Deciding that you are going to lose weight is an easy decision to make – many of us want to lose at least a few lbs so it is no thought at all to decide that we are going to make the effort to lose it now.  But the problem doesn’t come from your initial motivation, it comes from what follows. 

Not liking what you weight, how you look is enough of a spur to trigger the initial thought process, to lead you to starting a weight loss journey.  But for many people who want to lose weight that initial trigger will only provide them with the momentum to try lose weight for a week or two. 

This is no surprise, weight loss is hard, it takes sacrifice – you can’t simply do what you want and lose weight.  In fact it was probably doing so that gained you the weight in the first place!  What you need to do is find triggers and motivation to get you passed the first couple of weeks. 

Motivational Triggers 

1. An old favourite, but one that works, is the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo’s – or in this case just the before one.  Take a photo of yourself (possibly naked if you have a partner you can disrobe in front of) and pin it to the fridge or anywhere you think appropriate.  If you dislike your figure at the moment it will remind you just why you are putting the effort to lose weight in.

2. Join a club.  Weight watchers, for example, works for a reason – because being with others going through the same thing motivates us.  By going to a club you become responsible to others for your weight loss, you have to tell them why you failed to lose weight, if you do.

3. Work with a partner.  For much the same reason that joining a club works working with a partner does to, only it is more intimate and friendly (a partner could be a friend or family member).  You will often get competitive and try ‘beat’ what the other is losing.

4. Spend money.  Not for everyone this, but if you are spending money on trying to lose weight – on gym membership, clubs, membership sites etc, you will be more inclined to make that money worthwhile, to show it was well spent.

5. Set goals.  By setting numerous, small goals, you get in the habit of trying to ‘out do yoursef’, to beat the goals and deadlines you put in place.  Losing 4 stone is not an achievable goal quickly, and could put you off.  Losing 3lbs in a week though is a target you  might reasonably set yourself (depending on your weight) – and then you can set another for the next week.

Look in any newspaper or gossip magazine and you will see another celebrity pushing a new fad diet. They come in all sorts of odd shapes and sizes, from only eating green coloured food through to the more popular ‘cabbage soup diet’.

But such diets are actually dangerous, and often won’t lose you weight.  They take a single piece of information and base an entire diet around it.  But the body doesn’t work in isolation, it needs a lot of things to keep it going… which is why you should focus more on changing your eating habits to be more healthy and less on the fad diets.

Why Fad Diets Are Dangerous

Any diet that has you cutting our certain food types, or only eating set foods, should be given careful consideration.  Because the body doesn’t work in isolation what you put into it will react together – and is often needed.

As an example consider calcium. We know calcium is important for things like bone density – those who are likely to suffer from problems with weak bones are advised to take more calcium from sources such as milk – but the amount of calcium we absorb is actually decided by our magnesium levels, so simply getting more calcium without increasing magnesium won’t have much effect.

It is this sort of balance within the body that many fad diets don’t consider.  Because they simply look at ‘your body needs x so give it x, they don’t see the bigger picture.  And of course that is for those diets that consider anything other than how few calories you can eat – and those diets are very dangerous, they can even compromise your immune system.

Many people that are quite new to losing weight and fatloss are wondering about this one question so I finally decided to address it on my blog. People really can’t decide whether HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) or LISS (Low Intensity Steady State Cardio) is best for them. We talked about HIIT here already, so let me address LISS now as it is in fact a great way to drop the fat.

So, What Is LISS?

LISS is a very popular form of excercising. It’s low intensity workouts that usually take a longer ammount of time. Those guys you always see walking on a treadmill or riding a gym bike and talking to their friends are using LISS to work out. Why?…because it works.

You may believe it or not, but LISS actually works like gangbusters. I mean, it’s probably one of the oldest ways to work out. It burns a lot of calories although as I mentioned before it does require some time each day.

I mean, it’s not uncommon for a person using LISS to shed fat to do somthing simillar to this:
1. 20 minutes of brisk walking to the gym
2. A low intensive weightlifting workout at the gym for 30 minutes
3. And finally, 20 minutes of walking back home.

That person just spent an hour working out. They could accomplish results with just 20 minutes of HIIT, but you have to remember that your body does need the variety of different workout methods and some people just aren’t on friendly terms with HIIT. That’s why you do need to use LISS.

I use low intensity cardio for fatloss and it works great. I walk for 45 minutes to an hour at around a 3.5 mile per hour pace. I am only saying this to make sure that you don’t underestimate it because you’ve seen it so much. It’s popular for a reason.

Before we part I do want to share another great tip with you. If you really want to get the best results out of your LISS workout, try doing it early in the morning before you even eat anything.

This is precisely how your body is going to burn the most calories because you didn’t have anything to eat since the evening before.

Another thing that you should definitely remember is that your workout sessions should not be longer than 50 minutes. If you work out for longer than that, you’re going to be running a risk of burning your muscle tissue to supply energy and that’s of course never good.

Just to sum up, LISS is good. You should do it. Go ahead and mix it up with HIIT if you want to, but do get some good cardio in. It will do you good.