Take the time to look at the nutritional information – marketing has a way of telling you what “healthy” lunches are, but if you are trying to lose weight, your definition of healthy can be very different!

First of all, when it comes to losing weight and making the results last, there are simply no easy answers. That means that as great as it would be to believe some of the commercials that are on television today, there are no magic pills to take that will allow you to eat what you want and exercise as little as you want. Put simply, being fit is not easy.

In order to get lasting weight loss results you have to do two things; diet and exercise. You have to do these two things together as one will not be as effective without the other. If you diet and don’t exercise you may get great results at first, but as soon as you slip up on your diet, you will begin to put the pounds right back on. If you exercise and don’t eat right, then your best case scenario will be that your body will still be out of shape, but your cardiovascular will improve. Either way, the results are not going to be what you want or be lasting.

Really when you think about lasting weight loss, you need to think about lasting changes. While it would be great to lie on the couch all day and eat whatever you want, this type of lifestyle will only lead you to being overweight and at risk for many health issues.

Instead of thinking about diet and exercise as something you will do for a little while, think about it as a lasting change I your life. Get used to working out and get used to eating better foods. After awhile you will be used to your new lifestyle and the results that you achieve will not soon fade away.

It should be noted that this is not something that will happen overnight. If you haven’t taken care of your body for 15 years then it will take some time to get back to where you want to be. Just as it took you years to form all the bad habits you have, it will take some time to change those habits into new and better habits.

The worst thing you can do is to diet and exercise for a few months and then give it all up because your results have hit a wall. This is bound to happen, but if you make those lasting changes in your lifestyle, those walls do get smashed and more results eventually come.

It all comes down to how much you really want change. But realize that lasting change in your weight loss only comes with lasting change in your habits. If you can commit to these changes in your life, then you will see the results that you want with time and best of all those results will last.

1.    EA Sports Active: More Workouts

EA Sports Active was a huge hit and More Workouts has proven to be the perfect compliment.  It provides players with 35 more workouts to ensure that your routine never gets boring.  If you are already playing EA Sports Active, then transferring your current information into the More Workouts version is cinch.  The highlight of this game is the 30 Day Challenge, which allows you to set goals and watch yourself meet them in 30 day increments.  The original EA Sports Active is not necessary to play More Active, however some of the additional accessories are not included in the second version.

2.    The Biggest Loser

The Biggest Loser has been popular since the day that it was released and it has stayed popular even with the release of other games.  This game features nearly 90 different exercise to make sure that you reach your weight loss goals in record time.  The best part is that you can customize your workouts with a daily calendar.  The Biggest Loser will allow you to choose either a 4, 8, or 12 week program where you can actually compete against the contestants from previous seasons.  You can even compete with a friend.

3.    Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games

The title might a little long, but the game has proven to be fantastic.  With this game, weight loss seems more like a by-product than the purpose of the game.  However, this doesn’t mean that you won’t get a fantastic workout.  This game offers a wide variety of traditional winter Olympic games that can be played alone, multi-player, co-op mode, or even festival mode.

4.    Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010

Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 has successfully improved upon the already popular 2009 edition.  Jillian is a brutally honest and direct as always as your personal trainer and she will guide you through unique workout plans for 6 whole months.  This game provides a lot of balance in regards to combining strength and cardio games.  Compared to the 2009 edition, the new version has been more enhanced to utilize the balance board more effectively and all of your movements are much more accurate, while the exercises are more brutal.

Wii Fit has brought rise to a wide variety of fitness games and it seems like this trend will be continuing long into the future.  Lasting weight loss games for Wii are easier to find than ever, so pick up and start shedding pounds.

Lets face it. Everyone wants to get the fat off as quickly as possible – and having that desire is not wrong its simply human nature. However, you must become aware of some serious problems that can occur if you try to force it and lose weight too quickly. The faster you lose weight, the more muscle you will lose with the fat, and that can really mess up your metabolism. An even bigger problem with fast weight loss is that the loss just wont last. The faster you lose, the more likely you are to gain it back. Think about it: We dont have a weight loss problem today, we have a keeping the weight off problem.

