How To Lose Weight - You Will Fail Unless You Know These

We have all shed some weight only to find that it quickly finds its way back on again. Fact is, most diets out there are unsuccessful because they fail to target the exact nature of long term sustainable weight loss, the thing we all desire. In order to help you with your diet, I have put together these top five "must know" strategies. Once you take these onboard, you will have the exact blueprint that the fitness gurus teach.

1. Exercise will always speed up weight loss - Fact

If you want to succeed long term and keep the weight off, you should do some form of exercise. Your 30 minute exercises twice per week will ensure you increase your heart rate and speed up your metabolism. You can even do them in 15 minute slots, 4 times per week, there is no fixed rule here. If you can't run, walking is a great way to get you moving. Give it a try, because after 2 weeks you will certainly lose unwanted fat from the areas you most desire.

2. Your food diary - Keep a log of everything you eat

This alone will be a deciding factor on whether you lose weight or not because you must keep track of what you are eating, and how much too. You may not have noticed how much you snack, or what you are snacking on is actually bad for you. Making subtle changes will always make a huge difference when embarking upon any diet program. The same goes with portion size. You may be thinking, who cares if I eat an extra 200 calories per day more than I should. This equates to an extra 1400 calories per week and it is nearly a whole days worth of food extra that you do not need. This leads to steady weight gain, so always log everything you eat, including the type of food, and the amount. You can then reflect on this and see where you can cut back or replace certain meals with a healthier alternative.

3. The healthy mindset

Do not over burden yourself with trying to shed a stone in a week. Firstly, you need to have the right body fuel, which means a controlled diet. Does your car run well on water? No, and your body does not run very well when you consume excess fatty oils either. If you stay determined, you are already half way there.

4. Overeating - We all do it

There are many reasons why we choose to eat more than our body requires. This is called comfort or habit eating. As mentioned earlier, those extra calories soon escalate, until you are overeating by a day a week without even knowing. If you are stressed, angry, alone or have other triggers such as depression, these can all lead to overeating occasionally. Remember the healthy mindset from point 3 and get yourself back on track.

5. Portion control

As this is an extremely important aspect when trying to lose weight, we cover it in more detail here. Try and cut down on your portion sizes, even just a couple of times per week to start with. An excellent way to reduce portion intake is to not eat after 6 or 7pm in the evening. This is when you may be least active hence your body is burning less calories. If you are hungry and would like to eat, snack on something healthy before bed, but only if you must.

There you have it, the top 5 things which are preventing you from losing weight. There are other factors, so keep reading because the more you learn, the more weight you will lose.