Weight loss is a hard challenge, and therefore staying motivated requires establishing a realistic schedule. Although there are countless weight loss programs, support groups and slimming products, all of which claiming easy and fast results, the obesity rate increases.
The reason for this is that most of them are not realistically applicable for long periods of time. The major problems are the lack of motivation and sustainability.

Dieters lose motivation for many reasons. Everyone who has ever tried a weight loss program has met difficulties with motivation at some point or another.

One of the biggest enemies of weight loss is time. As time passes sticking to a diet plan gets harder and daily routines slowly reorganize your priorities. Keeping yourself motivated is not easy. It needs focus and a certain goal which in itself requires a realistic and detailed plan.

Dieting itself is a combination of determination, hard work, and ambition. These factors keep you motivated enough to stay in the fight.

It is challenging but not impossible to maintain the basic enthusiasm for a long time in order to reduce weight. Here are some tips you can use to move in the right direction:

- Answer the question why you are motivated to lose weight and is this reason enough to make you change your lifestyle to achieve it?
Everyone has individual reasons- health, physical appearance, achieving higher sports performance. Once you have made a decision to start a weight loss program, you need to build a strategy for staying motivated and keep on following it.

- Keep in mind all the benefits you will gain. Losing weight means not only looking physically fit and attractive, it also means good health. The statistical evidence correlating obesity and life span is staggering. Being at a proper weight for your height and age will help ward off many risks from certain diseases. The risk from heart disease, clogged arteries, diabetes, intestinal problems or many types of cancer will be greatly reduced.

- Take it slowly. Reducing weight too fast is likely to cause gaining the lost kilos back and even putting on more than before.

- Get educated. Read and gather information about healthy weight control. Every time you lose motivation remember all the negatives of obesity and stay focused on your goals.

- Don’t give up if you don’t appear to be losing any weight according to the scales. Stick to your diet plan and do your workouts and eventually you will see the results. Everyone reduces weight at different rates depending on age, environment and hereditary factors. Another reason is that exercising actually puts weight on because sports build muscles and muscle weights more than fat.

- Turn your weight loss plan into a group project. It is easier to keep your schedule if more people are involved. Don’t underestimate the risk of failure if you start a weight loss program alone. You won’t have any support and help when you need it most. Motivation can also be hard to find when you are surrounded by temptations such as junk food and sweets and old habits are eagerly waiting to be revived.

So. Never lose sight of the main goal but keep yourself motivated and determined, don’t let yourself slack too much and thus letting things take priority over your diet plan and slipping back into your bad habits. Soon enough, you’ll be able to see the results you were expecting.

Nowadays one of the biggest problems that our civilization faces is the overweight. Accordingly to the Forbes only in USA over 100 000 of the dead cases each year belong to diseases or medical conditions related to obesity (hypertension, infarcts, insults etc.) and 60% of the people in that country are overweight (with a third of them crossed the boundaries of obesity). The treatment of those diseases costs to US budget over 93 billion USD yearly!!! This has led to program against fatness announced two years ago by presidential administration. Even not so harsh and frightening as in the USA, there are similar tendencies in all western countries.

But why are YOU waiting to reach that condition?

Here I’d like to review several ways that in my personal observations are proved to work best for keeping your body healthy and slim. Of course – we are different – in terms of age, body type etc, so each way implicates best for certain group of people. But let me introduce you (OK, I’m pretty sure you know most of the facts but if I systematize them well we can start together RIGHT NOW and choose your way) :

1. Sports.

Of course this is the best decision. Running, fitness, push-ups… all they accelerate your metabolism and burn energy. This energy comes initially from carbohydrates. But when the glucose pool (all “carbs” degrade to glucose in order to be processed as source for energy) is exhausted then fat depots come as energy source. When you make exercises (especially aerobic ones) you eventually burn them, get slimmer and stronger as you train your muscles.
Unfortunately sometimes it’s too late to start with that – if you already have troubles with a blood pressure or cardiovascular system you could really put yourself in more troubles if you try to overcharge your heart.
In my opinion “the burning” (sport/exercising) approach by itself is best decision for young or middle age people, especially if the last are not too much overweight. Of course you can combine it with some of the following ways.

2. Diets.

Pffffffew! I really don’t like them, but if you follow properly some them they really help. But, frankly I don’t know anyone that got slim after using diet coke even for years. Do you?
The idea of the diets is simple – instead, as it was described in previous paragraph, to increase your catabolic activity (the metabolic pathways that break down large molecules (mainly fats and sugars and much rarely proteins) into smaller units and release energy) you decrease level of energy sources that you enter to your organism.
It is good method for all sizes and ages but I would consider that usually by cutting out carbs and fats trough your diet you might cut out some essential supplements. Even if it’s not fatal, if you carry for a long time with diets for sure it’s not healthy, so please, beware of what diet you choose. I’d rather to prefer sports if it’s about to people that have no obstacles to begin pro-active lifestyle. Moreover all of us know, that one of the reasons Universe to exist is that there is Belgian chocolate.

3. Pills and drugs.

The ultimate way to get rid your extra-pounds/kilos.
Actually their mechanism is different but usually it mimics some of the mechanisms that were mentioned above. There are several types of drugs that exist:

- Fat binders (or “the sport without moving”). This is maybe the newest approach in the war against obesity. Those are substances that occur in the nature (but not in our organisms) or their semi-synthetic derivatives. The mechanism is simple – they have very high affinity to fat molecules and are not capable to be absorbed by our stomach and intestines. So they just bind the fats and don’t allow them to be utilized by the organism (here we can give as example one of the best-known products of this group – PROACTOL).

- Appetite suppressants (or “artificial diets”). Even they were widely announced the mechanism of their action has not been completely revealed yet. The first and most popular product from this group is definitely HOODIA. Pfizer developed it about ten years ago. Actually the active compound (or one of the active compounds) is extract from the African plant hoodia. It has been reported by Pfizer that Hoodia affects the hypothalamus – the part of brain were the feeling of hungriness is formed. By suppressing this hypothalamic function it make us feel never hungry and we may decrease dramatically the food that we eat (i. e. we lower the amount of energy that input into our organisms).