Weight loss will be the healthiest, safest and most likely to be permanent if you set your goal for about two pounds per week (and even if you lose only a single pound each week, that is healthy progress). This is the recommendation of almost every legitimate and respected dietician, nutritionist, exercise physiologist and personal trainer, as well as exercise organizations such as the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Dietetic Association.

Are there any exceptions to this rule? Is it ever okay to lose more than two pounds per week? The answer is yes. It may be ok to lose slightly more than two pounds per week if you have a lot of weight to lose because the rate of weight loss tends to be relative to your total starting body weight. Generally the rule is that its safe to lose up to 1% of your total body weight per week, so if you weigh 300 lbs to start, then 3 lbs a week is a reasonable goal.

But there IS a catch.

What really matters is not how much weight you lose, but how much FAT you lose. Where did your weight loss come from? Did you lose body fat or lean body mass?

“Weight” is not the same as “fat.” Weight includes muscle, bone, internal organs as well as lots and lots of water. What you really want is fat loss, not weight loss. If you only wanted weight loss, I could show you an easy way to lose 20 or 25 pounds in about 5 minutes. Just come over to my house. I have a really sharp hacksaw in my garage, and well just slice off one of your legs, after all its just extra weight right?

Lets look at an example with some numbers so you can really grasp this concept of weight versus fat and then you can see, clearly illustrated, what will happen when you lose weight too quickly (because I know you probably dont believe me and you STILL want to lose weight as fast as possible read on and it will all become clear to you).

As an example, lets take a 260 pound man who has a lot of body fat to lose – lets call it 32%. With 32% fat, a 260 pounder has 83.2 pounds of body fat and 176.8 pounds of lean mass. Using this example, lets look at a few possible scenarios with losses ranging from two to four pounds per week.

Weight Loss Scenario 1:

Suppose our 260 pound subject loses four full pounds instead of the recommended two pounds per week. Is this bad? Well, lets see:

If he loses a half a percent of body fat, here are his body composition results:

256 lbs 31.5% body fat 80.6 lbs fat 175.4 lbs lean body mass

Out of the four pounds lost, 2.8 pounds were fat and 1.2 were lean mass. Not a disaster, but not good either. Thirty percent of the weight lost was lean tissue.

Weight Loss Scenario 2:

If he loses a half a percent of body fat and only three pounds, here are his results:

257 lbs 31.5% body fat 80.9 lbs fat 176.1 lbs lean body mass

These results are better. Although he lost less body weight than scenario one, in this instance, 2.3 pounds of fat and only 0.7 lbs of lean mass were lost.

Weight Loss Scenario 3:

What if he only lost two pounds? Here are the results:

258 lbs 31.5% body fat 81.2 lbs fat 176.8 lbs lean body mass

These results are perfect. Even though our subject has only lost two pounds, which seems slow, 100% of the two pound weight loss came from fat.

Weight Loss Scenario 4:

Now lets suppose he loses three pounds but he loses more body fat: .8%

257 lbs 31.2% body fat 80.2 lbs fat 176.8 lbs lean body mass

These are the best results of all. When the weekly fat loss is .8%, 100% of the three pounds lost is fat.

So the answer to the question is yes – its safe to lose more than two pounds per week but only if the weight is all fat or at least mostly fat with minimal lean mass losses.

If you take example one with thirty percent lean tissue loss and compound that over a few months, youre talking about a massive muscle tissue loss which can dramatically slow down your metabolism and turn you into nothing more than a skinny fat person (a person with low body weight because they lost all their muscle, but still holding stubborn body fat because they slowed down their metabolism).

One thing you should know is that water weight losses sometimes distort the numbers, especially when you first begin a new nutrition and training program. Its very common to lose 4 – 5 pounds in the first week on nearly any diet and exercise program and sometimes even more on low carb diets. Just remember, its NOT all fat – Its water!

The best advice you will EVER get is to focus on losing fat, not losing weight. If you lose three to five pounds per week, and you know its all fat, and not lean tissue, then more power to you!

