If you would like to lose weight, you must have a plan, a route map to success. This is called a program or programme. There are thousands of programs, but many of them are just just batty. If they sound foolish, they probably are. Have you heard of the ‘cabbage water diet’? It sounds daft and it is. You cannot only drink cabbage water all your life!

Although there is a lot of claptrap talked about losing weight, there are some truths that have a role to play in nearly any program you choose to follow. One of these truths is that it is better to eat many small meals during the day (about 5-6), than to go all day without eating and then stuffing yourself at dinner in the evening. This is commonly called ‘grazing’.

Have you ever asked yourself why this might be so? Well, the fact is, that the typical human body can only process about 250 calories per hour. If you consume more than that, you are probably overloading your digestive system. This is why it is important, because if your body cannot use all the calories that you give it, it will store them.

Your body can only use up what it requires to fulfill the job that it is busy with, that is, what you are putting it through. If you are watching TV, a lot of of those 250 will be stored. If you are exercising, most will be burned up. It stores the remainder as body fat. Your body has learned through evolution that tough times will come, so it prepares for them. It is like us putting excess money in a savings account or people hoarding food if a bad winter is predicted.

However, these days in the West, we seldom face those lean times anymore. So, that fat is never used up and we just keep adding to it until we resolve, by choice, to limit our intake of calories or increase our amount of exercise.

Knowing this information, what can we do with it? Well, if you were to want to lose weight, you ought to be consuming no more than 1,500 calories a day (or whatever your program tells you), so 1,500 divided by 250 is six. if you ate 250 calories every other hour, that would give you twelve hours.

Consequently, eating light but often would be a helpful strategy or program to follow, because first of all, you are only providing your body with what it requires, when it needs it and secondly, you are able to better maintain a consistent blood sugar level, which means that you iron out the spikes and troughs you experience in a normal day’s cycle.

Two hundred and fifty calories does not seem a lot, but it is surprising what it will stretch too, if you take the time to investigate. It is true that you will have to rigorously restrict some foodstuffs, like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, but whoever honestly thought that you could lose weight by eating that stuff anyway?

If you do not have time to cook a number of times every day, look in your superstore. There are loads of ‘250 calorie’ microwave meals. You don’t want to eat that? I can’t blame you. so get a decent cookbook, which shows calorie content. You are at work all day? OK, eat some fruit, but choose wisely. It can be done, it only requires a little will and planning.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? You can get a unique content version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be slimmer just to have a sexier body. Many people have moulded their bodies to make them look more healthy and more desirable. However, there is no way to attain this new look in a day of two. The problem is that most people do not want to wait, they want it now.

This can lead to these people making rather rash and, it has top be said, rather silly decisions. They are not willing to wait and they are not willing to work for what they want. This is why so many people turn to rapid weight loss diets. Some ‘guru’ brings out a new fad diet and a good proportion of the ‘I want it now’ crowd jump on the band wagon. Only to be disappointed again within the year or less.

Speed diets or rapid weight loss diets tend to put out impressive advertising copy that is very hard to resist. However, all diets, no matter which one you choose, Weight Watchers, Atkins or fad diet, depend on overweight people making lifestyle changes in order for them to work permanently.

There is a very apposite saying: if you always do what you always did, then you will always get what you always got. That says it all. You can lose weight with all but the stupidest of diets, but if you go back to your old ways when you hit your target weight, you MUST slowly, but gradually creep back to your old weight.

If you give your body more calories than it needs, it will store them for when it does need them. The problem is that that day never comes for too many people, because they never exercise themselves. This is especially true of fad diets like the ‘cabbage water’ diet. Yes, you will lose weight on it, but you would lose weight by fasting whatever you did. For a while, and then you might get sick. For a diet to work, it has to be adaptable and enjoyable enough for you to be able to stick with it for the rest of your life. Make no mistake, dieting is long-haul.

Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. The problem with short term dieting, is that you let go of the sponge underwater.

This is why serial dieters first lose weight and are delighted; then finish dieting, go back to their old weight and become depressed. In that state of depression they are suckers for the advertisers of the next latest craze diet. In other words, they are being manipulated and literally squeezed dry, but of their cash too.

These silly rapid weight loss programs also include fat loss pills. They are not making you lose fat, well, maybe a tiny amount gets washed out with all the surplus water you are carrying. They are only diuretics under another name. How many pills would I sell if I called them diuretics? How many more would I sell if I called them miracle fat loss pills?

Type the word diuretic into a engine and learn more about them. They are all around you in mild healthy forms. A diuretic will essentially cause your body to lose more fluid than was in the diuretic. Tea is a diuretic, for instance.

This list of these dopey dieting aids to rapid weight loss goes on and on, but someone must be buying them and you can bet your bottom dollar that it is the sad, depressed dieter who let go of the sponge.

Slimming soap! Slimming soap is being advertised as being a rare Eastern remedy for corpulence. Well, let me tell you, I live in the East and I have never seen it here. Asians are slim because they do a lot of physical work and do not come under the pressure to eat junk food that Westerners do, although that situation is changing rapidly too.

Magnetic weight loss earrings, I ask you! Even being inebriated without a present for your wife ten minutes before Christmas Day is not a good enough excuse to fall for this one, surely? The advertisers say that the secret of this set of earrings is that they are magnetic.

Well, if you believe this, why not get a pair of $1 children’s toy magnets or even a couple of fridge magnets and put one in each hip pocket? Two? Well, after all, you would not want to lose weight from only one side, would you? You would be lop sided.

Just remember, when you are looking for a rapid weight loss diet: there ain’t one ( that will work for life). If you are putting on weight, then your lifestyle is wrong and it is up to you alone to change it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?