its efficacy. Still, the only way to lose weight safely is to lose it slowly. That way, the body can adjust to the state you want it in and there would be no more physiological impetus for you to eat more than what is needed. When a person binges on food after a period of semi-starvation, it is the body’s way of saying that it needs food urgently to survive.