The Habit of Permanent Weight Loss
September 28, 2008 by Henry John
Do diets work? Every year, more and more people decide to go on a diet to try and get rid of unwanted pounds. They put their faith in some new formula which promises to deliver their dream - permanent weight loss. Be it the Atkins diet or the South Beach Diet, their expectations are always high. These diets can deliver short-term weight loss, but the majority of dieters will be disappointed because permanent weight loss will not happen.
The essential ingredient that is missing is the means to effect change, permanent change. What is needed are new habits, slim habits if you like, that can be repeated and practiced to effect that change, not just another restrictive diet.
Most diets fail to deliver permanent weight loss because they don’t address the need for behavior change. Traci Mann, a psychologist at the University of California (UCLA) who analyzed 31 long-term studies that followed people on a range of diets for between two and five years found that : ‘Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.’
The study found that you can lose between 5 to 10% of your bodyweight on any number of diets, but the weight comes back. The majority of dieters put all the weight back on again - plus some. Going on a diet can actually make you fat. Another study found that only one person in every 100 loses weight permanently - that’s a failure rate of 99%!
There have been some enormous advances made in the fields of neuroscience and psychology. There is now a far better understanding about how our body and brain work, how they interact and what we can do to make change and take control of our lives. One new weight loss system, the Slim Habit, puts this new knowledge into plain, easy to understand language and translates it into practical applications - ’slim habits’. This is interesting because learning new habits and discarding old behaviors is the way to achieve permanent weight loss.
Making change is not difficult, but it helps to have a program that supplies a knowledge base and also a means of offering long-term support. We need help and a formal structure if we are to identify our old behaviors and learn new habits. We have to have a means of taking control of our lives to make long-term change. It needs to be a program of learning and where we can discover our true strength and resolve.
Programs that open the door to a new slimmer, healthier life will be the ones that help to identify the behaviors that caused overweight to occur in the first place and provides the means and support to learn new habits that lead to permanent weight loss.
For those struggling to lose weight permanently, the big weight could soon be over.
About the Author:
Henry John has been writing and commentating on health matters for many years. He has a particular interest in permanent weight loss and behavior change. Learn more about how to lose weight permanently click here
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