"Fat Loss Success and Failure "
- appeared in the February print edition of the Northern AZ Homesteader

Nutrition. Exercise. Lean Muscle. Strength... N.E.LM.S. Fitness

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A common trait of people pursuing success is enlisting the help of a coach or mentor. It is fairly common knowledge that one of the quickest ways to succeed at a goal is to find someone who has previously achieved your desired outcome and then emulate that person. The person is your role model, a mentor, and teacher. Often they will be able to provide a step-by-step plan of action that will help you achieve success and maintain it, for far faster and for far longer than if you had made the attempt on your own.

Sometimes in the area of successful fat loss, however, such a mentor is hard to find. Sadly, most of us do not know many people who have achieved the apparently miraculous combination of both losing weight and keeping it off. It is not often that we are able to surround ourselves with such a group, let alone find a single person that falls into this elusive category.

Thankfully, such a group exists, and we are going to show you exactly where to find them.

The National Weight Control Registry is a research project that tracks the progress, habits, and characteristics of people who have lost over 30 pounds and kept it off for longer than a year. They are currently tracking over 5000 people, year after year, studying the traits that enable perpetual fat loss. To keep current with the National Weight Control Registry’s (NWCR) findings, be sure to frequent their website at www.NWCR.ws. In the meantime, here are five of the key factors associated with people that have achieved results.

1) One of the best findings of the NWCR is a subject that appears to be very well known, yet somehow people ignore it day after day and year after year, as they add pound after pound. Here it is: successful “losers” lost their weight with a combination of diet AND exercise. Just dieting does NOT work! Exercising 2-3 times a week while eating junk food does NOT work! We all know this, yet why do so many continue to struggle every single day, ignoring the facts?

2) In one study, the average participant had lost at least 66 pounds and kept the weight off for over 5 years. Pretty impressive, right? The common characteristic of this group was that they followed a lower calorie, low-fat diet. Before you completely kick fat out of your diet and off of your plate, however, it is important to know that this group’s average daily caloric intake from fat was 24% of total calories. Fat is an extremely important part of our diet, so shoot for this percentage as you eat throughout the day.

3) Nearly 80% of the “biggest losers” ate breakfast…everyday. Breakfast helps jump start your metabolism each day, so make it a top priority in your weight loss program.

4) Participants in the study who were consistent with their diet throughout the entire week, as opposed to just Monday through Friday, were 150% more likely to keep their weight at bay over the course of a year. A cheat MEAL or two per week can be helpful to keep you sane, but a cheat DAY or two will probably prevent success.

5) We know that the NWCR group lost weight through both diet and exercise, but how have they successfully kept it off for over a year? Drum roll, please, as the results are announced…

They continued to do both diet AND exercise. It’s just that simple.

There you have it. The combination of diet and exercise is, by far, the most important factor in the achievement of fat loss. The group from the National Weight Control Registry can be fantastic allies in your weight loss endeavor. Use them as mentors and role models, and allow the lessons they have learned to more quickly help you develop new lifelong habits that virtually guarantee weight loss success.

But wait…there is more to the story. A coin always has two sides. Now, it is time to look at the other side…and it isn’t very pleasant or shiny!

Sometimes, it is valuable and important to learn from failure. Failure shows us what NOT to do. Failure shows us what doesn’t work. Specific to weight loss, what if we could learn from others that failed to lose body fat? Thankfully, the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) has more than just solutions to weight loss. They also record the events and circumstances that caused people to fail. Think about how valuable it will be, and how much time you will save, if you take the time and energy to avoid the things that have proven to lead not to success…but to failure.

1) If the point hasn’t been drive home enough, already, the NWCR also found a common characteristic of those people that FAILED to maintain their weight loss. What was it? Simply stated: the people that failed to maintain weight loss failed to continue their behavioral changes that brought them success in the first place. In other words, they stopped eating right and exercising.

2) Here is another interesting fact to help motivate you to keep the weight off. The likelihood that people will regain weight consistently drops as time passes. So, the longer you practice the habits of eating intelligently and exercising properly, the more you reduce the chance that you will ever gain the weight back. This explains why fad diets don’t work! The change must become permanent, and “quick” fixes just don’t do the trick. Failure tip: stay motivated to keep the weight off for a long time, so that you don’t fall back into the old, unhealthy, life-destroying habits that once plagued you.

3) Sadly, life-endangering medical issues seem to be the best motivator and predictor of successful weight loss. The study clearly showed that people who made the decision to lose weight after a medical scare both lost weight faster and kept it off longer. Do yourself a favor and think ahead…before your doctor asks you to sit down, so that she can explain that your excess fat is literally killing you.

4) Do you need more motivation to keep the weight off? At the National Weight Control Registry, they also found this disturbing statistic: for those people who unfortunately regained some of their lost weight, only 11% returned to their previous lowest weight point in the following year. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that a person has successfully gone from 200 pounds down to 150 pounds. However, the person backslides and gains back 30 pounds. Experience shows that only 11 out of 100 people will be able to get back down to 150 pounds over the next year.

Keep in mind that these are people that had already successfully lost weight and knew exactly what to do to lose the weight they had re-gained. Logically, much more than 11% should have been able to return to their previous baseline weight. They had the knowledge. They had the experience. They knew what worked for their body. Sadly, though, logic does not always lead to success. It takes action…consistent action.

We can summarize all of these “failure points” pretty easily, can’t we? In essence, people failed because they failed to continue with the habits that created the initial success.

Perhaps, though, you haven’t yet experienced successful weight loss. Don’t let that be an obstacle for you. Use this article to motivate you to make a serious commitment…a lifelong one…so that you develop a true change in your lifestyle. You learned that several lifestyle changes lead to true fat loss success. You learned that working on fat loss with a short-term view in mind is not nearly as successful, and instead, often leads directly to failure. So, decide now to develop the habits that are necessary to transform your body into one that you are proud of.

Do you feel like you are getting value from the monthly fitness articles? If so, we would love to hear about it! Drop an email to Jeremy or Alissa Nelms at www.NelmsFitness.com today, and give us your feedback.

Jeremy Nelms and his wife, Alissa, provide professional fitness training services and management at Prescott Racquet Club (www.PrescottRacquetClub.com) and own Prescott’s Adventure Boot Camp for Women. They can be reached at www.PrescottBootCamp.com or www.NelmsFitness.com, where you can sign up for a free weekly newsletter filled with fat loss tips and methods, or even receive professional fitness training from them online! Each month, this column will bring you the concepts and methods and tips that have been proven to create lifelong, effective results for individuals – just like you – who started off with a strong desire to change his or her appearance, health, and future.

 

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