Setting the right target to lose weight

There are attractive advertisements everywhere, about exciting weight loss programmes and the 20kg or 30 kgs that somebody lost. At every social gathering people are discussing some new diet plan that is bound to make you lose loads of fat.

The truth is when you actually start on a programme or diet you realize that your dream of 20-30kgs loss is quite far off and the distance or the time involved seems so huge that you tend to give up in a week or two. The most important step is to make a realistic target. Those who want to lose 15-20kgs must first work at 10kgs, not more. The scientific and medically safe time period to lose 10kgs is 3 months or 90days at a rate of approximately 3kgs in a month.

When you feel you will be done with the food restrictions in 3 months then you are able to do full justice to the 3 months. You try not to break the diet and you see good, encouraging results because you are very focused and committed to that 90 day period. After this if you still want to lose another 5-10kgs you are able to go on with confidence and ease. I know a young girl of age 21 years who stuck to a programme for 10 months and lost 30kgs and has maintained it for the last 3 years. This type of reasonable and steady weight loss is the safest as it does not bounce back as soon as you start indulging a little bit.

1. How ever there are some rules one must understand and that is that every time you check your weight and see a loss, it is not an excuse to indulge in some food which adds fat back to your body. Also when people compliment you on your weight loss it should motivate you to alter your clothes or treat your self to some new clothes, cosmetics, jewellary etc. but not to more food or fatty food.

2. Please understand that any programme or diet promising 10kgs loss in 20days or one month is to be avoided. In one month the human body can lose about 3-4kgs fat. After this the remaining 6kgs will consist of muscle and water loss from the body. When you lose muscle tissue you also seriously damage your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) which goes down. This results in rapid weight gain in the future. Unfortunately when you gain weight the weight that comes back does not come back as fat plus muscle plus water but comes back as 10kg of fat alone. You lose 4kgs fat but put back 10kgs of fat.

3. Those who weight over 100 or 120 kgs may lose upto 5kgs fat per month because they have so much fat to lose where as a person who is 70 or 80kgs would lose about 3 -4kgs per month. On the other hand a person who is 60kgs and wanting to reduce to 55kgs may lose only 1-2kgs per month as they have only a small amount of fat to be lost. In the 60kg persons case it would be extremely unhealthy to lose 5kgs in one month. No two persons weight lose can be compared and no two persons ideal weight would be the same. The most important lesson to learn is not to compare and compete with somebody else but to work on your body by your own standards and do it in a scientifically, healthy way.