by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: July 08, 2010

You may believe that to lose weight you have to completely overhaul your lifestyle, but this is not necessarily the case, as the only successful route to weight loss involves reducing your calorie intake to a lower level than your calorie expenditure. You certainly don’t have to switch from your usual diet to a ‘detox’ diet when this won’t help you achieve long-term weight loss. In most cases, when you go on a diet you follow it for a week or so and lose a few pounds before you get bored with it and give up.

Giving up is to be expected, really, as any diet that gets you to concentrate on cutting out whole food groups is hardly likely to be sensible. You may lose some weight when all the foods you’re allowed to eat are very low in calories, but can you really expect to subsist on soups and salads alone? Of course, you can’t and it is this kind of mentality which is likely to lead you to failure, as instead of making adjustments to your lifestyle to improve upon it you just swap one unhealthy way of living for another. You may lose weight initially, but you probably won’t keep it off if your inclination is to overeat and to avoid exercise at all costs.

Thus, you really need to consider introducing small but significant changes to your lifestyle to achieve the kind of weight loss you desire. Ultimately, you have to build up a calorie deficit which you can only do by consuming fewer calories than you expend, which means you have to make some alterations to your diet and do more exercise.

When it comes to your diet you have to pay more attention to what you eat and try to avoid those foods that are packed with sugar, salt and salt, while containing very little nutritional value. You don’t want to waste your daily calorie allowance on junk food when you need to eat a balanced diet while living on fewer calories. Plus, you have to reduce your portion sizes at meal times and try to eat fewer snacks if you have a habit of grazing on food all day long.

As well as introducing these kinds of changes to your diet you also need to look for ways to increase your activity levels. You don’t have to throw yourself into hardcore training sessions to burn extra calories, but you do have to look for opportunities to expend a little bit more energy. Thus, instead of driving to work you could always walk there, while cycling into town is definitely a good way to burn calories.

If you get used to doing things differently you will find that you are actually able to stick with your weight-loss plans for long enough to reach your goal and that once you’re there you stay there, rather than watching your weight increase again.

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