Choosing the Ideal Weight-loss Program

Maintain A Food Journal to Track Your Eating Habits

Weight loss does not happen overnight and to maintain the healthy weight loss, you need to work hard. Ask yourself if you need to lose weight or if you are interested in taking up a weight-loss program. If your answer is yes, don’t worry. You are not alone and there are millions of individuals in this world who have a similar weight loss goal just like yours. All these people are overweight/obese, and they try to lose weight through different weight-loss programs. Many of these programs are advertised in newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and internet. But, are they safe, reliable and effective?

Given here are tips to choose a program that helps you lose weight safely and maintain your lost weight.

Choosing the Ideal Program to Lose Weight
To stay on a healthy weight, you need to fix your attention on overall body health and lifestyle changes. Any weight-loss program should promote healthy behaviors in an individual that helps him/her lose weight safely, stay on the healthy weight and that you can stick to every day. Look for a program that includes:

1. Lifestyle counselling or behavioral treatment that guides you to eat healthier and stick to these eating habits and exercise practices. Few programs ask their clients to maintain a journal or food and activity record.
2. Details on promoting healthy sleep routines, stress management tips and informs individuals on the disadvantages of weight-loss medicines.
3. Continuous monitoring, support or feedback throughout the program either by phone, online, face-to-face or through a combination of these approaches.
4. Slow but steady weight-loss goals that include losing 0.5-1.0 kilograms every week. Don’t be excited if you lose more weight initially as weight loss happens faster at the start of the program and becomes rigid after some time.
5. Instructions and plans to help you keep the weight off and motivates you to self-regulate eating habits and activity schedules with the help of a food journal along with offering counselling support.

Most successful weight loss programs are those than span over a duration of at least 3-6 months and led by trained nutritionists/dietitians. When people want to lose weight quickly (maybe 1.5 kilograms or more every week) and look out for programs that offer very low-calorie diets (800 calories or less) to promote weight loss, it is essential that these people are closely monitored by healthcare professionals. But, these programs are neither recommended nor encouraged. This is because, firstly these are not good for the body, secondly, they might help a person lose 7-8 kilograms within a month, but they don’t help to keep the weight off in the long run and thirdly, they pose abundant health risks (most common is gallstones).

Overweight/obese people are initially recommended to enroll themselves in a program that helps them lose 5-10% of body weight within 6 months. For example, if you weigh 100 kilograms, losing around 5-10 kilograms in 6 months should be your target.

While losing weight is not easy, practicing healthy habits that you don’t give up within a few weeks or months can help you maintain the lost weight.

Can I Go for an Offline Weight-loss Program?
Just like online shopping and online health consultations by physicians nowadays, weight-loss programs are offered online too. If you plan to enroll yourself for an online program, ensure that the program offers the following facilities:

1. Weekly lessons offered online or via podcasts to meet your goals
2. Allocates a qualified staff to meet your requirements
3. Plan to track your progress using mobile, online journals or activity counter
4. Monitors and asks for your feedback on your progress, goals and results through email, phone or text message.
5. Online support though online meetings or bulletin boards.
   
   

Keep it a rule to avoid programs that promise to make you:

• Lose weight without diet or exercise
• Lose weight even while eating all that you want
• Lose 10 kilograms in 10 days
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Look for small prints, asterisks and footnotes that might make you miss out on important information. Also, avoid programs that make before- and after- photos to look too good to be true.