One of the most overlooked aspects of life concerns our health.

Millions of Americans make New Year’s resolutions that they don’t keep.  Not only do they fail to keep them each year, but they generally end up adding on a few more pounds before the next January 1st rolls around. This is a terrible habit. It’s a complacent rut that everyone needs to get out of.

Whether you like it or not, a major part of living well and feeling great is personal fitness. What kind of shape are you currently in? I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you could be in better shape.

Hey, it all starts with a little motivation.

Everyone knows that working out and eating healthy leads to a healthier body. The better your diet is and the leaner your body, the more energy you are likely to have. I can’t stress enough how good being in shape can make you feel. It’s a physical and emotional surge. Because when your personal fitness levels are up-to-par, you not only have more strength and energy, but you also have more confidence. You know that you look great and that you can do things like head down to the beach in a swimsuit or wear less clothing in public. But when you need to lose weight, you feel the need to cover up and hide from the world. This can often lead to depression and feelings of regret. NO MORE!

It’s time to put more time and effort into your weight loss schedule.

Okay, this is where you can begin.

• Pull out a sheet of paper and label it with each day of the week.
• Choose five of these days to exercise on. [Many people choose to have the weekends off, but it's up to you].
• Now, to get started you may want to try three days of cardio and two days of weight training, alternating days.

This regular weight loss regimen will get your body in shape the way it’s supposed to be year-round. Always remember, being in great shape is NOT just a summer thing.

Eating right is imperative. You need a balance of good carbs, proteins and vitamins.

Typically you can consume as many vegetables as you please. We need like 8 a day, so go for it.

As far as proteins go, try lean poultry and fish. Then with good carbs, shoot for brown rice, whole grain breads and low-fat granola. With personal fitness so much relies on your diet. Without a nutritious one, you’re doomed.

There are many ways to lose weight if you try to search online or read various fitness references. However, not all weight loss methods are applicable to every person. It is easy to find a particular weight loss program but it is hard to make your body do it. In order to address your growing concern about your weight problem, you have to tell the words “help me lose weight” to yourself as well. This is a way of conditioning your mind and body to cooperate with what you are aiming for.

Helping yourself can do wonders to your body. In fact, more than any form of exercise or work out routine, doing this is the only way to keep yourself going and from giving up. Even though you are so intent in following a specific weight loss program, there is a possibility that you will find yourself giving up halfway through the course due to frustration or exhaustion. So do not stress yourself on weight loss programs that demand a lot of effort from you. Telling yourself to “help me lose weight” each time you exercise or choose to eat a healthy meal is a good motivation. It is one way to gain control over your mind and body.

There are times when you feel too lazy to do any physical activity. This is very natural among human beings. Time outs are indeed necessary at some point to unwind and refresh. Sometimes, you just want to lie down and enjoy a good movie instead of going out for a walk. Whenever you feel this way, do not force yourself to exercise. Doing so will only take the fun out of it. As much as you believe in telling yourself to “help me lose weight”, you also need to relax, unwind and enjoy yourself. Do not feel guilty. Learn to compromise by eating healthy foods when you do not feel like exercising. You can snack on carrot and celery sticks dipped in light salad dressing or low fat yogurt while watching TV or reading a good book.

Lastly, keep yourself inspired so you can focus on your weight loss goals. Do not be ashamed to face the mirror everyday and tell yourself to “help me lose weight”. This is probably the best empowerment you can do to inspire yourself to achieve your goals.

For many people it has been a while since they had any weight loss exercise program incorporated in their lives. It is always much easier to sit on the couch watching a favourite TV show than to get out and get moving. The statistics, however, are showing that we need to change our ways. Two out of every three American adults are now considered to be overweight and One in Four are considered obese. This is an alarming statistic that we have become immune to over time.

Ask yourself – “Am I in the Overweight or Obese category?

The benefits to incorporating a weight loss program into your life are fantastic; it reduces the strain on your essential organs thereby lowering the chances of heart disease, back problems, diabetes and many other problems. But the main benefits are that you will feel stronger and more energetic, more confident and full of life.

So, how do you choose a weight loss exercise program? Because everyone is unique with their own aims and time available to exercising, this can be a different answer for everyone. The main thing is that you choose exercises that are fun for you so that you are happy to choose exercise over whatever you have been doing. Exercising with a group of people can be great too. You can make some new friends and if you stop going they will be ringing you to find out where you are.

