Keep Your Visits to the Weight Loss Clinic a Secret

Anita Mills was 382 pounds when her doctor gave her two rules to lose weight:

Rule #1 - Eat healthy & don't skip meals.

Rule #2 - Don't tell anyone that you're trying to lose weight.

After losing a whopping 242 pounds, Anita credits the second tip for her success.

Here's why.... By not having someone questioning what she ate or trying to get her to relax on weekends kept her focused on the goal.

Anita said that having people ask "Hey, did you do something different?" was so much better than announcing "I'm on a diet" and have people watching you.

At first the "don't tell" advice seems counter-intuitive. After all, Weight Watchers and others claim that their support groups are key to your success.

But a growing number of experts now say that telling family, friends and Facebook about that your involved with the local weight loss clinic may well have a negative effect.

Dr. Jon Walz, Anita's doctor, gives all his weight loss patients the same rules. He claims that - ever since we were young children - we look for people who look like and act like us. However, when we're obese, that puts us in a circle of friends where we'd rather not be from a physical standpoint anyway

The trouble with having many obese friends is that obesity becomes OK, along with the habits that support it. And, if we're going to break free from our weight problem, we also need to change our "obesity-oriented" habits and behaviors for a "naturally-thin" lifestyle.

The doctor was right. When Anita Mills started losing the pounds and couldn't hide her diet anymore, her more obese friends also started drifting away.

"People are mean -- people who you would normally think would be supportive. One friend told me she liked it better when I was the fat friend. That hurt," Mills said.

Dr. Peter Gollwitzer, a  professor of psychology at New York University, agrees.

His research "When Intentions Go Public," describes how gaining praise on achieving a goal - like a diet - gives us recognition from friends and others, even before we may have finished. We then mark this as a sense of accomplishment and then start telling ourselves that "we did it" even before we are done.

"The danger is that you feel that you have already reached the goal and because of that you don't have to act on it any more," Gollwitzer says.

Gollwitzer added that it may be OK to tell a couple of very close friends - who also want to see you thin - so that they can hold you accountable and help keep focus on your ultimate goal, not just the day-to-day process.

But until you reach your goal, just sidestep the questions about your new shape and don't tell anyone about your visits to the weight loss clinic until you're done the program.

The doctors at the WeightWorks weight loss clinics have helped many people overcome their prior weight loss failures to get back to their naturally-thin selves. For a limited time, they are offering 50% off the initial doctor consultation to help you as well. To hear how our weight loss clinics can help you, fill out this no-obligation application online and take the first step to your weight loss success! Enter EZINE50 as the discount code when prompted to receive your 50% off. Read additional detail about the WeightWorks weight loss program here.

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The Truth Behind Holiday Weight Gain and What You Can Do About It

For many of us, the period from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day is often a continuous parade of holiday parties, family dinners, and social hours.

Even if you can keep your weight on target for the rest of the year, by the time we get through the holidays, we're left talking about the "Christmas 5" or the "Holiday 7" and again wondering what weight loss program to start with in January.

The year-end holiday season is definitely where most of us struggle with weight management. But even worse news is that weight gained during this time tends to stick with us, so that even slight gains of the season add up.

The most-quoted research in this area was completed by the doctors at the National Institutes of Health. In that study, 195 people were tracked in detail before and after the holiday period, with further weight tracking at intervals up to one year later.

That study shows that the "average" weight gain of all study participants over the 6-week holiday period was just less than 1 pound.

That sounds good, but digging a bit deeper, the study shows that those who were already overweight posted bigger weight gains. In fact, almost 10% of the study participants recorded a whopping 5 pounds or more gained over the 6-week holiday season!

Comparing these seasonal weight gains with weight measurements made one year later highlighted a good news / bad news story.

The bad news was that any weight gained over the 6-week holiday period tended to stick around for the whole year and form the basis for new weight gains in the next year. Despite the average weight gain of just 0.8 lbs during the holidays, that average gain increased to 1.4 lbs by the time the holidays rolled around again the next year.

