Losing weight can be tricky. If you’re trying to be healthy you can’t lose more than one or two pounds a week, and hitting that middle ground can be a lot harder than you think it is. Using a weight loss program can help you a lot along the way.
It’s common knowledge that “losing weight” is one of the top New Years’ resolutions that are made every year. You can tell just by looking at the spike in gym memberships in January.
There are two main problems that people face that stop them from meeting their goals. People will either:
- Go too hard at the gym and burn themselves out. Mental fatigue is just as harmful as physical fatigue.
- Not go too hard but not get the results that they want as quickly as they want, which leads to them being discouraged.
Both of these things can and will end someone’s journey to weight loss prematurely, and that’s never a good thing for people that are looking to make sustainable and lasting changes in their lifestyles.
So, how do weight loss programs seek to help out with this? Let’s look at all of the ways that they help people just like you get to their weight loss goals every single day.
Why It’s Hard to Lose Weight and Keep it Off
A lot of people simply don’t understand why they can’t seem to lose weight and then keep it off. There are plenty of people that get down 20,30,50 pounds and stop working out for one reason or another and before they know it they’re back at their old weight. Why is this?
Well, our bodies strive to create equilibrium. This is both why it’s hard to lose weight and hard to keep it off. If your body is in a certain shape for a long enough time it will snap back to that shape whenever it can.
It will also do whatever it can to keep the shape that you’re in. This is a great thing for humans, or it was way back when we were cave people. If you study biology or psychology you’ll quickly learn that a lot of the things that cause us trouble today were critical for hunter-gatherer humans.
Our bodies also don’t really want to lose weight. Our bodies still believe that we’re in our hunter-gatherer phase, which means that all of that stored energy could be needed for survival later on.
There’s no real way to tell your body that the smaller amount of food that you’re eating is by choice and not because something happened to the food supply, and so when you start trying to lose weight your body fights back.
In most casing, barring medical conditions, this is to be expected. Your body is just doing what it does best, making sure that you stay alive for as long as possible even when there is a shortage in the food supply.
That being said, the best way to combat this is through long-term lifestyle changes. Over time your body will learn to accept the new situation and you might even find that your skinnier body becomes the equilibrium, which will make it easier to lose weight if you slack off for a few weeks.
Dietary Planning
Losing weight through exercise alone isn’t impossible but odds are you don’t want to go that route. A 5 mph run can burn 755 calories per hour in someone who is out of shape. The better shape you’re in, the fewer calories are burned by the same exercise at the same intensity.
For comparison, a Big Mac is 550 calories. That’s just the sandwich, a combo with a medium drink and fries is going to be around 1,080 calories. That means you would need to run for over an hour just to burn that off.
If you’re on a 1,800 calorie a day diet, that meal is most of your calories so you’ll need to run for an hour at least just to make sure that you don’t go over that goal. That might not sound like a lot but that’s some serious exercise, especially if you’re at the beginning of your fitness journey.
By going through a program for weight loss you can sit down with a professional that will:
- Help you find realistic diet goals for you.
- Look at recipes that fit into your lifestyle that will be good and nutritious.
- Hold you accountable to your diet.
Not only will you have the help of someone who knows what they’re doing, but you’ll have someone to go through this process with. Many people have problems with their weight loss plans simply because they feel like they have to go it alone.
Medical Assistance
In some cases, not all, you’ll be given some things for medical assistance with losing weight. These cases can depend a lot on why exactly you might be having trouble losing weight. A medical professional will sit down with you and go over what exactly is stopping you from losing weight.
Of course, not every single weight loss clinic has doctors in them so if you think you might need help from a medical perspective make sure that you’re specifically searching for that. This kind of help might include:
- Hormone therapy
- Appetite suppressants
- Fat burners
- B Vitamins
- Vitamin optimization
What your specific program might provide you with could vary a lot depending on where you go and what’s preventing you from losing weight. Regardless of where you go, you’ll be able to find a lot of the help that you need.
If the issues that are preventing you from losing weight are severe enough you might need to see your primary physician for further assistance, but if your weight loss coach thinks that might be the case they’ll definitely let you know.
Help With an Excercise Plan
Planning for exercise is hard. Even fitness coaches will admit this. Starting from scratch and building up from there takes a lot of discipline and balance, which is really hard to see for yourself.
As we mentioned, a lot of people will start off going too hard and then they get burnt out. What this means can be different for different people, but going from 0 to 100 isn’t a great idea if you want to make sustainable changes in your life.
Many people will notice that they can do a lot more than they’re doing before feeling tired, and that gives you a false perspective. Once you’re in the routine you can go a little harder than you should, but it’s especially important to work your way up to certain feats.
For example, did you know that your joints don’t get stronger at the same rate that your muscles do? That means that pushing yourself as hard as your muscles want to go can lead to you accidentally injuring your joints in the process.
That’s just one example of an injury that you can sustain from pushing yourself too hard too soon. Torn and strained muscles are a serious concern, too. When you injure yourself you need to rest to recover. That downtime can make you less likely to want to get back into it.
On top of that, there is an aspect that many people overlook when it comes to getting physically injured. That is the psychological aspect. It only makes sense, you get hurt and your brain says that it’s a bad idea.
After all, that kind of response is how we learn not to touch hot objects and other dangerous things. Most people don’t like being injured, and our brains associate injury with things that we shouldn’t be doing.
By making sure that you have someone that knows what they’re doing help you, you can make sure that you have a good workout plan ready that takes account for what your body can do without pushing yourself too hard too early on.
Having this kind of plan ready can ensure that you keep working out for a longer period of time. The longer you exercise, the more likely that it will be to stick as a habit. The more you get working out in as a habit, the more likely you’ll be able to meet your goals.
Exercise is about working your way up incrementally so you don’t overwhelm yourself, physically or metnally. The longer you can go without feeling burnt out the better.
Get the Weight Loss You Want
Getting to your ideal weight doesn’t have to be impossible. With the right plan in place you can meet your goals, all you need is a little bit of time to do so.
It’s never going to be easy, but you can give yourself an edge by getting some help from someone who makes their living helping people just like you get down to their goal weights. These people are trained professionals that can help pinpoint a plan that will work well for you.