What’s The Best Way to Lose Weight?

I fought with this question for years. I even messed around with some stupid stuff that really messed me up (fat burner pills, appetite suppressants, etc.). I’m not going to tell my complete story now but if you’re interested in that, you can find it here. I definitely went around the block a few times before I figured it out.

The obvious answer to the question is that the best way to lose weight is diet and exercise, but it isn’t really that simple now is it? Those of you who have dieted and exercised know that it isn’t IF you do it, it’s HOW you do it. That’s why there are millions of people all over the world who are dieting and exercising without getting the results they want.

This lesson will help you to learn HOW to diet and HOW to exercise in a way that will actually make a difference.

How To Diet To Lose Weight Indefinitely

Before we get started I need you to ask yourself a simple question. Are you happier or less happy with your body since you ‘went on a diet’ for the first time? Be honest with yourself. Most of you will be less happy and that’s a fact. You are of course less happy with your body, because your body is in worse shape.

Conventional wisdom won’t help you to lose weight in the long run, in fact it will do more harm than good.

I want to help you to solve that problem, but chances are high that you’ll have to change the way you think about diet.

I’m guessing that you know how to lose weight, in fact you have probably done it many times before. Your problem is that you can’t sustain that weight loss. If you have never been able to sustain weight loss, chances are high that you’re doing it wrong. You’re eating the wrong stuff!!

When people eat the wrong stuff, it causes a lot of physiological and mental blocks. A pattern starts where they build up a bunch of self control, start a diet, and do well temporarily. However, since they’re eating the wrong stuff, they have a lot of appetite control issues. This will inevitably lead to a let-down and that causes self-image issues. Those self-image issues add to body-image issues and that leads to a desire to lose weight again. The cycle generally starts over.

Physiologically this cycle is a nightmare. If you’re eating the wrong foods when you diet (or if you don’t eat enough calories), your body will change physiologically. It will become more likely to store fat and less likely to store muscle. Your metabolism will slow. Your appetite will increase. No matter how strong you are mentally, eventually you will fail and when you do, you will end up with more fat and less muscle than you have now.

You may have not recognized that you have already repeated this cycle, but for many of you this will be the case. The cycle isn’t easy to break, but it can be done. You can change your approach. Last week I wrote an article called “Success In Increasing Calories Without Weight Gain!” I wrote it because my little sister was stuck in that cycle and I’m helping her to get out of it. Interestingly, if you eat the right foods, it’s easy to stay on the wagon. More importantly, it will heal your body so that lapses won’t lead to disaster.

There are two diets that will help you to heal your body and will set you up hormonally for weight loss that’s sustainable:

• The Paleo Diet (see The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf)
• The Slow Carb Diet (Tim Ferris and The Four Hour Body)

I’m not going to go into the details of those diets here, but I can tell you that they both work great and are easy to follow. They’re easy to follow because they maximize the principles of successful appetite control, give us foods that raise our metabolism, and cut out the foods that will make us fat.

My sister and I have similar stories. We both completely wrecked our bodies and metabolisms and got back on the path to healing by using paleo diets. I never believed that weight loss and body control were attainable for me but I can tell you that now it’s pretty easy.

How To Exercise To Maximize Fat Loss

I exercised with varied results for more than ten years. I followed conventional wisdom for most of that and that led me to lifting weights and doing slow cardio. For most of those ten years, I was working out for 1-2 hours per day. My body adapted to the point where I literally had to workout for two hours just to maintain my weight. Yikes.

I knew that I couldn’t sustain that lifestyle forever so I started to become more open to different ideas about exercise. That eventually led me to try out shorter exercise routines that are a lot more intense. To my surprise, after I switched from two hour workout sessions to really intense sessions that lasted from 5-20 minutes, my body started to change. I got leaner and stronger. For a while that made absolutely no sense but I eventually figured out why that’s what happened.

My body’s chemistry was changing. The intense exercising was forcing my body to release fat mobilizing hormones. The decrease in exercise time was helping my body to retain and build new muscle. My body got into a new cycle where my metabolism was increasing instead of decreasing.

If you want to learn more about that type of exercise I do now, read my article on the best exercises to lose weight.

Increase your intensity and you will really increase your fat loss.

To summarize, the way you approach diet and exercise will ultimately determine whether you succeed or fail. If you are constantly fighting cravings or you feel the need for two hour slow cardio sessions, you’re probably on the wrong track.

1. Healthy Weight Loss 101: How To Lose Weight Quickly
2. How to Lose Weight Without Exercise
3. Why Can’t I Lose Weight? (6 Reasons)
4. How To Lose Weight Fast For Kids
5. How To Lose Water Weight Fast

Tags: appetite control, best way to lose weight, fat loss, fat mobilizing hormones, lose weight