Of course the only way to know this is with body composition testing. For home self-testing, I recommend the Accu measure as first choice. I suggest using the bio-electric impedance analysis body fat scale only as second choice behind calipers for home self testing because this device gives some funky readings sometimes.

Even better, get a professional caliper test from an experienced tester at a health club, or even a water (hydrostatic) or air (bod pod) displacement test.

From literally hundreds of client case studies, I can confirm that its rare to lose more than 1.5 – 2.0 lbs of weight per week without losing some muscle along with it. If you exceed 2.0 to 3.0 pound per week, the probability of losing muscle is extremely high. If you lose muscle, you are damaging your metabolism and this will lead to a plateau and ultimately to relapse.

Lack of patience is one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to losing weight. If you want your weight loss to be PERMANENT, you have to take off the pounds slowly.

This is one of the toughest lessons that overweight men and women have to learn – and they can be very hard learners. They fight kicking and screaming, insisting that they CAN and they MUST lose it faster.

Then you have these TV shows that encourage the masses that rapid, crash weight loss is okay. I say to the producers of these shows SHAME ON YOU! To the personal trainers, registered dieticians and medical doctors who are associated with these programs, I say DOUBLE SHAME ON YOU, because you should know better.

The rapid weight loss being promoted by the media for the sake of ratings and by the weight loss companies for the sake of profits today makes it even harder for those of us who are legitimate fitness and nutrition professionals because our clients say, But look at so and so on TV – he lost 26 pounds in a week!

Sure, but 26 pounds of WHAT – and do you have any idea what the long term consequences are?

Short term thinking, folks foolish. There are hundreds of ways to lose weight quickly, but only one way to lose fat and keep it off in the long term.

Do it the right way – the healthy and sensible way. Take off the pounds slowly with an intelligent nutrition and exercise program make this a new lifestyle, not a race, and you will never have to take the pounds off again because they will be gone forever the first time. No more yo-yoing.

Author: Tom Venuto
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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I know that sounded a little vague, but your weight loss plan does NOT have to be something that only NASA could understand or approve.

YOUR weight loss plan should include such simple things as what activities (exercise) you are going to indulge in, when, where, and so on. You will want to outline your weight loss goals, long term goals as well as short term goals. You will need to outline what your strategy will be for nutrition…notice I DID NOT say “diet”!

Why have a formal, or at least semi-formal, weight loss plan?

It has long been known to those who are successful in business, sports, entertainment, motivation, and other areas, that one way to improve your chances of success is to sit down and write out where you are, where you want to be, and how you are going to get there.

It is easier to plan for weight loss or any other goal related activity if there exists a clear picture of starting points, ending points, and how you intend to move from one point to the other. It is very easy to start a weight loss program or any other activity with intense motivation and a flurry of lofty plans only to lose site of the objective or to be led down unproductive paths by daily activities and the blurring effect of time.

Here are a few tips to consider when putting together YOUR personal weight loss plan:

1. Make your weight loss goals realistic:

Wanting to weigh what you weighed in high school is, for most of us at least, unrealistic. Using some movie star’s weight or a relative’s weight as your goal is also possibly detrimental to actually accomplishing effective weight loss. Each of those people arrived at THEIR weight by a combination of genetics, diet, and exercise which may not apply to you at all!

Most people do not realize that a healthy weight loss program should, for most people, result in a weight loss of only a pound or so a week. To many who have been striving for years to lose weight, this may seem a depressing statement. However, let me put it in perspective.

I have a close friend who was so desperate to lose weight that she opted for gastric bypass surgery. She weighed 340 lbs at the time of the surgery. When the doctor was briefing her on what to expect, she learned that even with surgical intervention, she would probably only lose about 70 lbs in her first year. That works out to 1.35 lbs a week, which would be a healthy weight loss that most people could achieve through a combination of physical activity and proper nutrition. The doctor also informed my friend that she would continue to lose weight over the following years until she reached some new level which would be determined by genetics, nutrition, and activity. This is the same expectation that anyone bypassing the bypass and opting for a healthy weight loss program could expect.

Finally, unrealistic weight loss goals insure failure, while an average of a pound a week over a period of a year is relatively easy to attain with motivation and effort.

