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Yes, You Really Can Have Successful Weight LossHow do you start a successful weight loss program?You might ask yourself, "What is the best way for me to lose weight?" The answer is easy if you are willing to do whatever it takes to lose weight. Imagine you were a machine. You didn't have likes and dislikes. You didn't have problems. You were a machine that could be programmed to do whatever needed to be done. Then the answer is simple. The best way to start a successful weight loss program is to have: 
Why a small calorie deficit and not a crash diet? Because your body needs to get used to changes. Why a mild increase in exercise and not a crash exercise program? Because it takes a while for your body to change the way it works. Give your body time to adjustIf you are overweight it is because your body is busy storing fat. Now you go on a diet. And you want your body to break down fat and burn it up. Well, it is not very good at breaking down fat. It takes certain processes in the body, certain enzymes, to break down fat. Your body is good at storing fat. It is not good at breaking it down. So you go on a diet. You starve yourself. And it all might be wasted. You might just lose good healthy lean mass instead of fat. Why? Your body is not ready to start losing fat. Your body doesn't have what it needs to burn fat. It has to build up the enzymes and things it needs to start really burning fat. And that will take a few weeks. But if you starve yourself it can burn up your lean muscle and use it for energy. And that is the last thing you want to have happen. And what about activity?Remember, we are imagining you don't have any likes or dislikes--that you will do whatever it takes to have successful weight loss. So if you don't want to exercise--if you just can't exercise--I have a plan for you too. But read this anyway, and file it in your memory banks for later. Ideally you will increase your activity. You have to do something to get the blood pumping--some people call it cardio and some people call it aerobics. That includes any activities that get you breathing and get your blood flowing. It can be walking, running, swimming, biking, but it is anything that gets your heart rate up and gets your breathing up and gets your body moving. And with that you need to do some resistance exercise. Resistance exercises are the ones that fill your muscles with blood and stimulate your muscles to grow. The easiest resistance exercise is weight training. That's right--weight lifting is not the hardest exercise--weight lifting is the easiest exercise. Other exercises like pull-ups and pushups work too, if you are strong enough to do them. But these exercises, just like the diet, should be mild at first. Why? Because you are out of shape and you can't exercise really hard at first. If you try to exercise too hard you will just kill yourself off. You will be sore, and miserable, and you will give up. Will it ever get easier?But after a few short weeks all of that will have changed. The exercise will get easier and easier. The new food patterns, where you are eating the right amounts of the right foods, will get easier and easier. When you start a truly successful weight loss program you are starting a new life. So you see, the hardest part of your new program, and the hardest part of your new life, is the beginning. After that it gets easier. That is why you want to go slow at first. But remember, we were imagining you were a machine without likes and dislikes. And that ignores the human aspect. See, you are not a machine. You can't be programmed like a machine to just do certain things in a certain way at a certain time.
So if all other things are equal, the slow and steady wins the race all the time when it comes to successful weight loss. In fact, for the long run, slow and steady is the only thing that works. But,
…then maybe a quick jump start diet is right for you. It won't keep the weight off in the long run. But if it is what is needed to motivate you in the beginning that is not so bad. But then get back here and follow through on what really does work for successful weight loss, what you can do, what you will do, and finally find out how to get the weight off and keep it off forever.
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