by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: January 22, 2009

Losing weight through diet and exercise has so many negative connotations associated with it: being hungry, deprivation, painful and time-consuming. It is hard to get excited about embarking on a weight-loss programme, because it is hard to keep in mind what success will mean. For so many people diets end in failure that it is hard to believe that you will be able to stick to a diet and exercise regime long enough to actually notice difference, but it can and has been done.

For many people their weight is a constant battle; often they have been overweight since childhood which makes tackling their weight even more difficult as they have to completely retrain their brain. However, sometimes the decision to make a complete break with the past can be empowering; you start to feel that you can get control of your food consumption and your activity levels, and thus your weight.

Most people set themselves up for failure by setting unrealistic weight goals, aiming to lose large amounts of weight in a short period of time. Such action is unlikely to result in a break from the past, but set you on a course of constant yo-yo dieting; completely depriving yourself one minute and then bingeing and overindulging the next. Once you get into this cycle it can be hard to break, and so it is important before starting a weight-loss programme to acknowledge what your relationship with food and what you want it to be.

Visualisation is important because it helps you keep in mind what you want to achieve, but again weight-loss should be a gradual process, and so it will take more than just a week to see a difference. Rather than looking towards a certain weight it is better to focus on the health benefits of losing weight, which are particularly substantial for people who are significantly overweight or obese. Exercise is a particularly useful indicator of health and fitness levels, and once you get into the habit of exercising you will feel better about yourself both physically and mentally. As your fitness improves so will your ability to engage in higher-intensity workouts which further aid weight loss.

It is extremely hard to make the decision to make significant changes to your life, particularly when it comes to your weight because it involves thinking about food and exercise differently. Basically, you have to adapt to a new way of thinking, which can be quite difficult to sustain in the beginning. However, it is getting into healthier habits and having a good routine which will keep your weight-loss going, rather than excitement.

It is important that you acknowledge even the small adjustments you make to your life and give yourself a pat on the back for those successes which other people may regard as small but which mean a lot to you. Weight loss is about you, as an individual, gaining control of your weight, and so it requires you to reward yourself, not with food, but with a positive attitude and thoughts which reinforce your weight loss and the changes you have made.

Weight loss is not only about improving your physical health, but also about improving your self-esteem and making you feel good about yourself without turning to food. It may be a difficult challenge; one which doesn't exactly excite you, but one which will have an extremely significant impact on your life.

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