Six Principles for Improved Health and Lasting Weight-Loss

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 by: Craig Pepin-Donat, The Fit Advocate
Tags: weight loss, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) How many times have you proclaimed, "I need to go on a diet"? How many of those diets resulted in long-term success? Not many, if any. Millions of people are looking for the answer to improved health and fitness, and spend billions of dollars every year on diets and weight loss. Diets continually fail to deliver results because no matter how compelling the underlying principles for any diet may seem, no one can stay on a diet forever. Eventually, you will drop the diet and go back to your normal eating habits. Typically, you not only gain back the weight you lost, but statistics show that you will also gain additional weight.

Anything built on a faulty foundation has little chance for success, and most weight loss programs are riddled with pitfalls and over inflated promises. Weight loss and weight management are lifelong commitments. Until you accept the reality that they are a learning process that takes ongoing work and focus, you will continue to look for the fast and simple solutions that are nothing more than a bunch of big, fat lies.

Long-term success with health and weight loss requires significant changes not just in how you eat, but in the way you live. Attaining results must be achieved in a way that enhances your life and allows your body to reach its optimal weight naturally. This is in sharp contrast to the quick-fix mentality, which attempts to trick the body into short-term weight loss with diets and other rapid results formulas.

There are six basic principles that allow long-term positive change to occur. Each plays an integral role in achieving health and fitness success:

1.  Understand how addictions can negatively impact your lifestyle choices. There are many forms of addiction that go unrecognized or fly under the radar of conventional thinking, negatively impacting our health. In our stressed-out society, we search for escape from the harsh realities of life. We smoke, drink alcohol, take drugs and overeat. The number one reason people give for not exercising is time, yet the average American watches more than 4 hours of television every day. All of these activities make us fat, lazy and out of shape. They prevent us from obtaining optimal health.

2.  Reduce toxic exposure and stress. The definition of toxic is poison. Sadly, we are surrounded by poisons that damage our health and put our lives at risk. We have been conditioned to believe that small amounts of toxic exposure are safe, but they are not. There are thousands of untested chemical combinations injected into our food and water supply, and there are deadly chemical compounds in our personal hygiene and cleaning products. Stress is the number one toxin, contributing to as much as 80 percent of all disease. Educate yourself about the deadly toxins or watch your health slowly and quietly deteriorate.

3.  Create a mindset for change with no time limits. The starting block for any long-term success is changing the way you think about your body and your health. Changing your mindset means that you have made the unequivocal decision that you will improve your health, which may include weight loss and ultimately weight management, no matter what it takes. Your determination must be strong and cannot waiver. Obviously, this cannot be achieved with a six-week diet or any other type of short-term solution. Until you change your mindset, all of the decisions you make regarding your health or weight challenges will be flawed. Your new mindset must focus on how your actions and attitudes will help you achieve your goals for the rest of your life. If you do not have a weight problem or if you do not feel that weight loss is important to improve your health, your new long-term mindset is no less important. The end result of implementing a new, long-term mindset while applying the principles outlined here will naturally result in weight reduction and, more important, improved health. 

4.  Provide proper nutrition to feed your body and your brain. Did you ever try to fill the gas tank in your car with diesel fuel? If you have, you would have found yourself stuck on the side of the road watching your car smoke and sputter because you fed it fuel that was not designed for you car's optimal performance. Everything we eat and drink affects us on a cellular level. Food is the fuel for the body and brain. The type of fuel you choose to consume will determine how your body operates. Most of our food choices are made with our taste buds, driven by the desire to obtain pleasure with little thought about the consequences of our actions. There are many small but still palatable changes you can make to your eating habits that can have a big impact on your health.

5.  Engage in physical activity in the form of consistent exercise. It takes a deficit or surplus of 3,500 calories to lose or gain a single pound of body fat. Everyone burns a certain number of calories just by being alive. This is called your resting metabolic rate (RMR). After you account for your RMR, a caloric surplus (weight gain) or deficit (weight loss) is a simple mater of calories consumed through eating and drinking versus calories expended through physical activity. It is a proven fact that even small amounts of activity can dramatically improve your health.

6.  Adjust your lifestyle with habits and routines that will enhance your life. Human beings are creatures of habit, and we follow the same patterns and routines every day. Think about what you do every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed. It is human nature to fly on autopilot, constantly repeating our actions without thinking about them. You will never be successful achieving your health and fitness goals with fads or quick-fix solutions. Lasting results can only be obtained with lifestyle changes that you can stick with for the rest of your life.
 
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About the author

Craig Pepin-Donat is uniquely qualified to speak on issues related to health and fitness. With over a quarter century of experience, Craig led two of the largest fitness organizations in the U.S. as president and he was the executive vice president for the world's largest fitness organization, 24 Hour Fitness. He has operated more than 450 fitness clubs in 11 countries and has visited over 30 countries while studying health and fitness trends worldwide. He has researched and purchased millions of dollars worth of fitness equipment, dietary supplements and other health and fitness related products.
A dynamic public speaker and educator, Craig Pepin-Donat has trained literally thousands of people within the fitness industry all over the world. Craig has created numerous professional training programs, seminars and workshops, based on his simple formula for success that have helped millions of people get on the path to living a healthier and more active lifestyle. He has dedicated his life to helping people through health and fitness education and now brings that knowledge and expertise to you in his ground breaking book, The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie. He founded www.FitAdvocate.com as an ongoing platform to “protect and enhance the lives of health and fitness consumers".
Craig is also the founder, chairman and host of The International Health and Fitness Symposium with a mission of delivering professional, unbiased and often suppressed information needed to make healthy lifestyle changes.
The International Health and Fitness Symposium experts are “united to improve and extend lives” through an advanced program called The People’s Guide to Health, Happiness and Longevity.
You can learn more about Craig Pepin-Donat at www.ThePeoplesGuidetoHealth.com or at www.FitAdvocate.com.