Formulating Your Weight Loss Plan

When you make a decision to lose weight, it is only the first of a number of decisions you must make. The next decisions concern how you are going to achieve any weight loss, and by how much. To do that, it is best to do a bit of research first, and then based on that, come up with a weight loss plan.

It's a bit like starting a business, except instead of putting pounds (or $'s) on your bank account, you will be taking pounds off your weight.

The article below takes a brief look at formulating a weight loss plan.

A Weight Loss Plan That Is Achievable

When you decide to lose weight, one of the first things that you will inevitably want to do is to set a target weight for yourself. For most people, that goal will be their 'ideal weight'. For many, though, what they think of as that 'ideal weight' may be exactly the wrong weight for them to be aiming for.

It is a common side effect of years of dieting, or just being overweight, that a person's concept of the 'ideal weight' gets altered from what is truly considered ideal. The 'set point' is the weight at which your body naturally feels most comfortable. If you have been overweight for a very long time, or if you've consistently gone up and down, your body may respond to your initial weight loss by lowering its metabolism, because it "believes" you are starving to death. This effect slowing leads to a weight plateau, and this stage can often discourage people in maintaining their diets entirely, and lead to regaining all or part of the lost weight.

Many experts recommend that, instead of aiming for an 'ideal weight' that calls for you to lose weight steadily for months or even years, you should aim for shorter-term attainable goals. Relly, that is the same as any objective setting, whether it be for losing weight or anything else. The target. Since the bulk of diet research shows that most dieters lose weight steadily for about 12 weeks, then hit a plateau, that's the time period that they suggest you set your targets for. The strategy that many have found works best for them is having alternate periods of weight loss and weight maintenance, each lasting between 8 and 12 weeks.

By setting that sort of timescale, you have acknowledge the likely reality: you will have a plateau around that time. Your next decision will be to choose a realistic amount of weight that you can lose in that 8 to 12 week period. On the basis that the most reasonable, and healthiest, weight loss rate is about 1 to 2 pounds per week, to set an objective to lose 30 pounds in three months is reasonable. Once you have firmed up on your target, diet until you reach that goal, or for 12 weeks, whichever comes first. That is then the time to switch to a maintenance diet.

Why should youswitch to a maintenance diet at that time? Partly, you are giving yourself a 'breather', a break from more restrictive eating. The other part, though, is that you are re-educating your body. What you will do is let your body establish a new 'norm'. Once you've maintained your new weight for 8-12 weeks, then you can set yourself set another weight loss target, and move back into a weight loss cycle. By giving your body a break from what it sees as impending 'starvation', you will have overcome your body's resistance to losing more weight You will then be back to dieting for 'the first two weeks' - these are the weeks that most people lose weight more rapidly.

By sticking to this phased weight loss plan, you will be giving yourself a chance to 'practice' maintaining your new, healthier weight. Researchers have found that above 50% of the dieters who lose significant amounts of weight, do not maintain that weight loss once they go 'off' their diet. You want to be in the minority, amongst those who are able to maintain their new lower weight. By practicing weight maintenance in stages, you will be proving to yourself that you CAN do it. That will remove a major and negative psychological block.

This plan will work with any long-term weight loss diet. however, you will find it much easier to do if you choose a diet that has concrete 'phases', like the South Beach or the Atkins diets, since the weight loss and maintenance phases are clearly laid out for you to follow. Regardless of the diet you choose, though, if you alternate between weight loss phases and maintenance phases, you'll teach yourself and your body how to maintain a healthy weight.