Weightloss Program

The Fine Art Of Selecting The Right Weight Loss Program

Many others, probably a larger percentage, will benefit more with support, guidance and a helping hand.

When seeking out the best weight loss program there are a number of important questions that second group will want answered.

The most essential, and therefore the first question is: What are the facts about diet, exercise and weight loss? There are dozens of fad diets, special exercise regimens and all manner of junk science surrounding the subject.

It won't be very easy for those not greatly knowledgeable about the science of weight loss, or at least the most important topics of nutrition and exercise, to sort the wheat from the chaff, to sort fact from fiction. On the other hand, anyone with common sense and some persistence can fairly quickly find one or more sources of reliable information. Scientific studies don't stand in isolation, they either support or contradict others. When you find a number, from serious sources, that agree there's good reason to give them some credence.

Similarly, it will be important for your success to find knowledgeable and experienced people at the gym> and nutritionists that can help you along. Most people can distinguish between people who are trying to give wise counsel and those who just want to sell you something that may or may not have any value. People deserve to be paid for their services, but they should offer something worthwhile in return.

Once you have found a gym, or the right home exercise equipment, and a nutritionist that can offer you good guidance and moral support, you'll probably get added benefits from the association with them. Such people can help remind you, when the going gets tough, of why you chose to make the effort to even begin a weight loss program in the first place.

It's going to be difficult to adhere to a long term program when the progress is slow.

While exercising at home is going to work for some, in a gym setting you may also meet others going through the same process as you and get, or provide, needed moral support because of that.

Any sensibly planned diet and exercise program will certainly need be oriented toward lifestyle changes that will help you lose the weight and keep it off, and keep you healthy and fit over a lifetime. Counseling provided by fitness and nutrition professionals can help you do that. They can also help you unlearn bad habits and learn better ones, while providing the encouragement and guidance you to stick with them.

You'll need to monitor your progress, of course, so you will need to ask what are the tests and tools to do that. You will need food charts for measuring calories and types of nutrients. You'll need a Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator and other tools.

You will be happy to know that some of those "tools" (what my daughter calls a "special implement" and my wife simply "hammer") are as simple and inexpensive as a scale, a flexible tape measure and a mirror. Others, slightly more complex but not complicated, may be a heart rate or pulse monitor, a device that measures body fat percentage and other things that often accompany a treadmill.

You will want to judge any weight loss program by how many people have actually found success using it, of course. Beware of hype. A few unsolicited opinions from people you don't know won't even start to tell the whole story. Find out how many finished, and how much they lost, and whether there were any downsides or side effects.