So what are some choices for a weight loss exercise program? Well the easiest to get started on today – is walking. Making sure you have comfortable clothes and good supportive shoes will make it more enjoyable. Aim to walk for 30-45 minutes at a consistent pace to get the greatest benefits. Using an mp3 player with upbeat music is a great way to do this as people tend to naturally fall in step with the timing of the music – one of the reasons that they play slow music in shopping malls. When I go walking I like to go a different direction each time and look at properties in my neighbourhood. Use whatever keeps you motivated.

If walking does not excite you, then perhaps look at aerobics, swimming or even take a dance class, like rock ’n roll or belly dancing. Focussing on a weight loss exercise program that use the whole body helps your body burn even more calories, burn the fat and also build muscle. Plan to exercise 3-4 times each week and you should start to see great results within 4 weeks.

So, get out there, have fun and lose weight – what are you waiting for?

When we are trying to change a habit or a lifestyle I think one of the best methods is to treat ourselves like kids again. As a child, when I was not achieving something, Mom always pulled out the star chart. “Now Jane, if you can make your bed every morning for the next month then you can choose a new game from the store.” Of course as it takes 21 days to create a habit needless to say I now make my bed each morning! But why is it so hard to go to the gym and use that membership I am paying for?

So the other day in the mall I saw a star chart similar to the one Mom used. I also saw a dress that I really liked and on any other day would have bought it, but today I felt that I should earn it. I came home and wrote all of the tips to lose weight that I had been avoiding on the chart and a picture of the dress on the reward box.

It is a really simple thing to do and I feel that it is one of the best tips to lose weight that there is. To lose weight we need continual progress. Stopping and starting just doesn’t give the same results and then we end up frustrated and still fat.

So on my star chart I wrote the following tips to weight loss:

1. Drink 8 glasses of water – hydration is really important to help your major organs function. Don’t believe someone if they say that coffee, tea or sodas are just as good as water – it’s not true.
2. Every 2^nd day is an exercise activity. I don’t like to do the same thing each time, so I put down walking, gym, and swimming on different days. Each of these give me an all over body workout which is great for weight loss.
3. No eating after 7pm. This is an interesting tip to lose weight that seems to work well. It makes sense because you are doing less physical activity after this time so your body’s metabolism is slowing making it harder to process food.

Make sure that you only write things that you can do on your star chart this way it can be used to change your habits. It should not be used for a goal like losing 5lbs by next month.

I hope you can have some success with these tips to lose weight too.

Ps. I bought the dress and I was a size smaller – Yippee!

Just to let you know – I don’t recommend fad diets or weight loss pills. I feel that both of these actually create an extra strain for your body to bear rather than helping it function the way that it should.

So the most important tips to lose weight that I use is to drink lots of water. Our bodies are made up of about 2/3rds water, which is used to aid digestion, help absorb nutrients and remove toxins from the body. Our level of hydration impacts on how efficiently all major organs in our body can function. I know that it will mean that you need to go to the bathroom a little more often – but the overall health benefits are too many to mention, plus you get a little more exercise as well!

That brings me to the second of my tips to lose weight – Exercise – not just any exercise, I want you to choose something that is FUN. Go for a long fast walk with your dog – don’t have a dog? – see if you can walk someone elses! If you have kids, see if you can keep up with them at the playground – that takes a lot of energy. Join a dance group and learn Salsa dancing or go rock climbing. There are so many activities to choose from you don’t have to stick to the regular ones. Just try to make sure that whatever you choose works out your whole body and increases your heart rate for about 30 – 60 minutes depending on its intensity.

Now you will have to look seriously at the types of food you are eating. I don’t want you to deprive yourself completely of your favourite snacks initially as this is the fastest way to giving up on your weight loss goal. Try to reduce your intake – if you normally eat a candy bar each day, cut it in half and have the other half tomorrow.

Sometimes giving up food can be almost as hard as other addictive substances like nicotine. I gave up chocolate after eating a block a day – boy was I hard to be around for the next few weeks! It is these tips to lose weight that will save your sanity when you first start.

For the other snacks that you are not addicted to, donate whatever is in your cupboard to charity or other family and friends and fill your larder with healthier alternatives. This way when you are getting hungry and need a snack you will be giving your body a more nourishing choice.

Remember that you are aiming for a lifestyle change. Fad diets are easy, but they tend not to work for very long. If you are overweight now, then your current lifestyle is not supporting the new you that you are imagining. The tips for weight loss that I have mentioned may seem too few, but if you can incorporate these into your life first, then it will be easy to add in more ideas as your health and fitness increases.

