Weight loss cannot be too painful. If attempting to lose weight causes too much “pain”, emotionally and mentally-even physically if we’re talking in terms of hard work outs-then the attempts will be abandoned by most people. This in fact is a constant problem faced by people who want to lose weight and keep it off.
Therefore, we have to have ways of losing weight that don’t cause us too much pain and suffering. Our lives have enough of that already. Too much stress isn’t any healthier than weighing too much.
But…is it possible for weight loss to be “painless”? Not entirely, for at the very least it requires making some changes, and change can cause discomfort. However, this doesn’t mean that great pain and suffering have to be induced in order to lose weight.
Consider Whether You Are Overeating
Are you overeating? This is obviously going to help make you fat and keep you that way. However, the concept of “overeating” is misunderstood.
Many people, even some so-called “experts” at matters of weight, think that counting calories and watching portion sizes are the methods for preventing overeating. These methods are proven to fail. They lead to misery, lack of energy, self-defeating despair whenever a little “too much” food is eaten,
Yet, both of these ideas do have some measure of truth in them.
There is no way for you, or anyone, to lose weight unless you are burning more calories than you consume. But counting calories is too complicated and leaves people hungry-and they quit. You must change the calories you eat, for not all calories are equal in nutritional terms.
It is also proven true that if you eat smaller meals you will be able to lose weight-but, that’s if you increase the number of meals you eat. Yes, if you eat meals that are only half the size of those that you typically eat now, but eat five or six of them each day you will melt off pounds-and all without going hungry or needing to count any calories.
But there’s another aspect to overeating, too: eating at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.
To Eat or Not to Eat?
Eating empty calories-like, say, Toaster Strudels-in front of the TV is a bad move. Why must you eat just because you’re watching TV anyway? TV eating habits are bad because they cause people to eat when they really don’t need to for health or energy. Too many people eat out of a need for “comforting” or simply out of habit (“that’s how we always ate at my house when I was growing up).
Eating because you’re watching TV, or because some bad habit was what you were taught, or because you need comforting are all invalid reasons to eat. (There’s nothing wrong with eating comfort foods when needed, but these should be eaten as or as part of a real meal, not as an extra snack.)
So, to lose weight permanently you must: 1) change some of the things you eat, replacing empty calories with healthy, energizing calories; 2) change the times and reasons concerning when you eat; and 3) change the way that you portion out your daily food.
