Five Tips To Guarantee Weight Loss Success

 

Tired of failing on workout program after workout program and not seeing the results you’d like? If you feel like you’ve spent more of your life dieting then eating normally, it’s time to take a good look at what you’re doing and see if perhaps there are some slight changes that you could make.
If you go about your approach properly, there’s no reason that you can’t see the success that you’re looking for, you just have to know what to do to guarantee that you do get results.
The following five tips will do just that.
These are going to help you not only increase the rate in which you lose fat, but also increase your adherence level as well.
Let’s look at five of the top tips that you should know for faster progress.

Weight Train

The very first must-do for success is to make sure that you are weight training regularly. Weight training is the form of exercise that is best going to help to stroke your metabolic rate, build up lean muscle mass, and help totally change the way your body looks.
If you’re someone who’s still stuck on the cardio bandwagon and you visit the gym each and every day for your dreaded hour, you have to make some changes.
While some cardio is okay to have in your plan, when cardio training comes at the expense of weight lifting, you are definitely not going to see the ideal progress you should be.
Start weight training using a full body approach at least twice per week and get ready to see your progress soar.

Track Your Calories

Next, also make sure that you’re tracking your calorie intake. Make no mistake about it, calories do count. If you believe that you can simply just eat ‘healthy’ and not have to worry about your calorie intake, you’re going to be seriously misled.
Tracking your calories is integral to success because doing so is what will ensure that you are hitting your target without fail.
You can still gain weight even eating foods that are healthy for you if you eat enough of them, so maintaining a reduced calorie intake is key to your success.
Set your calorie intake target to be 250-500 calories below what you expend and you’ll be moving along to a slimmer you.
Remember to count all calories you eat as well – even those small bites of food that you eat while preparing your dinner meal. If you start letting calories slip by, you could see fewer results than you should.

Add Variety

Next up, make sure that your program does offer enough variety. If you aren’t incorporating variety in with your workouts and diet, there is a much greater risk of falling off the plan due to boredom.
Lack of variety will not only make it that much more difficult to stick to your scheduled diet and workout plan, but it will also make you that much more likely to plateau.
Plateaus are caused when the body gets used to doing the same thing over and over again, therefore sees no real reason to change.
By adding more variety, you’ll shock your system so that it has to continually adapt to what you’re doing, growing that much stronger in the process. If you want to improve your performance and not just lose weight, a carefully planned program that utilizes enough variety is key.

Journal

The next smart move to make if you want to guarantee the success you see is to make sure that you are journaling on a regular basis. Writing in both a food journal as well as a workout journal will go a long way towards making certain that you are following the plan as you should and continually progressing along.
Plus, simply knowing that you have to write down what you’re eating and doing for a workout is going to help to hold you more accountable, meaning you’ll be that much less likely to cheat.
In a food journal, make sure that you do take the time to track down not only what you eat, but the serving size, the nutritional information (if not using a diet tracker), when you ate, how you felt when you ate, as well as your hunger on a scale of one to ten.
This can allow you to see patterns in your eating habits and easily spot where you may need to make some changes.
One the workout side of things, write down your sets, reps, rest, and weight lifted, so you can clearly see what you did last workout and make sure that each successive workout aims to beat it.

Set Deadlines

Finally, the last step to guaranteeing your success is to make sure that you have some good deadlines in place. Lack of deadlines will create a major problem for some people because it will cause them to procrastinate over time, never actually stepping up and taking action with their plan.
When you know you have a firm deadline in place that you must reach, it’s going to be that much more compelling to hit the gym for each workout and say no when that piece of cheesecake passes you by.
When you have this floating deadline – this date that you know very well in your mind is negotiable because you aren’t holding yourself accountable – that is when you will be putting off the effort required to reach that goal on an ongoing basis.
Step up to the plate. Set a firm deadline and make sure that you are reminding yourself of it constantly. If it helps, tell others about it as well so that they can help hold you accountable also.
So put these five steps into action and get ready to finally start seeing the results that you’ve missed out on all these times prior. When you have a game plan ready to go, you’re already one step ahead in the battle of the bulge.

Fresh from research – Where’s the beef?

 

 yikes, it’s an ugly headline: Only 6% of USA adults meet the recommended guidelines for muscle-strengthening exercising (two or more days per week targeting all seven muscle groups)! Ugly, but not surprising. One current fitness industry trend is offering group classes that focus on isolated or pairs of body parts, e.g., ‘abs’, ‘glutes and thighs’. Marketing aside, it’s interesting to interpret the public’s response to the trend.
At face value, the scant percentage that sustains a comprehensive health-related fitness routine (including strength training) is cause for alarm. Consider women’s bone health alone. Without reversing the growing prevalence, public health estimates that 1:2 women will develop osteoporosis by 2020. Science agrees in strength training’s mitigation so the reality is 1:2 women developing a devastating condition that is…preventable!
Then there is the impact that isolative training has on motivation. Level of fitness strengthens exercise adherence, meaning the more fit one is the more likely one will continue to exercise. The industry neglects this key motivation principle when it offers isolative programming AND messages that fragmented body part conditioning is ok. The more we program and encourage comprehensive fitness, the more fit participants become, the more resilient their motivation to stick to their routine.
Interpreted from a different perspective, the response to the trend is actually encouraging. First, even during the economic recession of the past couple of years, the general public has continued to spend discretionary income on fitness. Gym membership has actually increased as has spending on fitness apparel, equipment and DVD’s. The message here is wellness is a priority and ‘if we build it they will come,’ meaning the public trusts the industry so will populate whatever the offered programming.
That Jane and Joe Public listens to the industry only means more responsibility to the industry to offer programming that serves its best interest. Decisions need to be made cautiously so to not trivialize the physical activity experience, nor outright negate principles that strengthen adherence. Some exercise is always better than no exercise but we can do better than to expect only the bare minimum.
Finally, a message to Jane and Joe Public. It doesn’t take an exercise science degree to realize that fragmented fitness doesn’t make sense. Listen to your intuition when it tells you ‘glutes and abs’ does not make for a sound health-related fitness routine. As an add-on to a full complement of cardio, strength training and flexibility – awesome!! – as the staple of your physical activity participation there is just more to your physical activity self than your stomach and your rear end.
Loustalot, F., Carlson, S., Kruger, J., Bushner, D. & Fulton, M. (2013). Muscle-Strengthening Activities and Participation Among Adults in the United States. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 84 (1), 30-38.