What is health and fitness if not maintaining a lifestyle that makes us feel and look good? A healthy lifestyle usually refers to maintaining a diet full of nutrients and healthy foods, avoiding fast weight loss solutions that promise you can lose 10 pounds in 3 days and of course adding some exercising in your life.

Women usually try to lose weight fast, ignoring the rules about a healthy lifestyle and the fact that during a short term diet you will simply not have sufficient time during this short spell of deprivation to learn the basis of good, healthy eating habits.

Too many diets around are proclaiming the wonders of losing 14 pounds in 4 weeks which, for a healthy eating plan, is simply too much. A good weight loss is between 1lb – 2lb per week but, unfortunately, too many dieters become despondent with this small weight loss.

When a dieter climbs on the scales at the end of each week fully expecting to have lost 5lbs at least and, when they have only lost a very healthy 1 – 2lb, they give up and try another diet because they think this diet is not working. Eventually, they try diet pills, supplements and lots of other quick-fixes that are being sold on the open market these days.

To succeed, instead of ‘going on a diet’ for a few weeks or so, a healthy eating plan should be followed so that permanent weight loss is sustainable for the long-term. Diets such as these should be based on 1200 to 1600 calories per day, focusing on foods that are classed as ‘nutrient-dense’.

The basis of this diet should be fresh fruit and vegetables, with a vast reduction on processed foods and snacks that are high in calories and saturated fat. Part of the learning process should be how to replace refined foods with more natural alternatives which have a better effect on blood sugar and appetite and help to control the kinds of cravings that can result in overeating.

It takes time to learn how to make these adjustments but, rather than focus your diet on foods you have to avoid, you need to learn to focus on substituting one kind of food for a more suitable alternative e.g. change fries for basmati rice which is just as filling and tasty but much more healthy; or a bowl of ice-cream for a piece of fruit. Looking for a miracle diet that shifts all the pounds you have to lose in just a few weeks will not work.  There is no miracle diet!

Losing weight fast and permanently takes commitment and is hard work. It is a positive action that you have to focus on for yourself. Despite this, however, the end really does justify the means and, despite the hard work, when you learn how to lose weight properly and permanently, it is well worth the effort.

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