If you are here reading this article, then you are researching ways get control of your weight. Do not ever, ever, under any circumstance, put yourself on a diet! That's right, I am telling you to avoid diets in order to lose weight. Diets are failures; diets have always been failures. The worst thing you can do to your health is to go on a diet. You have seen it before - perhaps you even experienced yourself; people go on a diet, achieve some success, go off the diet, and regain the weight they loss - perhaps with interest.

Diets are nothing new, the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Babylonians had diet plans to lose weight. Even the low-carb craze is not new; there was a low-carb diet introduced in the 1820s and later again in the 1860s. Virtually all diets have two things in common; they require the dieter to adjust their eating often in an unpleasant manner. This can cause nutritional deficiencies to the body. Secondly, diets are often approached with a short-term mindset - going on a diet implies one will be going off it on a later date. The end results are generally one of two outcomes. The dieter reaches his weight goal and stops the diet, goes back to what he was doing before and then slowly regains the weight often along with additional weight. Or, the body begins to suffer imbalance, hormonal or otherwise, due to the nutritional deficiencies caused by the diet and, he or she becomes "fed up" with being on the diet and simply gives up. Binge eating frequently follows this situation. Neither outcome will help you have a successful long-term weight loss outcome and can cause harm in the long run. Finally, when one cuts the amount of food - and it is the amount of food, not calories (our bodies do not have built-in calorimeters) that trigger these reactions - our bodies undergo several reactions. First, the thyroid gland reduces its T3 hormone production, slowing overall metabolism. Second, your body, thinking it is starving, begins to leach off your muscles, slowing your metabolism even more, and leaving you weaker. Since regained weight that follows will invariably be fat, the individual will end up having a higher body fat composition.

Diets, being temporary phenomena, will give you only temporary results. To have permanent results, you will need to make permanent changes. Instead of dieting then, change your lifestyle, which then will allow you to achieve permanent weight loss. This will involve a combination of healthy eating as well as a reasonable activity level, and still, in moderation, enjoy those foods we all love but know are fattening. This site will show how I adjusted my lifestyle in such a way that I went from being obese to having an athletic physique (Actually it was a series of lifestyle changes, depending on my fitness goals at the time). It will also direct you to resources and products that were helpful for me. Don't wait any longer; start changing your life today!

About the Author

I am a weight loss runaway success story. After years of struggling with weight, I finally overcame. Now I am sharing my research to help others take control of their weight. Check out my story at: http://www.squidoo.com/fromobesetoathletic/