As bad as it sounds, there is good news in this data - it shows that most of our weight gain for the entire year is packed on in the 6 weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's. This means that if we can avoid the problem of holiday weight gain, then we have eliminated most of the weight gain problem - all in one fell swoop!

But eliminating the holiday weight gain - even if it is just over a 6-week period - is no small feat.

The most typical advice given is just that - advice: someone else telling you what to do and what not to do. The big tips that come around as advice pretty much every year include: 

• Watch your serving sizes
• Avoid sugary or fatty snacks
• Alcohol calories count too
• Don't forget to exercise
• Etc., etc.

All of it is just advice - do this, don't do that.

However, another group of scientists have found that relaxation therapy with embedded messaging for the reinforcement of healthy eating has been highly effective.

Randy Clusiau agrees. He recently lost 170 lbs just by using this type of relaxation therapy.

We agree too, and recommend that you check it out for yourself. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how well it works.

The doctors at WeightWorks have helped many people overcome their prior weight loss failures to get back to their naturally-thin selves. For a limited time, they are offering free access to their Holiday Season Success Therapy to help you as well. Sign up for free access by clicking here. Read additional detail about the WeightWorks weight loss program here.

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Don't Exercise to Lose Weight

Here's what an exercise-based weight loss program looks like:

Monday is cardio day - 20 minutes of stair climbing to nowhere, followed by 30 minutes of slightly uphill walking back that also doesn't go anywhere.

Wednesday is personal trainer day - a whole hour of being worked like a farm animal by someone whom I am paying for the privilege of telling me so.

Then, on Fridays, it's off to my body shaping class to bend, flex and jump around with a roomful of others, hoping that I will come out looking different than when I went in.

Isn't that how most of us do it?

We grunt and sweat through our workouts, smugly satisfied that our efforts are burning up more calories than the piece of chocolate cake we had for dessert last night.

Despite our best efforts, however, our weight and shape seem stuck at the very place we're trying to escape.

Eventually we give up hope on losing those last 20-30-40 pounds and the exercise routine becomes just another part of our social circle, or we quit the program altogether.

Well, as a doctor, I'm here to tell you that the common belief that exercise is THE WAY to lose your excess weight is false.

Your inner couch potato can rejoice, because, while exercise is a good thing to do for many other healthy reasons, it is not your #1 tool to losing weight.

The basic problem is that, even though exercise burns off the calories, it also stimulates hunger. That causes us to eat more, and unless we're very controlled in how much or what we eat, this will wipe out any weight loss advantage from working out.

In other words, in most cases, exercise makes your weight loss challenge even more difficult than it already is.

Check out the results of this study...

In 2009, researchers at Louisiana State University followed the weight loss progress of 464 overweight women for six months. They found no significant difference between women who exercised and those who did not.

Dr. Timothy Church, chair in health wisdom at LSU, pins the lack of an exercise bonus on "compensation". By that, he specifically means that those women who worked out rewarded themselves in one of two ways later that day: eating more or doing less.

Even just a brief stop at Starbucks for a coffee and muffin for a little "treat" wipes out 300-400 calories of workout time.

Colleague Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism and a prominent exercise researcher at LSU, agrees: "In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless."

For those of you who are more mathematically inclined, chew on this the next time you come back from the gym... Our bodies need 6 calories daily to sustain a pound of muscle, but only 2 calories per pound of fat.

This means that when you finally manage to convert 10lb of fat to muscle - which is a major achievement - you can eat an extra 40 calories per day without weight gain effect.

Wow!

Exercise is good for many reasons, but the exercise that is best for weight loss is just plain, old self-control. We did write an article on that a while back - The #1 Reason for Weight Loss Failure - but if you missed that, just drop us an email and I'm happy to send you a copy.

The doctors at WeightWorks have helped many people overcome their prior weight loss failures to get back to their naturally-thin selves. For a limited time, they are offering free consultations to help you as well. To hear how the doctors at WeightWorks can help you, fill out this no-obligation application online and take the first step to your weight loss success! Read additional detail about the WeightWorks weight loss program here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Stacey_Glines

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