Who is responsible for your weight gain

Weight Loss Support Program

.... who is responsible for your weight gain?

Article by Dieter L. Editor of useNature

Author of It happened in the seventies

Part 10 - who is responsible for your weight gain?

Have you figured out why you gained more weight than you wanted to?

Is it just bad diet behaviour or are there emotional aspects at play?

Reading the former chapters, have you found any specific reason and ways to change attitudes? If you wanted to justify yourself, how would you do it?

Would you come up with justifications like:

It’s too hard to cook properly when you have to work long hours, have too much stress, or what so ever?

Actually, it doesn’t matter really how someone justifies gaining weight, justifying will not help. It may help a bit in showing the areas in your life which may need special attention, but the only thing which really helps is to recognise that it is always and finally your responsibility.

Justifying is just a bit nicer word than blaming, but both functions are totally worthless.

It is an absolutely great feeling to take charge of your own life and claim back responsibility. If you don’t do that, you have yourself set up to be a victim, and who wants that?

Obviously there are many factors, which can be, or are, absolutely stressful, but how you react to stress is still your responsibility.

However, it is still important to acknowledge that stress, it could be the main reason for being overweight.

Stress is one of the main recognised factors for people being overweight.

It is however important how you use this knowledge. Do you use it as justification and therefore give up your responsibility, or do you see it as awareness, and use this awareness to take responsibility of your stress?

Weight is often seen as a guard around you to protect yourself from the outside world. Unfortunately weight is a poor guard against societies temptations and stresses; in fact it is ballast. To once again be in control of yourself and responding in a positive way to societies pressures, claim your responsibility now and throw off your weight once and for all, and you certainly will be quicker on your feet.

Once you have claimed back your responsibility, you are in charge. Take charge and set your own boundaries and rules. It’s up to you now, how you let yourself be affected by the stresses around you.

Set nutritious and diet rules.
Set exercise rules.
Set stress response rules.
Set new goals for yourself.

If you feel that stress is a major part of why you gained weight, consider 3 important steps:

Find out how to minimize external stress.
Find new ways to cope and guard your self from stress, - often it is an attitude.
Do recognised stress combating exercises, such as relaxation – meditation – visualization – and all sports activities.

More about stress reduction techniques later, but first lets discuss some more ideas why weight loss needs to be a holistic approach.

Weight loss always should be simple, in a way, it shouldn’t need pages and pages of explanation, a simple eat healthy with a peaceful attitude should be enough. But as we all know, it isn’t. To bring thoughts into our awareness, talking about each step within your weight loss journey is a helpful adjunct to achieving your goal. It reinforces what you basically know already.

First of all, a Holistic approach to weight loss is simple but effective. It encourages you, to do it yourself without the help of magic pills and wonder drugs.
A holistic approach always considers you as a whole person, your mind, your physical and your spiritual part, all one.
So far, we have concentrated a lot on the mind and the effects of attitudes, conditionings and reacting, but slowly we will start working with the physical part. By now, you should know your journey, and should be able to visualize yourself at your ideal weight. If not, take some time every day visualizing yourself at your ideal weight, perhaps in a new outfit, and immerge yourself in that visualization, feel, see and hear as this new person. Do that at least once daily.
Start exercising, we will expand on this later, here are just a few tips to get you started. The best time for exercise is in the morning, before breakfast. Maybe have glass of diluted lemon juice, and do some exercise, if you can for 30min. Exercise in the morning will set up your metabolism for the day, yes, that’s right, speed up your metabolism in the morning, and not at night before you go to bed.
The second best time is in the late afternoon.
Exercising in the morning, before breakfast, before you have carbohydrates to burn, and you will burn fat as you fuel.
What type of exercise, mix it up … some stretches – some aerobics, some weights. Haven’t got a bike or treadmill? Use step exercise, very effective, step up, step down, if you haven’t got a problems with your knees, use a 25cm to 30 cm steps, start gently, even a smaller step.
Get yourself some weights, and learn some yoga stretches.
Drink about 8 glasses of pure water, at least half of it, drink as hot water. Hot water cleanses your lymphatic system and speeds up fat loss. Cold water may shock your system and slow it down, if it is too cold, it may produces even mucous. Drinking hot water, esp. some time before a meal, helps with cravings and snack attacks.
Make your main meal, the largest meal at mid-day, between 11AM and 2PM. .
Most cultures, eat or ate the big meal in the middle of the day. I grew up with the midday meal being the main meal.
According to Ayurvedic principles, the body is in a fiery, burning mode during these hours and will quickly assimilate nutrients and burn off excess calories.
The best regimen is eating a good breakfast, a big, healthy lunch, and a light dinner. Having that light dinner may be even more effective than the big mid day meal. It is suggested, that most people gain most of their weight at night.
Think about that ...
Don’t eat processed food, if you can, at all. That simple fact will be the biggest change for most people. Start working on that. That includes sugars; because most processed food contains too much sugar. Eat only whole foods, we are animals, and do best on whole, unprocessed foods. All animals gain weight and get sick when they ingest processed food over and over.
If you are not a vegetarian, than do eat lean meat, fish, poultry and dairy in small amounts with every meal and if possible, make sure it is high quality and organic. A full meal serving size of protein is the size of your palm.
Don’t have sugar. Try to do without altogether.
No juices. Juice may sound healthy and it can be in certain circumstances, but regarding weight loss, you need to see it simple as a huge load of sugar. Same with dried fruit, don’t have dried fruit, it is concentrated sugar.
Back to movement (exercise), any movement needs, and burns energy. Find ways to move, constantly, or as much as possible. If you sit still or stand waiting for something, move yourself instead. Even without apparent movement you can move by tensing different muscle in your body.
Your body composition is a crucial factor in determining your basic metabolic rate, and muscles even consumes energy when you’re resting. A good way of considering how important it is: compare 100 body builders and 100 overweight people who all weigh about the same, they will have a totally different metabolic rate. But first you need the muscles. To change your body’s composition, exercise is your most powerful tool.
Resistance training, which means lifting weights, is the most effective type of exercise to build muscle. Find an exercise you enjoy.
And lastly for this chapter… add some spice to your life, eat more chilies they have a warming effect on the body and can raise metabolic rate. Use all kind of spices, they are good for digestion, ginger, garlic, turmeric..

Weight loss is more than a diet!

Any short-term diet may help you to lose some weight, but usually, you will gain your weight again.

There is only one way to achieve proper weight loss, and this is working out a lifestyle nutrition plan first.

Once you adopted that new way of eating, you can go onto a “weight-loss diet”, and having lost more weight, you will go back to your newly adopted lifestyle nutrition plan, which after the weight-loss diet is very easy.

To reach your desired weight, you will swing between your newly adopted lifestyle diet and the weight-loss diet. – Desired weight loss is ½ to 1kg fat loss per week. This indicates the length of the program.

You can transform you self and your life in 1 year, do not even try to do it in a month, you set yourself up for failure….

This is a long-term program, designed for weight-loss as well as health.

Part 11 - Your Personal Individual Lifestyle Diet

... or ... go back to the Weight Loss Menu

Article by:

Dieter L. Editor of useNature Gold Coast - Brisbane

Disclaimer:
The information provided in this article is intended for general use and for personal interest only. It should not be used or understood as suggestion or medical advice.