2. Do not focus on weight loss:

I know that sounds strange since your goal IS weight loss, but it is easy to see failure if you are only looking for weight loss. For example, people’s weight fluctuates from day to day and even within the day itself. A temporary setback where weight is regained becomes inflated if viewed against the background of only weight loss. However, if your goal is to do the things which are going to make you healthy, for example, then those few days of overeating at Thanksgiving may be more excusable in your own heart if you know that you have been taking your walks, or have cut your use of sugar, or are still taking action in some other form.

This is something that should be considered in your weight loss plan. How are you going to make your life better overall? How many ways can you approach “weight loss”? Do not make it your goal to lose so many pounds this week. Rather, set a goal to walk so many minutes, lift so many pounds, garden for so many minutes. That way, even if your weight does not change that much in that period or even goes in the wrong direction, you still know that your body is benefiting from the parts of your weight loss plan that you are still in touch with.

NOTE: People who begin exercising as part of their weight loss program often experience a weight GAIN somewhere in the first few weeks of their new exercise experience. THIS IS PERFECTLY NATURAL! If you have just begun exercising to lose weight and experience a weight gain, this should be only temporary, and is most commonly caused by your body adding muscle mass faster than it loses fat.

3. Plan to go slow:

I don’t know if there is a statistic somewhere that demonstrates how many people drop out of their weight loss program due to stress, strain, pain, or just plain burnout. However, I have experienced it myself, I have read about it, and I know people it has happened to. Sometimes the simplest statements are most true. One that you will often hear is, “It took years for your body to get this way, and you cannot change it overnight.” This is so true. Also, take into consideration that, even though you might not be SEEING significant changes, if you are taking the steps that you have outlined in your weight loss plan, your body is adapting inside, in places you cannot see, but it is repairing and preparing to move to higher levels of fitness and health.

4. Plan to measure your progress:

I know I said not to stress so much about the weight loss, but you do need to see what is going on. You don’t have to concentrate exclusively on pounds lost, however. If you can walk farther this week than you could two or three weeks ago, you are progressing. Hopefully, in another two weeks, you will be walking farther, or faster. If, at the start of your weight loss program you could only exercise for five minutes at a time, and now you can exercise for 15 minutes, that is progress, isn’t it? That’s an accomplishment and is something you should be proud of.

NOTE: One measurement of progress in a weight loss program is quite simply “size”. Two weeks into a weight loss program, you might actually have gained weight, for example, as I pointed out a few paragraphs ago. However, if your clothes are looser, or you need to buy smaller clothes, or friends are coming up and asking, “Have you lost weight? these are good signs that your program is working even if your scales haven’t gotten the news yet.

5. Plan to stay motivated:

One of the most common obstacles that knock people off their weight loss program is loss of motivation. The drive and excitement that gets you started is very seldom still around when you lace up your walking shoes for what seems like the millionth time and have only lost two lbs.

Including your reasons for losing weight, the emotional and perhaps physical triggers that got you started in the first place, as part of your written weight loss plan gives you a means of reinvigorating your desire to achieve your goals. We often forget how we felt and what we believed at the start of such a journey, and being able to pull out the paper and review the dreams and expectations can bring us back up to that original level, or at least remind us of what we are enduring this for.

I used to be an instructor for a major national corporation, and one thing that I and other instructors would tell our students was, to achieve their goals, they had to, “plan their work, and work their plan.”

Author: Donovan Baldwin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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1. Weight Loss Diet Mistake: Choosing A Wrong Principle

Dieters who go for the whole incorporate an all-or-nothing attitude as their guiding principle to lose weight and feel great. After having made the decision to lose weight, they are going to decide on what diet they want to use in order to achieve their goal and lose weight. They believe they just have discovered the top secret fat loss secret and go about implementing their weight loss diet plan. Generally, this type of people chose a diet that is too demanding for them to follow up until the finish line. Before starting the new diet to burn the fat and thus lose weight, they will clear out their kitchen and remove whatsoever is not included in their rigorous weight loss diet plan and dispose all the “good food stuff” which they enjoyed before as were it a useless waste. Such would-be diet-success story writers fancy themselves to be super smart and successful weight watchers, and so they may be, for 3-, 5- or 7 days, yeah sometimes even for a view weeks.

