Avoid The "Challenges" and Achieve Long Term Victory

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Since I have been on Facebook I have been inundated with posts, messages and emails to get involved in all sorts of weight loss challenges. The notes implore me to take the “blank” 90 day challenge, or get involved in the several week challenge or something to that effect.

Weight management and fitness should not be objectives for the moment, they are ways of life. I have never been a fan of event weight loss missions.  Simply put, by having an end date, you set yourself up to not continue on. The proof is in the repeats you see in many of these groups. People who start them, restart them again and again; often times because they have not maintained their own weight loss.  You are not maintaining your goals, because you are not changing your lifestyle.  Once the days, weeks or months are over and you have lost however much weight you did — there is now an ending and the inevitable what do I do now moment.

The one thing everyone most certainly does is go off their diet. Why? Because you have completed the so many days, weeks, months and because you haven’t genuinely changed your life, you use the one thing you should never use as a reward….. FOOD! The next thing you know, you are shoveling all sorts of nutrient deficient junk into your mouth as fast as you can swallow.  Of course, the scale has not only crept up, it has shot up to, if you’re lucky, the weight you started; however, more than likely, it is higher.  So what do you do?  Another challenge. The cycle repeated itself many times and you have now entered the YO-YO SYNDROME ZONE.

How do you get out of the Y/Y-ZONE? You buy my book.  Okay, that was a shameless plug; but if I didn’t think I had an answer, I wouldn’t have written a book.

First and formeost you must change your mindset.  A diet is not something we go on and off; a diet is the foods we consume on a daily basis.

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If our food intake consists of non-starchy low carbohydrate foods, healthy fats and lean proteins, then that is our diet and it is a good way of eating.  If you consistently exist on high sugar sodas, chocolates, doughnuts, candy, pizza, ice cream and french fries — you are still on a diet, it just so happens to be a garbage diet and the results are that you more than likely look and feel like garbage.  So your solution is to simply start eating healthy every day and make up your mind that this is your diet and you will not be going off it at the end of some predetermined period of time.

Next is to pick an exercise plan that consists of both endurance and progressive resistance activities and most importantly, you must be consistent.  Haphazard exercise has the same result as haphazard dieting — FAILURE!

It is good to have goals, both long and short-term, but you must determine what is the actual long-term goal.  Here is a little secret, it is not solely  body weight.  Your long-term goal should to be as healthy and fit as you possibly can be. Your body weight is nothing more than a tool to help you asses your progress toward that goal.  Use a final and interval weights to monitor your progress, but don’t allow that number on the scale to be the end of your journey, because if you do, when you reach the end you will stop your progress.

Keep in mind that weight loss is a side effect of fitness, fitness is not an end result of weight loss.

We should maintain a fit lifestyle not for some event or finite period of time, but to make life itself more enjoyable.  As I have written in the past —  I’m not sure if I will live any longer, but I do live better.  I only have one end point to my health and fitness targets and that is when my heart stops beating — then and only then will optimal health and fitness no longer be my goals

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Chiropractor, Dr. Joe Leonardi is the author of the life changing book, A Life Beyond Weight Loss.  He is available to appear on any talk radio, internet podcasting or television outlet. He has appeared on WILK’s The Sue Henry Show, Magic 93′s Frankie In The Morning, WBRE’s PA Live, SSPTV’s News 13, Public Television WVIA’s State of Pennsylvania and Call the Doctor; Entercom’s Outlook on Northeast PA with Shadoe Steele, Citadel Broadcasting’s Sunday Magazine with Brian Hughes, Lisa Davis’ Your Health Radio; Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb podcast; Hank Garner’s Podcast, Dr. Robert Su’s Carbohydrates Can Kill Podcast.

Dr. Joe Leonardi also will come and speak to your group; to learn more about his motivational speaking fees and availability contact him at docjoeleonardi@betterlifeseminars.com and check out his web site www.betterlifeseminars.com.

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************The posting that I  write do not apply to those with an underlying medical or hormonal condition.  I advise anyone embarking on a weight loss and fitness plan to have a thorough medical evaluation. You want to be sure that you are physically able to exercise and you don’t have any underlying medical conditions.*************

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