How To Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Merry Christmas. This is my gift to you dear reader for reading my stories. For those of you who need it, this is my free guaranteed plan to help you not only lose weight but to keep it off and get healthier, while doing it.

It's that time of year when all of us make our New Year's resolutions that we quickly forget, once we get over our hangover. Before we made our resolutions to lose weight and keep it off, we thought it important enough to make the promises to ourselves being that it is the one thing we named, as something that we'd like to accomplish. Only, by the number of diet books sold in this country, too many people don't know how to lose weight and keep it off, and the ones who know how to lose weight and keep it off fail. Instead of sticking to their weight loss plans, they end up hibernating and grazing throughout the winter and when spring arrives, they are 20 pounds or more heavier.

It's good to have a goal. I commend you for wanting to take control of your weight issues. It's important to want to improve ourselves. Yet, sometimes too lofty of a goal is a self-defeating prophesy. If you think you're going to lose all the weight you need to loose in a few short months, before the good weather arrives, so that you can hit the beach by the summer, unless you only have ten to twenty pounds to lose, then you're doomed for failure. You aren't being realistic.

If you're a couch potato, a person who's never been athletic, active even, didn't play a sport in high school or college, never did anything competitive, rethink the amount of weight you want to lose and then lengthen the time period you'll need to lose it. If you've never done a pushup, pull up, or a sit up, never jogged, or rode a bike for any extended length of time, or maintained any fitness plan over a length of time that improved your aerobic conditioning, what makes you seriously think you're going to do a complete 360 and do that now? Let me burst your bubble for you now before you become depressed later and eat more and gain even more weight.

"It won't happen. You won't last a week exercising. Sorry."

Yet, don't fret. I didn't write this how to story to discourage you from losing weight and keeping it off, I wrote it to help you. Wait. Don't go. Get back here. See? You're giving up already, before I even told you the good news, and there is good news. There is light at the end of the tunnel. There is a rainbow with your name on it. This is your lucky day. Are you ready? This weight loss plan is for you.

If you're the type of person who has never seriously worked out, don't despair. Don't overwhelm yourself by dwelling on the whole. Think of one thing and one goal. Take a breath and relax. Feel better?

Of course, you should always check with your doctor first before you begin an exercise plan. Also, when you are exercising and feel dizzy, nauseous, have chest pain or numbness, stop and seek emergency medical care. Excessive eating and lack of exercise is what got you in this unhealthy condition and moderation and exercise is what will change your life for the better.

Here goes. Once someone like you starts working out, someone who has never exercised before, the weight drops faster and the muscle goes on quicker. Yes, I know, you're a woman and don't want muscles. Don't worry. You can't get muscles in the way that a man can, unless you've been taking testosterone supplements from the men's aisle in a health store. Besides, those things don't work anyway. Only a doctor's prescription is safe and effective to take and only illegal steroids can make you look like those monstrous female bodybuilders you see on television.

This is my foolproof formula over a realistic time period to not only help you to lose the weight but also to keep it off and make yourself not only healthier but also look better. Think back and remember yourself before you were heavy. How long did it take for you to put all that weight on is twice the amount of time it will take for you to take it off. I know, it's discouraging when you think about it in those terms. Unfortunately, there is no magic pill to shed the pounds and nothing in life that is worthwhile is easy, so true.

There is a shortcut, however, and one that works, only it's not easy. Like everything else in life in takes hard work, dedication, perseverance, and a determined effort. How badly you want it is your personal barometer measuring your success or failure.

Yeah, sure, your personal trainer will tell you differently. He or she will tell you that you'll look like a different person in whatever amount of time he or she knows will keep you coming back to him or her. Only, your personal trainer is paid by you to tell you what you want to hear. Besides, he or she is not with you 24/7 when you're gulping down two donuts for breakfast, MacDonald's for lunch, and pizza for dinner with an ice cream, cookie, and a potato chip chaser, as a snack later. C'mon, get real. Yet, relax, as I mentioned before, there is a shortcut, though and one that works, only it's not easy.

I've worked out all my life and because of all that I've done, I've maintained my weight. Don't hate me, but I take the same size clothes that I took after I graduated high school. I know. My friends that I bump into after 30 years tell me the same thing.

"You look the same. You look amazing. How do you do it?"

My wife who had been overeating because of childhood emotional issues had gained an enormous amount of weight. By her doctor's definition and body mass index charts, she was considered morbidly obese. With my help, she lost 90 pounds in a year and a half and ten years later has kept it off.

You notice that I didn't write overnight or in 90 days or 6 weeks, as some of these miracle diets and exercise plans promise you. Unless you're a contestant on Survivor or a cancer victim, you can't lose that kind of weight that fast and still remain healthy. If you really believe that you can lose weight fast, as too many diets purport, I have a used car to sell you with low mileage that my elderly aunt only drove to pick up her mail at the end of the driveway, once a week.

So, how did I do it, maintain my weight? This isn't about me. It's about you. How can you do it, lose weight and keep off the weight that you lose?

