So many people want to know how to lose weight, but why is it so difficult to persevere with a diet? Everyone seems to know that weight loss from dieting is almost impossible to achieve (and even harder to maintain), but it still doesn t stop millions of people spending billions of pounds per year in the hope of finding The Holy Grail a diet that actually works for normal people. There must be a better way

First, why is it that diets fail? The main reason is that going on a diet makes you concentrate on the one thing that you can t have. When,

as a child, you were told that you couldn t have any sweets, what was the one thing that you craved? It s human nature to want the things that we think about most of the time. So if you are on a diet which means that you can t have any pasta, you prowl around the planet thinking only of pasta. Sooner or later, your willpower will fail and just once you ll slip. Then again, and again

A further problem with diets is that the dieter thinks of the diet as a panacea. I m on a diet so I don t need to

do anything else to lose weight. Well sorry, that s just not true. In fact a diet can make things worse in one respect. Many dieters report a loss of enthusiasm and energy. The result of this is that they end up being less physically active than they were before. So even though they may be consuming fewer calories by being good and sticking to the diet, they are also using less calories, and therefore either not losing any weight at all, or at least not as much as they should.

So how do you get around this to make a real difference? I d

love to say that you could buy a pill which will make the pounds drop off. Or that there was some special technique you can learn for losing weight from the comfort of your own sofa. But sadly I can t. I know that you want to lose weight, as you ve already spent a fortune on diets, and even read this far down an article and you don t yet know whether it might help. The fact is you need to put in some work. It s not going to be hard, but it will take a bit of effort.

The most important fact you need to know is

that, at the simplest level, if you consume more calories than you use you will gain weight, if you use more calories than you consume you will lose weight. You can analyse it to the millionth degree and worry about whether fat calories have more of an impact than carbohydrate calories , or whether the Glycaemic Index of the food will change the rate of digesting which will and so on. But you can t get away from the fact that eating more calories than you use will make you put on weight.

Already we know that trying to cut calorie intake isn t easy for most people. So

the only alternative is to try to use more calories. If you think about going to the gym and how it s going to be hard work and a drag, then it will live down to your expectations. On the other hand, if you think about the sexy, slimmed-down you that you are working towards, you will have a really positive image in your mind which will help to take your mind off of the exercise. Not that I m advocating joining a gym. Certainly not, but we ll come onto that later!

Starting to be more physically active helps in a number of ways:

By being more active, you use more

calories, which helps to create a calorie deficit, which is what you need to lose weight.
Also, since you will be on your feet more and doing more things, your mind and body will be occupied, so you won t have so much time to think about the food that you are missing. So naturally you tend to snack less, and you don t even notice that you re doing it.
When you increase your level of activity, your body starts to adapt. If you re going to be walking more, then your leg muscles are going to need to be bigger than if you just spend your whole life sitting down. So the exercise starts to increase the amount of muscle you have. Muscle takes more energy to maintain than fat, so having more muscle makes your metabolism go up. So now you are using more calories than you did when you had a higher ratio of fat, even when you are sitting down!
I find being more active makes me want to eat less. Maybe it s due to the tension in your stomach muscles. I don t really know. What I do know is that I tend to want to eat smaller portions. I still eat the same things, but I just don t feel like having such a large portion. So the calorie intake also goes down.

So psychologically and physically there are good reasons why starting to do more exercise is more likely to work that just going on a diet. There are other good reasons as well. There are many studies which show that starting to do 30 minutes of exercise per day, 5 days per week is the single best thing that you can do for your health. The benefits are so numerous that they need an article all of their own, but start with reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, and diabetes, and go on to a wide range of other health benefits which you just

can t get by changing the food that you consume.

So how can you get started? The easiest way is to start walking. Go for a 30 minute walk on 5 days of the week. If you can t manage that, start with what you can manage. Just make sure that you do it at least 5 days a week. The human body is a wonderful thing, and it adapts to its environment. So even if you can t manage the 30 minutes a day to start with, doing what you can, regularly, your body will adapt so that you can increase the time little by little, and

finally reach that goal.

Then you can start walking faster each time, until you are doing a brisk walk. Fast enough to get your pulse rate going up, your body feeling warmer, and having to breath more deeply. Normally by this stage you will be feeling fitter, and will almost certainly have lost some weight. The fact that you feel so much fitter will help to give you the drive to keep going and make further improvements. As you will then know how to lose weight and how to get fitter, you ll find that the sky is the limit. Want to run a marathon? Why not!

Rob Knowles

used to be a sedentary office dweller who never did any exercise. Then he found out how to lose weight and get fit and now he wants everybody to know how easy it can be. Find out more at http://www.getfitfeelgreat.co.uk