Most people can count more than ten other people they know who “want to lose weight”. Losing weight is a very general concept and when people say they want to lose weight, what exactly do they mean?
How To Lose 10 Pounds In One Day!
My husband, Rudi, wrote a humorous article a while ago, something like, “How to Lose Ten Pounds in One Day” in which he told his readers they could chop off a couple of limbs and achieve the effect quite nicely. Obviously that’s not what people mean when they say they want to lose weight.
Usually losing weight means shrinking fat cells. People want to reduce the amount of body fat they are carrying around. This makes sense as it’s the fat under the skin (subcutaneous fat) that makes people look overweight, flabby, soft, swollen and dimpled. The fat around the organs and in the blood is important to reduce as well as this can affect the body’s ability to operate properly, clog up arteries and slow down the heart (trying to keep things light here but high levels of visceral fat is plain dangerous).
The Weight Loss/Fat Loss Confusion
Unfortunately a lot of people have losing weight confused with reducing fat. They go on very low calorie diets for short periods of time and lose anything up to twenty pounds in thirty days. There is usually no evaluation of exactly what they’re losing; no fat tests or blood tests are done. Fat is reduced, certainly, but so is muscle tissue and this is key to why, once the diet is over, the weight piles back on and people complain they are heavier (and fatter) than before.
“Weight Loss” Is BIG Business
The weight loss industry is big business. Millions are spent on it every year and yet people are statistically fatter than ever before. It doesn’t take a genius to know something is seriously wrong – could it be the general confusion most people have about what it means to lose weight?
Best Strategy – Forget Your Weight
Here’s a good attitude: forget about your weight! Get a fat test done with a competent health and fitness specialist, personal trainer or with your doctor.
Find out how much fat you’re carrying about with you then work out how you’re going to reduce this. Realize it’s NOT going to happen in a month (most likely it took you much longer than a month to build it up, right?). You will have to reduce what you eat, you will have to exercise (and that doesn’t mean just going for a walk, it means doing weights, doing some aerobic activity and stretching).
We’ve helped many people reduce their body fat (and their size). It does take effort and it’s hard to get started but, when people follow 100% what we direct them to do, they get results (and usually feel fantastic into the bargain). There is a science to all of this and it can be done but focusing on losing weight is 100% the wrong way to go – see a true health and fitness professional and take control.