But suddenly, something unpredictable appears in their lives that they were not able to anticipate, and this odd thing just throws over board their whole weight loss plan. All their good motives and intentions to lose weight and live healthier are just forgotten and they’re crossed with this “cruel” weight loss diet plan. At once they find themselves lost in the old bad habits which made them too fat and uncomfortable in the first place. Out of frustration these unfortunate weight watchers are running to their favorite grocery store as fast as they can and go buying all the food stuff they want and re-stock their favorite supplies at home, foods they previously had thrown away for the sake of undergoing a successful lasting weight loss plan through their rigorous diet. Finally, for a season they’ll forget all their good purposes and plans to burn fat from their body to lose weight and live healthy. What’s the outcome of their backward thrift? They reverse all the fat loss and rebuild the weight they just had reduced through their unfinished weight loss diet on their bodies, and this happens more quickly than they could imagine!

What is the conclusion you can draw out of this first mistake? If you’re thinking about losing weight you should first of all ask yourself “Do I really want to lose weight permanently? Or do I just want to burn the fat a view pounds in order to eat more afterward and burden the body of mine again with these unwanted pounds”? If you really want to lose weight in a natural and healthy manner then you have to go on making some adjustments in what you are going to eat and when you’re eating your meals. To eat healthy is the most successful principle to be followed when it comes to achieving permanent results, to burn the excess fat once and lose weight permanently.

2. Weight Loss Diet Mistake: Choosing A Wrong Method

Don’t see your commitment to a fat loss diet plan as a sacrifice. Instead you should take it as an opportunity and your investment in your own well-being where you will be building a better and healthier body, benefitting not only yourself but also your loved ones. When viewing your weight loss diet plan as a sacrifice, you fasten from all the delicious food stuff you actually enjoy most until you reach the ideal weight you aim at. Your diet plan may be amazing and you may even lose significant weight, but what happens after you’ve reached your goal? If you haven’t disciplined yourself to eat the “banned foods” moderately, you are exposed to the temptation to lose control. The better and more successful method is to adapt an attitude that allows you to eat a little of everything that you love even during your weight loss diet program. The truth is that you can eat and drink everything as long as it is with temperance and gratitude, even hot chocolate and fresh pie!

3. Weight Loss Diet Mistake: Setting Wrong Goals

How to decide what your ideal weight and body fat percentage should be and how to formulate a goal that is realistic to achieve with any weight loss diet plan? If you set a goal that isn’t clear, not realistic and not written down on paper, you will fail. You may have the ideal weight and body shape for you in mind, but unless you are only very slightly overweight it is probably too distant to be set as a reasonable goal. Take your ideal weight and body shape as a distant goal and use intermediate steps on your way to reach that ideal body you deserve. It is possible to lose 11 pounds every 10 days through a fat loss 4 idiots program without starving but to make you more comfortable with your weight loss plan you could set a first small goal by targeting a weight loss of 2 pounds each week. Thus you would actually lose 6 pounds in 3 weeks and having reached your goal. That’s good for your confidence and self-estimate. In reality, if you keep a weight loss diet plan with joy, you can even lose up to 21 pounds in 3 weeks and feel great all the way.

But the most important point of all is what happens after you have reached your weight loss goal. How are you going to maintain your weight? Or do you still have to go another stage towards reaching your ideal body weight? Choosing the right diet for healthy weight loss and sustaining that ideal weight after you have gained it, is key to your long term success and satisfaction. You want to live with joy and happiness and eating the right food with giving thanks and in the right measure can help you to keep everything in balance so that you will certainly reach the point where you don’t live to lose weight and don’t lose weight to live but you’ll just be fine with how it will be by then.

Of course, there are countless other mistakes that involve failure of any weight loss program and which will be dealt with accordingly in other publications on how to lose weight naturally and live healthy.

Author: Peter Goodwill
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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