Healthy weight loss is when one loses weight while enhancing one’s health. Health is enhanced because the body has lost fat and held on or built on its muscle reserves. This is achieved via exercise and a sensible diet. It cannot be achieved over night. It requires the cultivation of daily habits that promote weight loss and sustain it there after.

Daily Habits

Our daily habits are behavior patterns that are repeated regularly and tend to occur without someone directly thinking consciously about them. We do not notice our daily habits. This is because we do not need to analyze our actions when we are carrying out the behavior.

Our Daily Habits are the Cause of Our Weight Gain

Daily habits such as skipping breakfast, not exercising, indulging in unhealthy food, over eating, alcohol consumption and consuming too much sugar are some of the habits that maybe contributing to the obesity epidemic. Most people do not even realize that they are victim of their habits. You need to replace older habits with newer ones to get effective weight loss.

What Makes an Effective Habit

Experts say that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Old habits can be replaced by new and more useful habits. According to best-selling author Steven Covey, there are 3 components required to learn a new habit. These are knowledge, skill and desire.

Knowledge

The first part of a healthy weight loss habit is knowledge. This is the “what” to do. Before you can cultivate a new habit, you need to have adequate knowledge or information about what you want to do. At least, you will need to have basic knowledge about the following;

• The difference between weight loss and fat loss
• Sustainable weight loss results from losing fat and holding on to your muscles
• Diet pills, drugs or even starvation diets result in lots of water and muscle loss. Fat loss is smallest and this is why weight comes back with a vengeance
• Exercise helps burn fat and improve health.
• The importance of a sensible diet that can be practiced for life

Skill

The next part of a healthy weight loss habit is skill. This is the “how” to do the habit. Once you have the knowledge, you need to put it into practice. Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes real power when it is put into use. Someone may have read about all the benefits of exercise for someone trying to lose weight. Now one needs to do the exercise. One may need to do weight resistance or cardio training. Very few people can pick up the dumbbells for the very first time and be able to do all the exercises correctly. Exercise skills need to be learned.

Similarly, making correct food choices also needs some level of skill. 2 people going to a buffet may choose very different foods. The one without healthy food selection skills may give preference to fatty and sweet foods. The other may choose meat and salads instead. Either way, healthy eating skills need to be developed.

Desire

The last part of a healthy weight loss habit is desire. This is the “why” you want to achieve the habit.  Is your motivation to lose weight strong enough? The knowledge and skills can be learned with some effort. Unfortunately, the desire has to come from deep within. You must want to achieve the results that the habits will yield. If you do not have a strong desire for healthy weight loss, you will not have the drive and the will to learn the knowledge and the skills required to deeply inculcate the habit.

Its Our Habits That Make Us What We Are

We are creatures of our daily habits. Change your daily habits to change your weight. Anyone wanting success should look into these 3 essential ingredients of healthy weight loss habits. We make our daily habits and our daily habits make us.