First, is your diet. Forget about diets and dieting. Do not diet. Diets don't work. Today is the day that we're going to eat with our heads, instead of our emotions. Remove the diet word from your vocabulary. This is what you want to do instead.

Write down all that you eat on a daily basis for a week and be honest. If there's an empty calorie, remove it. Ice cream, cookies, candy, and potato chips are examples of empty calorie foods that make you fat and tired. Replace some of the carbohydrates and empty calories with vegetables and fruits. When you eat, have normal servings, human sized, not animal sized. You're older now, you don't need all that food just to slouch on the couch. Trust me, one banana is enough to keep your eyes open and you coherent.

If there is something that you're eating every day, such as a candy bar or a donut, there's an easy ten pounds in the course of a year that you will lose just by eliminating that one item. Only, I know, you're addicted to your Bavarian crème donut and Chunky candy bar. Only, now is the time to make the choice. Do you want to look and feel better or do you want to continue down the road that will surely take you to your early grave?

Now, repeat after me. Never, is when you eat donuts, bagels loaded with cream cheese, salads floating in salad dressing, fast foods, pizza, Chinese food, and supersized burgers and fries. Those foods are poison. You are what you eat and those foods will kill you. Jack La Lanne said fifty years ago, you don't want to eat any processed foods, anything that man made. Your best bet is colorful and leaner foods, fruits and vegetables with fish and chicken.

Go to bed hungry. Eat smaller meals. Snack during the day. Rather than eating one big meal at the end of the day and sitting on the couch, before going to bed, only have enough food to remove your hunger. Eat slower. Chew your food more. All these things will trick your mind and your stomach into thinking that you've have more food than you've actually eaten.

If you are dumb enough to still be smoking after all the information about how unhealthy, deadly actually, smoking is for you, don't even bother reading the rest of this story. Just go outside and have another cigarette with a pack or Ring Dings. There's no hope for you. Quitting smoking is the number one thing you can do to not only improve the quality of your life but also to save it. For that matter, you shouldn't even be drinking alcohol, but let's just concentrate on one thing at a time. Okay?

Let me ask you a simple question. What do you do every day, without missing a day, and without giving it any thought? You breath, you sleep, you eat, and you go to the bathroom. Right? Hopefully, you shower and brush your teeth, too. Some of you work, as well. There is one more thing that you must add to your daily routine and that is as important as breathing, sleeping, eating, and going to the bathroom, and that's exercising.

Wait! I know I said a bad word for some of you, exercise, but before you stop reading, just read a few more paragraphs. I promise not to give you a full routine of exercises with repetitions and sets that you won't do. Let's not call it exercise. Let's call it activity. It doesn't matter what kind of activity you do, so long as you do something, anything.

Pick one thing. What do you like to do? C'mon, be serious. Sex is not exercise, per se. Are you a walker? Jogger? Bike rider? Rope jumper? Stair climber? Swimmer? Roller skater? What? they even have that Wii game with workout DVD's. Maybe you or your kids got one for Christmas. There are a lot of fun things that you can do with that game that you can do to burn calories and get you off the couch and moving, while having fun at the same time. Just pick one thing that you enjoy doing and that you know you will continue doing. That is your key to success to burning calories and replacing fat with muscle.

Never mind what the other woman or man does for a workout routine. Chances are they are exaggerating what they do to serve a boastful need of who they think they are or need to be and are just saying that to make you feel bad about yourself. Don't listen to them. They are evil. They are your enemy. Now, make them your motivation to succeed. Besides, whatever it is that they do, may work for them but may not work for you. Got it?

Before I suggest those things that you can do to lose weight and keep it off, allow me to tell you what not to do. This is what you don't want to do. Do not join a gym, especially if you've never joined a gym before. For those who have never been to a gym, it's a scary place with devotees to the muscle God and Goddess. Some of these people are truly nuts, the machines they use are scary, and the weights they lift are insane.

Chances are you will hurt yourself the first day and never return. All of that put together will make you depressed and want to quit trying to lose weight and eat. I wouldn't blame you. It's all so overwhelming and impossibly difficult to wrap your head around. It's too much of a shocking change to your routine. Keep it simple and keep it fun.

The gym is a wonderful place if you can handle it, but it's not for you. Trust me. With your new workout bag and clean clothes, most of you will go once or twice to the gym and never go again and now you're stuck with a gym membership fee that you signed for a year. Do not go out and spend money on a piece of gym equipment for your home that will sit in the corner and remind you of what a loser and quitter you are. Don't do that to yourself. You're a better person than that.

Besides all of that, by not going to the gym, you won't have to drive your car to the gym, change your clothes in front of a locker, exercise, shower, get dressed, and drive home. It's too much trouble. There is an easier way and the reason why I wrote this how to story to tell you.

Do something cheap. Do something that you like to do and will continue to do anyway. Do something that you'll stick with. I've always been a walker. I have long legs and can walk very fast. Fortunately, I have a dog who loves to walk, too, run actually, but I've never been a runner. If you are a very heavy person with a lot of weight to lose, running and jogging is not for you. You need something more low impact, such as swimming or riding a stationary bike.

