Naturally thin people do not understand why overweight people struggle so much with weight management. After all, it seems pretty straightforward. If you eat too many calories your body will store what you do not use as fat. If you want to lose weight, just make sure that you are burning more calories than you eat. To stay at the same weight, eat and burn the same number of calories. If "how to lose weight fast" was that simple, nobody would be fat.

Obesity Epidemic

We have all heard the statistics that one-third of adults, 72 million people, are obese. We have probably also heard that 16% of children are obese, that more and more kids are getting lifestyle diseases like diabetes II, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol at younger and younger ages. It has been said that today's youth will be the first generation not to outlive their parents in more than a hundred years.

The Struggle

Even with those glaring statistics and the fact that we know we need to get healthy, that being obese may shorten our lives, so many people still struggle with weight management. Some people develop bulimia, anorexia, or laxative abuse problems in an effort to maintain fat loss. Why is it so hard to keep our weight at a reasonable level? The answer to that question is complicated.

Resigning Ourselves To Our Fates

Should we all resign ourselves to being fat, live as long as we can and enjoy it or should we keep up the struggle to be thin? The answer is somewhere in the middle. Before we go on one more diet program with expectations that we will be perfectly able to follow the diet 100%, stop. We are already setting ourselves up for failure and we have not even begun yet. Nobody does anything to the level of perfectly for 100% of the time. Would you expect your best friend to do that? No? Then why do you expect it of yourself?

Looking At Things Differently

What if we just accepted the fact that we are human and that humans do not do anything 100% of the time for very long? Let's look at the weight management issue differently than we have done in the past. Would it be possible for you to eat healthy foods 50% of your meals in a day or a week? Could you do it 60% of the time? How about 80% of the time? Do you think that you could eat healthy foods for 90% of your meals? What percentage of meals could you actually eat healthy foods without stirring up a lot of anxiety in yourself? That is where you need to begin. Gradually work your way up to eating 90% of your meals with only healthy food. This way you have 10% of your meals left for indulging yourself while still losing weight.

To boost weight loss, approach exercise in the same manner. Would it be possible for you to exercise 10 minutes a day three times a week? Start there and work up to 30 minute sessions five days a week.

Paying Attention To Your Feelings

Negative consequences and that critical little voice in our heads have not worked to help us manage our weight. Let's try something radically different: kindness and understanding towards that part of ourselves that is really afraid of being deprived. Let that part of yourself know that you will take the whole fat burning issue one step at a time and that, while you may not be able to indulge every food whim you have, you will make sure that deprivation does not become part of the plan. Then if you keep that promise, you will have truly recognized how to lose weight fast.