Thin Blog

If you are trying to lose weight and have reached a point where no
matter what you do those last few pounds will not come off, you are not
alone.   You wake up everyday and you go through your familiar routine of
weight loss efforts to no avail.  You exercise and you watch what you
eat and it seems that no mater what you attempt to do you are making no
headway on losing those last twenty pounds.  You have reached a point in
your weight loss attempt that you are starting to feel as if you will
not be able to lose anymore weight.  You are starting to think that
maybe your body has settled into what is the weight you need to be even
though it is not the weight that you want to become.  If you have been
trying to lose those last 20 pounds and have tried and tried to shed them
with little success there actually is a fairly simple and a somewhat
radical solution.  That solution is to stop the diet plan for a week or
so and eat the choices that you have been avoiding.

You have been doing all in your power to lose those last few pounds and
have hit the proverbial wall.  The method here is rather sound even
though some may consider it a radical idea.  You have reached what some
call a plateau and the frustration level is not only manifested in your
body but also in your thinking.  What has happened is that your body
has become accustomed to the daily exercises and the daily consumption of
specific and routine foods.  Your body is built to withstand many dire
circumstances and the physiology of the human is designed to fight off
starvation as long as possible.  As you try to lose weight your body
“believes” it is fending off total starvation and fights to keep each
and every ounce of fat that it has stored.  A rather simple and effective
solution which is also enjoyable is to indulge in a few days of diet
vacation.

Take a week or so and stop exercising and start to eat a few of the items that you have deprived yourself from enjoying.  Eat some chocolate or wash that pizza down with a Pepsi and take a few extra pieces of bread, have a chunk of cheese. A good example of this would be to do what you do on a cruise. This”diet vacation” will trick your body into thinking that the famine is over and we have survived another day.  Your body will quickly adjust itself and your metabolism will begin to shift and adjust also with the addition of more food and less exercise.  After a few days of enjoyment, which does not need to exceed seven, you can then jump right back into your familiar routine.  You will be shocked at how easy it is to gain weight back but do not dwell on this fact.  The very fact that your body gains weight so easily just points to more validity of the statement that your body is trying to prevent what it perceives as starvation.   At the conclusion of your “vacation” you then go back to your exercise routine  and your food choices that will carry you to that desired weight.  After the initial shock of the weight gain you will be able to drop weight fairly quickly and soon you will have pushed through that plateau.

There is a hidden danger to this approach and that is that you will be unable to pull yourself out of the weight gain mode.  The fear is that you will become so embedded into the mind set of eating that your
attempt to lose those last 20 pounds will be forgotten.  This concept of eating to lose weight really needs to only be attempted after you have tried and tried to lose those last few pounds and your frustration level has started to endanger your weight loss motivation.  It would be a complete shame of effort and self esteem to be chugging along for a year trying to lose weight only to give up and start eating and then never complete the weight loss journey.  The only way for this plateau buster
idea to work is if you get right back on the diet bandwagon. After you go on your week of metabolism altering journey you will not only cause your metabolism to shift, you will also see a shift in your
emotions.  You may even learn that the foods you once enjoyed were not as much of an enjoyment anymore.  You may learn that all that fried food causes acid reflux and the soda leaves you with an unsettled tummy.   You may not like the feeling of overeating as much as you thought you
once did.  As you travel through your week of eating you may realize that you no longer like what you thought you were missing.  At the end of this little experiment you may not only realize that you were able to lose those last 20 pounds but you may also be shocked that you do not miss the soda and water is what you now really enjoy.  You may not only be able to break through that plateau by churning up your metabolism but you may also realize that you have become a healthier minded person.
  You may realize that you missed those daily walks or that you really no longer missed those bowls of ice cream.  You may realize that you have grown out of the old you and the new you has taken hold.  You may have learned that not only could you lose those last 20 pounds but somewhere along the way you were no longer on a diet but were now actually on a “live-it”.

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