Most of us who have been on a diet, and let’s face it, that’s a lot of people, find dieting a real challenge. There are endless studies and statistics that tell us that 95%-99% of all diets fail in the long run, from someone who dieted for 15 years straight without losing weight, I can believe it, it wasn’t until I came off the diet and it changed my whole mindset and attitude towards weight loss that I finally shed the pounds once and for all.

I was intrigued to find out why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, getting fatter and hungrier, and why the diet industry gets richer. This, very briefly, is what I discovered.

apologies

There are a lot of perceived obstacles in the way of achieving your goal of being slim, fit and healthy. As you already know, there are certain things you really need to do if you want to lose weight: You have to eat adequate amounts of healthy foods and be moderately active. The only problem is that most of us have a hard time getting this done, we tend to rationalize why it’s hard for us to do something, we make excuses.

We blame our parents, our upbringing, being overweight in families, our slow metabolism. We blame our children, our spouses, our jobs, never having enough time. These may be factors that actually make it more difficult for us to lose weight. But it is important to note that these are simply reasons why we have not been successful in the past, not insurmountable obstacles that should prevent us from reaching our goals. By identifying potential blocks to successful weight loss and treating them early, any roadblocks can be effectively removed.

lack of organization

Reaching weight loss goals becomes much more difficult when the right foods aren’t available or there isn’t time left for some exercise. If you have cookies and chips in the cabinets and no fruit to snack on, you know what the likely outcome will be. The temptation to grab a handful of cookies to stave off hunger is often too great to resist. This is one of the main reasons people don’t stick to their weight loss plans and it can be easily avoided with proper planning. Make your life easier, spend some time planning your weekly routine, including what you want to eat and when, what you need to buy at the supermarket, and how much time you need to exercise regularly. And do yourself a favor, cut out all the junk food so there are no temptations.

Impatience

Going for the quick fix is ​​a tendency most unsuccessful dieters have. Once we’ve decided we want to lose weight, we want to lose it as fast as possible even though, as smart people, we know it’s not going to happen. Going on crazy fad diets that promise 12-pound weight loss a week is just plain counterproductive, but hey, you knew that, right?

Choosing the wrong diet

Some diets are impossible to follow. If you decide to go on a diet that only allows you to eat grapefruit or cabbage soup, for example, failure is inevitable. Your body is physically programmed to protect its fat stores, when those fat stores are threatened by starvation it goes to great lengths to hold on to them, it will give up muscle for energy before it gives up fat. These starvation diets simply have the effect of making you fat and miserable.

Not setting proper goals

There is an entire art and science to goal setting, there have been many studies to show the magic of goal setting and there are hundreds of goal setting programs on the market. The truth is that by laying out exactly what you want to achieve in writing and then defining the steps you are going to take to achieve it, your chance of success increases phenomenally. Generally, however, most people tend to ignore this important aspect of achieving their goal when embarking on a weight loss program, making failure almost inevitable.

Your mind

The reasons I have listed above are the main reasons why people fail to lose weight permanently and why the diet industry is so booming. Americans spend about $35 billion a year on diet products, and the obesity problem is getting worse. But there is one factor above all others that makes it so difficult for us to lose weight and that is our subconscious conditioning.

All your habits, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and behaviors make up your way of thinking, you eat the way you do because of your thoughts, feelings and beliefs, so going on a diet and ignoring this aspect of loss of weight is usually doomed to failure. to failure from the start.

It is essential to change your mindset before you can achieve comfortable and lasting weight loss.