Avoid Weight Loss Overkill
The Top 100 Weight Loss Tips series continues onwards and upwards with article 48 in this series that is bringing you one hundred original, unique and relevant articles all designed to help you to lose some weight as easily and naturally as possible.
In this post, I look at how easy it is to succumb to the temptation to overdo things right from the get go with extreme dieting and exercise that can cause problems if done too fast or vigorously.
How to Avoid Weight Loss Overkill
The point I want to get across here is that when it comes to losing weight, don't overdo it! For sure, if you change something about your whole lifestyle, you're most probably going to see some results. However, there is, as in most things a set law of diminishing returns that comes into play here.
When it comes to planning and executing a low calorie diet, you need to set your goals fairly low so that you don't get tempted to try and starve yourself in order to see the numbers tumble on your scales. Chances are it won't happen that way and you'll only end up compromising your health or even suffer malnutrition.
If you think you are prone to overdoing the diet, then try a structured diet plan like Nutrisystem or the South Beach Diet that measures out your meals so that you get full nutrition and still lose weight at a reasonable pace. When you set realistic weight loss goals, you are much more likely to attain them and feel motivated to go after further goals.
Up Your Exercise Game
You can exercise hard with a program like P90X or lightly for an additional hour every day for a whole week at a time. But you'll most likely still lose only the same amount as you would have done had you only been exercising for half as much time.
That's not to say you should exercise any less, but you have to build up to the extra gradually and not all at once.
You must give your body plenty of time to adjust to any new exercise regime and don't push yourself too hard. The consequences of overdoing it could be an injury that will then prevent you from doing any exercise at all for long enough to negate all the hard work you have put into it up until that point. So don't try so hard to lose weight and you'll find you will lose it easier than you could have thought possible.
Start Slow
By going at it hammer and tongs straight away, you're just going to expend energy on something that may not actually give you any immediate or direct benefits. You will see the best results by gradually building up your exercise times a little each day along with adding more different types of exercises to work different muscle groups as you go along.
This way, your whole body gets to improve muscle tone and you increase your metabolism and ability to burn off more calories for the same amount of exercise as a completely unfit person.
Also, when you take things little by little, each muscle group that was worked on that day can more easily repair and grow overnight when you sleep. That means each day, you will be more easily able to extend your exercises because your muscles have had time to get themselves into a state of readiness for the day's schedule without the undue stress that overworking them the previous day would have done.
Of course, this tip really only applies to anyone wanting to merely lose some of their excess fat. If you're training for a triathlon, then of course, you need to exercise hard! But that's a different story altogether.
100 Weight Loss Tips number 47 follows in the next post!
[BACK TO TOP]
Posted on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 1 Comments
1 thoughts on "Avoid Weight Loss Overkill"
Dan says:
You need to eat a lot of high quality protein and carbs in order to efficiently build muscle mass from an intensive weight training program. Working out with really heavy weight will help build power and mass.