Quickest Way to Lose Weight Naturally - Setting Goals
Humans are rather impatient creatures, so naturally, we want instant results, instant gratification, and will try any fad weight loss program that promises instant "weight loss" results. But before you spend money on these, ask yourself this, "what kind of weight will I be losing with this, and is it sustainable for long term results?" I think instinctively, you will know the answer simply from the sales pitch you see.
What's your weight loss goal? Is it simply "I want to lose weight"? That's a pretty general and pointless goal. Like we already mentioned before, losing weight, is not the same as losing body fat, and there are plenty of ways to instantly "lose weight". Perhaps consider changing your goal to be something more along the lines of: "I want to burn fat, reduce body fat, and try to maintain my lean muscle mass." Sounds like a lofty goal, doesn't it? But this is really the only true way to real weight loss and fitness. Your goal should be to reduce body fat while maintaining your lean muscle mass. The crucial point here is that if during any type of weight loss program, you will generally lose some lean muscle mass along with the fat reduction, and this leads to slower metabolism, and makes it more difficult for your weight loss to continue.
The scale is not the end-all-be-all of measuring your fat loss progress. It's even more important to keep track of your body compositions - the ratio of your body fat to your lean muscle mass. At the same time, keeping measurements of your body parts. Why isn't the scale important? Think about this for a minute. If you are slowly building muscle, and losing body fat, you will have improved your body composition. Every pound of lean mass you gain helps you burn 50 calories per day at resting metabolic rate, which means that for every pound of lean mass you put on, even if you sat on your butt all day, you will be burning an extra 350 calories each week. Now what if you put on 5 or even 10 pounds of lean muscle mass? That would become an extra 1,750, and 3,500 calories burned every single week! How's that for sustained fat loss? Not only will you be stronger, more fit, and healthier, you will also have less body fat, become leaner, and feel better about yourself.
There are several ways to measure your body fat. If you workout at a local gym, they should be able to measure your body fat for you. Alternatively, you can use either skin-fold fat caliper, or a digital fat caliper to do your own body fat measurements. Make a habit of measuring and tracking your body measurements, weight, and body composition on a weekly basis. Again, do not solely rely on the weight scale to judge your weight loss progress. If you are following a good fat loss program that helps you burn fat while maintaining lean muscle mass, you may very well find that although your weight on the scale doesn't change much as the start, but your measurements will have improved and your body composition will have improved.
Finally, remind yourself again that what you are after is fat loss and not "weight" loss. If you really wanted to, you could easily lose 5 or 10 pounds in just a few days simply by dehydrating yourself, but obviously, this isn't the kind of weight you want to be losing. Set yourself up on the right track from the start, learn the real method behind true fat loss, and keep the fat loss permanent.
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