When I moved out on my own and wanted to lose some weight, I needed to learn how to eat healthy. My solution was to cut out sweets entirely. I hated not having something sweet after dinner, but I didn’t see any other way to do it. I would eat no sweets until my willpower gave out, then binge. I don’t know why fresh fruit didn’t occur to me as an option earlier, but it didn’t. Once it did, however, it revolutionized my eating habits.

My parents would cook with fresh fruits, but they would never use them for dessert when I was growing up. Then one day, I received a fresh fruit basket from a friend. It was filled with fresh citrus fruit from Florida: oranges, lemons, and pomegranates. A lot of people scoff when they get fresh fruit baskets. They consider them to be a mediocre and uninspired gift. I reacted much differently. I was overjoyed to be getting all those fresh fruits. I practically ate myself sick!

A lot of people talk about the problems of eating too much fresh fruit. Supposedly, raw sugars are not much better for you than processed ones, and you can  gain weight from eating fresh fruit almost as easily as from eating chocolate cake. This opinion is rubbish. If you eat your fruit fresh, you get the fiber, vitamins, and minerals that are incorporated into these natural foods, without the fats and carbohydrates that typical deserts are filled with. I realised that this was how to eat healthy. Yes it is possible to eat too much fresh fruit, but you can eat too much of anything! The bottom line is, fresh fruits are a great way to enjoy a little taste of something sweet without compromising your diet.

For effective weight loss, the best way is to work on all three areas at once – diet, exercise and the usually forgotten – mindset.

Diet

You probably know that the most basic of all tips to lose weight and  lose those few extra pounds is to cut down your consumption of  food.  I realise that this is easier to say than to do.

There are many easy ideas that you can use to reduce the amount of food you eat without causing too much change in your lifestyle.  Those tips to lose weight which talk about how much food you consume focus on slightly changing your eating habits.  So, if you usually make two slices of toast every morning with your breakfast, try making just one.  Then if you are still hungry, you have to go through all the work of making more.  You may find the extra effort to be too much trouble and so you have saved some calories.

Another one of the main tips to lose weight is to cut out one of the regular snack times that you might regularly have.  If you normally take that ten o’clock coffee break with a doughnut, try to work through until 10:30 before stopping.  If you need the snack break though, do it, you should never starve yourself.  The benefit is gained however, because by then, it is closer to lunch and you might find that you will eat less lunch than you normally would.

Another category of tips to lose weight involves changing the food that we eat.  We all possibly need to reduce our consumption of sugars and fats.  Let’s be honest though, a carrot will never satisfy you if a candy bar is what you are craving, even though that is what would be better for our body.  But you need to look for the lower calorie alternatives to that chocolate bar.  Popcorn is more filling and has fewer calories than the candy bar – and it still goes great at the movies! Satisfying your desire to eat is the real need that you must meet.  That is one of my favorite tips to lose weight.

Other substitutes might include baked potato instead of fried potatoes.  And of course, the best of the weight loss tips is stay away from the typical fast foods that you probably are chowing down too frequently.

Exercise
The other class of tips to lose weight is exercise.  Normal exercise programs have a routine and regime that many people find hard to adapt to.  This is a difficult place to give advice.  We all know how important regular exercise is for our health and good looks.  Nevertheless, there are ways to increase the amount of exercise we get without an extra trip to the gym.  Studies have shown that people who walk faster tend to maintain their weight better than people who walk more slowly.  Pick up the pace when you are roaming around the mall.

MindSet

The tip to lose weight that most people either don’t know about or forget is creating a fun plan to achieve your goals.  Many people start with great gusto on either one or both of diet and exercise but lose momentum quickly and go back to their old habits. To have the best success in your goal to loose weight – make the process fun. If you think about the things that you regularly do easily like watching your favourite soap or sport on TV, or going shopping, you mainly do these activities because they are fun.

If you can change your habits and enjoy the change then it will be easier to keep up. Dragging yourself out of the lounge chair will only happen easily if your chosen activity brings just as much enjoyment.

If excess weight is a serious concern for you, then you are already on your way to changing that because you are reading these tips to lose weight. That is the first step. The second is to decide what you want to achieve and then start making changes in your life. A Chinese Philosopher Lao-tzu said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – you have started your journey. Congratulations.