Fat Loss – It’s Simple But It’s Not Easy

Caroline Radway — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:46:39 +0000

Most popular diet plans and programmes promise easy weight loss, if you follow and often fairly complicated plan. In fact, this is the wrong way round! The plan needn’t be complicated at all, and the simpler you make it for yourself the easier it will be! But actually achieving the weight loss is not easy – there will be times that you are tempted to indulge that bit too much and ruin all your hard work, so you need to have strategies available to prevent this from happening – and to get back on track as soon as you can afterwards.

If you start a fat loss plan understanding that it will be hard, you are much closer to success. So many people start off a plan feeling really motivated and ready to get stuck in. Many people I deal with are excited at first, as they think of the end result. But unless you have acknowledged that it won’t be plain sailing, you will hit the first obstacle or hurdle and struggle to overcome it. It is at this point that those who haven’t thought it all through become despondent and demotivated. They weren’t prepared for the regular, ongoing work that was required, and they certainly weren’t prepared to have to make the odd sacrifice or compromise – which is of course essential in order to reverse the situation your current habits have created.

The first step is to set clear goals before you start and then drill down into those goals and plan what you need to do in order to achieve them. At this stage, you can identify potential challenges and come up with clever strategies to overcome them. For example you might have a friend’s birthday to attend where everyone else will be drinking alcohol. If you think it will be too hard to ‘just say no’ when you are there, you can plan to be the designated driver – so you can’t say ‘yes’!

Keep in mind the mantra: ‘it’s simple but it’s not easy’. You are bound to face these obstacles and challenges. Some of these you will navigate easily, others will be harder to overcome. Being prepared and ready for some hard work is really important.

You should also remind yourself that the reward is greater when a challenge is harder, so the obstacles you face now are what will make success seem all the sweeter when you achieve it. When you have lost the fat and are looking great, you will tell everyone how you managed it despite your challenges, so rather than dwelling on them and using them as excuses, let them make your eventual success even more impressive!

Knowing that it is hard means you are likely to be able to be a little more forgiving, though, too. When you think you are failing at something you have been told is easy, you will feel like a failure. Remind yourself that fat loss is hard but that one slip-up really won’t affect your success as much as getting demotivated and giving up altogether will.

Be prepared to forgive yourself when you don’t meet your own expectations, and quickly jump back on and get back on track. The common ‘all or nothing’ mentality that comes from a need to be 100% perfect is counter-productive. Allow yourself some slack and realise that staying on track consistently 80% of the time is far more successful than being 100% perfect for a week only.

Keep your strategies simple (eat clean, eat less, exercise more) but be prepared for some hard work along the way!

Caroline is a Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher and Kettlebell Instructor based in the UK.

For more exercise, fat loss and kettlebell secrets and tips sign up to my mailing list (and claim your free report): http://kettlebellebody.blogspot.com http://www.kettlebellebody.com

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Overworked and Underexercised – The Fat Loss Catch 22

Caroline Radway — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:56:13 +0000

At the beginning of any fat loss programme, many people come to me feeling unfit and overweight but also low on energy and stressed. Exercise will increase your energy levels and reduce your stress levels, but at this very point in time, when you most need to reduce stress levels, the idea of taking on more tasks can seem daunting and likely only to increase stress levels further – it can become a catch 22, as you feel too stressed to fit everything in.

So how do you deal with this catch 22 situation? How do you make sure that adding an extra time commitment into your already busy life doesn’t increase your stress levels even further?

Firstly, you need to take some time out of your busy life, and assess where you are and where you are going. Goal setting and analysing what you want from life as a whole can often make us see life from a slightly different perspective. A lot of the things we are busy doing are not the ones that we really want to be focusing on, or the things that are most important to us. It is this that makes us stressed – that nagging feeling that we are really busy, but not managing to do the important things.

You need to make the commitment to becoming healthier and remind yourself what the results will be – it’s not purely about aesthetics and looking good, but it really is about being healthier and more energised. You need to prioritise your health in order to effectively deal with all that life throws at you and remind yourself that once you have made the time to fit in exercise, you will have more energy and be able to achieve more throughout the rest of the day.

Until your health and fitness is high enough on your priority list you will always find other things that get in the way. When you have fully accepted its importance you can then set about making time – as this is the key, time is not something that is just found!

Once you have acknowledged that you are going to make health and fitness a priority it is time to look into how you can create space in your life to fit it in. Are there things cluttering up your life? Are they all really that important? Could you spend 30 minutes less time on the internet or watching TV in the evenings and use that time to squeeze in a training session? Can you delegate certain tasks? We often feel that ‘to get a job done properly I might as well do it myself’ but sometimes we need to let it go, allow someone else to ‘learn’ to do it for us! It may not be perfect, but it will free you up some time!

Consciously looking at the way we respond to stressful situations can make a huge difference, too. Are you stressed because you are in a rush, or rushed because you are stressing? I practice a lot of yoga, and often have to remind myself when in traffic between clients that while a few good deep breaths won’t make the traffic move any faster, or get me there any quicker, it certainly will make me calmer and the journey more enjoyable – I can’t change the time I arrive by being stressed, but I can change the way I feel when I arrive!

Another important element is matching your exercise intensity to how you feel on a particular day. If you are truly frazzled, then a really intense session may just wear you out even further, so choose exercises that are more energising, or perform a strength training session with plenty of rest between sets, rather than an intense circuit style approach. There are days when I know that I need yoga, rather than anything else, in which case that is what I will do. My body and mind thanks me for it and I ensure I am ready and raring to go for my next intense training session.

This is not an excuse to slack off just because you can’t be bothered, mind you, and you will often find that once you get started your energy levels increase! Just get started with your warm up and have a plan, but be prepared to alter it slightly if need be.

On the subject of recovery, you must make sure you get enough. With the correct training plan, you do not need to exercise for hours every day to get results. You are far better off training intensely for 3 hour long sessions a week (or 4-6 shorter sessions) than training for hours on end at a mind-numbingly boring level. This is perfect for the busy person in today’s hectic world as you can rest and recover, safe in the knowledge that you are actually increasing the efficacy of your programme by recovering properly.

Exercise is a vital tool for reducing stress and increasing energy, so it is worth making the time to fit it in. You will soon wonder how you coped without it!

Caroline is a Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher and Kettlebell Instructor based in the UK.

For more exercise, fat loss and kettlebell secrets and tips sign up to my mailing list (and claim your free report): http://kettlebellebody.blogspot.com http://www.kettlebellebody.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Caroline_Radway

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Fat Loss – It’s Simple But It’s Not Easy

Overworked and Underexercised – The Fat Loss Catch 22