I always preferred skipping rope. By the way, there is a new jump rope out there that doesn't have a rope, a ropeless jump rope. It cost around $39 and it's great. I love mine.

Just as I know people who love to endlessly walk the mall, I know people who jump in place in the privacy of their bathrooms every day. Then, there are those people who do pushups, pull ups, and crunches every day in their homes. That's their preferred method of moving and getting healthier. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do something. The key is to do something that you enjoy doing, Palates for an example, because if you don't mind doing it, if you enjoy doing it, chances are you'll continue doing it.

Anyway, when I got my dog, he was a puppy and because he is a high energy type of dog, I couldn't exercise this dog enough. He made me walk faster and faster, until I was speed walking him. I actually had to buy a vest and put a five pound weight on each side of him to slow him down and take the edge off. Yet, in doing all this walking I discovered something.

Even with all the exercise plans I've had throughout my life with all the pushup, pull ups, crunches, and weights that I've lifted, I discovered that I was getting an aerobic benefit, just from walking, albeit walking very fast, something I figured that I could only get from marathon running or bike riding the planet or swimming Olympic pool laps, which I hate doing all those things with a passion. Boring. I'm not runner, biker, or swimmer. I don't have the time.

Since I was out walking my dog anyway, I walked every day, three times a day. It was good that I had a dog by my side, so that I didn't look like a pervert walking and stalking the neighborhood. Also, it was good that I lived in the shadow of a mountain and had a very long one and a half mile, flat, stretch of sidewalk road to walk to the base of the mountain and back to my house. Perfect, 3 miles a day, three times a day. Yeah, I know, that's too much for most people, but I was fairly fit before I started this adventure and my chosen method of exercise was walking.

You do what you can, whatever it is, so long as you get your ass off the couch. This isn't a competition nor is it rocket science. Eat less, move more. This is the quality of your life. This is about you. You only have one life to live and who wants to live it walking with a cane and complaining about aches and pains, while you're still young enough to enjoy a more active lifestyle. If you have a choice and now you do because I'm telling you how to do it and it won't cost you a dime, just your time, why not do it.

Walk. Start slow, but walk. Forget about carrying weights in your hand. Knowing how clumsy you are, you'll trip, drop a weight on your foot and break it, which will stop you from walking and will relegate you to eating, while lying on your couch recovering. Just walk. That's the least that you can do for yourself. Only, don't meander. Walk at a brisk pace, one where you can still hold a conversation. Walk with a friend. You don't have to walk alone, just as walking doesn't have to be a mindless activity. Learn a foreign language while walking by playing a tape or CD in your Sony.

After you've been walking for a week, seeing everything in the neighborhood that you never noticed before from your car window, while sipping your coffee and talking on your cell phone, walk longer and a little faster the second week. By the time you've been out walking for a month or two, I want you to walk so far and so fast that you'll think you are the walking champion of the world. Yeah, go ahead, it will do your heart good to jump up in down with your arms raised over your head, as Rocky Balboa did in Rocky.

Listen, it's no excuse if it's cold, raining, snowing, whatever. There are lightweight, warm, waterproof clothes you can buy to keep you dry and warm and there are ice cleats for your shoes to keep you from slipping and falling. Just walk or pick a backup exercise, something that you can do indoors whenever the weather is bad. Instead of walking outside, you can jump rope with a ropeless jump rope, ride a stationary bike, or walk on a treadmill. Just get off your ass and move. It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you do it.

Don't like to walk? Pick something else and follow the same principle, whether its riding a bike, rollerblading, ice skating, swimming or even jumping up and down in place. Do something other than sitting on your ass.

Now, that you've mastered the one thing you've picked is the time you add some resistance training to your workouts. Go out and buy a set of dumbbells. Start light. A set that has 5, 10 and 20 pound dumbbells is perfect. Most dumbbell sets will come with a chart to tell you which exercises to do and how to do them. If it doesn't come with instructions, then this is what you want to do with them, every other day. The dumbbell workout will only take you 15 minutes and I guarantee you that you will see phenomenal results in a very short time, within weeks, especially if you've never done any weight resistance exercises or if it's been years since you did any.

Do arm curls for your biceps, shoulder presses and lateral raises from the side and then lateral raises from the front for your shoulders. Do some reverse curls for your triceps or French presses Squat down and up while holding the heaviest dumbbells. While lying on a flat surface a bench or a chair that can support your back do some bench presses. If you have never done any of these and don't know what they are or how to do them, Google the exercise. They are all online with photos and explanations.

Oh, I almost forgot. There is one more thing that you must do, but only if you are a female. This is a very important part of your weight loss program. Send me a naked photo of yourself before you start my program and another one after you've lost the weight you wanted to lose. I just, uhm, want to see something, I mean, of course, monitor your progress.

Good luck, skinny.