How to lose weight

Is losing weight really that difficult?

We all want to look good and feel healthy. Keeping a healthy weight can make us feel better and happier too. The problem is, the internet is full with tips and advice about how to lose weight, and not all of it works.

Let's break down the question of how to lose weight and look at it through a new perspective. Instead of considering techniques and methods to help you lose weight quickly, let's instead re-frame the question about how to lose weight and keep it off through healthy lifestyle changes and habits.

How to lose weight

There is good news and bad news when it comes to how to lose weight.

The good news: losing weight is simple.

The bad news: losing weight is not always easy.

Losing weight is simply a matter of consuming fewer calories than you burn in a day. That's it. Every diet operates off of this principle, as it is literally the only way that the human body can lose weight.

The problem is, regulating your caloric intake can take a massive amount of willpower and motivation, and that's almost always difficult. This is why crash diets and fad celebrity diet plans don't work in the long run. Losing weight isn't a short-term goal; losing weight and keeping it off is a lifetime commitment.

The good news is that it can be done very simply. Instead of relying on a diet, changing your lifestyle to incorporate healthy habits is the easiest way to lose weight quick and keep it off forever. Once you are living a healthy lifestyle with healthy habits, you'll never have to "diet" again, because eating healthily will be just a natural part of your life.

It can be done, and you can do it!

Why can't I lose weight

• Crash diets DO NOT WORK.
• Diets alone are not sustainable, which often leads to rapid weight gain. Instead, you need to remake your habits in order to totally revamp your lifestyle.
• Without great diligence and dedication, diets are doomed to failure.

Exercise and weight loss

One regular-sized Snicker's candy bar contains 266 calories, around 15% of the daily recommended calories for a healthy adult.

It takes around one hour of light cardio to burn the same amount of calories. How filling was that candy bar, really? Is it really worth one hour of exercise?

You simply cannot lose weight through exercise alone. It is impossible to exercise enough to burn the calories from a poor diet.

Don't ignore exercise. Exercise can help with weight loss by regulating your appetite, increasing your self-control, raising your metabolism, and building muscle (which burns more calories than fat). However, if all you are doing to try to lose weight is hitting the gym, you won't see any results.

The truth is, you cannot outrun a bad diet.

What is the best diet?

I actually hate the word "diet".

A fad diet is one that recommends avoiding certain foods or severely limiting your calories for a set period of time. There are lots of celebrity diets and diet books recommending diet plans to help you lose weight.

This is the wrong way to approach the question of how to lose weight. Weight loss this way is not permanent, and it will come back. It always does.

The only way to lose weight and keep it off is through changing your diet; that is, the foods that you eat. This isn't "a diet". It's a lifestyle change. You need to re-train your taste buds to enjoy healthy foods. You need to learn to feel full after consuming the right number of calories and the proper balance of nutrients.

The only way to lose weight, and I do mean the only way, is by changing your relationship with food forever. A diet will not work. The only way to lose weight is through lifestyle changes and healthy habits.

Weight loss without dieting

The only way to lose weight is by regulating the number of calories you eat.

If you don't know how many calories you should be eating, download a fitness tracker like My Fitness Pal, and track EVERYTHING you eat or drink. When I stared doing this, I was SHOCKED that I was hitting my calorie goal by lunchtime every day! I needed a change if I really wanted to lose weight. You might be surprised to learn how many calories you are really eating.

By eating healthier foods and making smart food choices, you'll be consuming fewer calories. I don't believe in going on a "diet". I don't believe in eliminating any food completely. Enjoy your pizza, your cake, even your beer. But make sure that you track your calories! You will lose weight without falling off of the wagon if you practice moderation. This goes a long way to prevent binging and "cheat days".

How to lose weight and keep it off

You can lose weight quickly and easily, but the hardest part is how to keep the weight off after you've lost it. The secret is simple: don't revert back to your bad habits.

Once you've lost weight, you can't change your new healthy lifestyle. That's why it's so important to build good habits. Once something is a habit, you won't find it difficult to keep up.

Crash diets will always fail. Healthy lifestyle changes won't.

If you "diet", you can very easily hit your goal weight, then find yourself bouncing back to where you were before you started trying to lose weight.

If you have made healthy lifestyle changes and are dedicated to sticking to good eating habits, the weight won't come back.

It takes hard work and it takes motivation, but you can do it!