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Weight gain is a direct results of one’s habits. Conversely, sustaining weight loss is also the direct result of one’s habits. Inability to inculcate correct weight loss and weight maintenance habits is one of the main reasons for rebound weight gain.
Easier to Lose Weight Than Keep it Off
Weight loss is easier than maintaining the weight that has been lost. Weight loss can be achieved via crash diets, drugs or invasive therapies such as liposuction. Unless one inculcates the correct habits, the weight will come back with a vengeance.
Habits
Wikipedia defines habits as follows;
Habits are routines of behavior that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously, without directly thinking consciously about them. Habitual behavior sometimes goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting them, because it is often unnecessary to engage in self-analysis when undertaking in routine tasks.
Weight Gain or Maintaining Weight Loss is a Reflection of Your Habits
People do not gain weight over night. Weight gain is a long process. It is often the result of habits that that make it conducive for someone to gain weight. Habits are rooted so deep within the subconscious mind that most people may not even be aware of the habits that are causing them to gain weight.
Social Weight Gain Habits
Social habits are acts that people carry out socially in a fixed routine or in a fixed recognizable pattern. For instance, John goes out drinking with his buddies every Friday. He uses this as an excuse for relieving stress from the hard long week preceding it. Another example is of Albert who meets his buddies every Saturday to watch football. Watching the game is not the only thing that Albert and his buddies do. There is also plenty of beer and various types of junk food.
While there is nothing wrong with socializing, one needs to be be aware of social appointments that are contributing to weight gain or sabotaging weight loss efforts. Instead of watching football on television, why not play football or any other game you fancy. It gives you a chance to socialize while giving you an opportunity to trim your waist.
Mental Weight Gain Habits
Certain mental habits make you powerless when trying to lose weight. One such habit is procrastination. You know that you should lose weight but keep putting it off. This can be a serious problem for a lot of people.
In addition to this, there are those who are not able to prioritize important tasks to better manage their time. They fall prey to negative habits that do not add value to their lives but instead steal valuable time that could be channeled to useful activities such as exercise.
There are also those who suffer from excuse-itis. They have an endless list of excuses to justify their negative actions. Instead of taking the time to do what is necessary to lose weight, they spend all of their time justifying why weight loss is difficult.
Physical Weight Gain Habits
Physical weight gain habits are perhaps the most obvious and the easiest to change. Some of these habits include;
- Taking second helpings at lunch or dinner
- Snacking on junk food
- Consuming unnecessary liquid calories in the form of colas, sodas and lattes
- Missing breakfast or other main meals
- Keeping sweets, chocolates and other calorie dense food within easy reach
- Watching television when the time could be channeled towards exercise
Change Your Habits to Change Your Weight
Psychologists say that it takes about 21 days to change your habits. Once these habits have set in, they need to be reinforced for a period of time to create a deep groove within your subconscious mind. Unlike negative habits, positive habits require effort to enforce. It’s very much easier to sustain a negative habit than a positive habit.
This is the main reason that quick fix solutions do not work for long-term weight loss. This does not force you to adopt habits that will help you sustain the weight loss.
Replace Bad Habits with Healthy Habits
Someone serious about losing weight and keeping it off should do an honest self-evaluation of his or her habits. Look through all the activities in a typical week and highlight those that are contributing to weight gain.
It would also make sense to analyze eating habits to find those habits that are contributing to your waist line. Once identified, try replacing them with healthy eating habits. Create new patterns to offset the existing ones. Healthy eating habits would help you sustain the weight loss.
Once these new healthy habits have settled in, you will surely lose weight. As you adopt these habits deep within you, maintaining weight loss becomes a breeze.
Picture courtesy of stock.xchng
Related posts:
- Subsitute Weight Gaining Habits with Healthy Habits
- A Natural Weight Loss Diet is Driven by Daily Habits
- Forming Habits for Healthy Weight Loss
- 7 Steps Towards Healthy Eating Habits for Sustainable Weight Loss
- Change Your Perspective to Change Your Weight
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Agree that your habits – the consistent day to day actions, determine your results (not just weight loss). And really, it is the little things that add up over time. Dave
Thank you for your comments. You are absolutely right by saying that it is the small things in life that produce the bigger results.
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