This article, unlike most, looks at the research on people that have failed in their fat loss efforts. You can learn a lot from both success and failure, so make sure to capture the gems from both!
A common theme found in successful goal achievement manuals, e-courses, videos, etc. is to seek and find a mentor who has successfully achieved the results that you are seeking. In the realm of fat loss, it is no different. Many articles have been written about those who have achieved weight loss success, and one should take advantage of the great information they contain.
Well, a coin always has two sides. Now, it is time to look at the other side...and it isn't very pleasant or shiny!
Sometimes, it is valuable and important to learn from failure. Failure shows us what NOT to do. Failure shows us what doesn't work. Specific to weight loss, what if we could learn from others that failed to lose body fat? Thankfully, the National Weight Control Registry's (NWCR), located at www.NWCR.ws, has more than just solutions to weight loss. Interestingly (and quite intelligently), they also make it a point to find out exactly what caused individuals to fail. Think about how valuable it will be, and how much time you will save, if you take the time and energy to avoid the things that have proven to lead not to success...but to failure.
1) If the point hasn't been drive home enough, already, the NWCR also found a common characteristic of those people that FAILED to maintain their weight loss. What was it? Simply stated: the people that failed to maintain weight loss failed to continue their behavioral changes that brought them success in the first place. In other words, they stopped eating right and exercising.
2) Here is even more startling motivation for keeping the weight off permanently. The likelihood that people will regain weight consistently drops as time passes. So, the longer you practice the habits of eating intelligently and exercising properly, the more you reduce the chance that you will ever gain the weight back. This explains why fad diets don't work! The change must become permanent, and "quick" fixes just don't do the trick. Failure tip: it is important to continually developed and nurture your motivation for a lifetime, so that old, unhealthy, fat-producing habits do not eventually destroy you.
3) Sadly, life-endangering medical issues seem to be the best motivator and predictor of successful weight loss. The study clearly showed that people lost weight faster and kept it off for much longer immediately after a major medical scare. Do yourself a favor and think ahead...before your doctor asks you to sit down, so that she can explain that your excess fat is literally killing you.
4) Do you need more motivation to keep the weight off? At the National Weight Control Registry, they also found this disturbing statistic: for those people who had regained some of their lost weight, only 11% returned to their previous lowest weight point in the following year. Let us give you an example. Let's say that a person has successfully gone from 200 pounds down to 150 pounds. However, the person backslides and gains back 30 pounds. Experience shows that only 11 out of 100 people will be able to drop the weight back down to 150 pounds over the next year. Keep in mind that these are people that had already successfully lost weight and knew exactly what to do to lose the weight they had re-gained. Don't you agree that more than 11% should have been more than able to return to their previous baseline weight. They had the knowledge. They had the experience. They knew what worked for their body. Sadly, though, logic does not always lead to success.
We can summarize all of these "failure points" pretty easily, can't we? In essence, people failed because they failed to continue with the habits that created the initial success.
Perhaps, though, you haven't yet experienced successful weight loss. Don't let that be an obstacle for you. Use this article to motivate you to make a serious commitment...a lifelong one...so that you develop a true change in your lifestyle. You learned in our last article that there are thousands of people who have proven that long-term lifestyle changes create true fat loss success. You learned this week that working on fat loss with a short-term view in mind is not nearly as successful, and instead, often leads directly to failure. So, decide now to develop the habits that are necessary to transform your body into one that you are proud of.
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