Natural Weightloss Can Make You Shed More than Pounds

Being overweight isn’t just a cosmetic issue; it’s well recognized that excess weight predisposes us to numerous chronic diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension. Carrying around extra pounds also shortens our life expectancy. And while you think that being pleasantly plumb isn’t that big a deal, it can be: As little as 20% excess weight is enough to be considered a medical risk.

Why do we get overweight? Let us count the ways. For starters, our eating habits play a major role-eating too much at meals, eating between meals, and of course, there is that sweet tooth. The sedentary lifestyle of modern society doesn’t help, most of us just don’t get the exercise we need. For many people, eating can also be a means of emotional compensation, a way to comfort ourselves and ward off feelings of loneliness, frustration, depression, anxiety, or other forms of emotional pain.

The risk of being overweight is age-related in the sense that the older you are, the more likely you are to have gained excess pounds. There are also certain periods of life when we’re more likely to become overweight. For women the years leading up to menopause usually is a time when we begin to pack on extra pounds, for men the ages between 29 to 35 tend to be a time of gaining weight.

There are many good reasons for trying to lose weight. Apart from the increased risks of developing chronic disease, people who are overweight tend to struggle with issues of low self-esteem, loss of connection with their body, and even depression. Lugging around excess pounds also predispose us to back problems and other aches and pains, as the body is forced to carry around more weight than it’s built for.

Most anyone trying to lose weight have gone through a series of diets with varying degrees of success. While the quick and easy fix of fast weightloss is tempting, for the most part it just results in yo-yo dieting-lose a few pounds on a diet, gain them back again when you go off the diet. Rinse and repeat.

Why is it so hard to lose weight? There are as many reasons as we are overweight. Eating is a powerful natural drive; it’s part of our survival instinct. The more we try to restrict it, the more our body is there to remind us that we need food. Think about it. Do you ever fantasize more about food than when you’re on a diet?

Most people who’ve lost weight and kept it off will tell you that fast weightloss approaches just don’t work. The only way to lose weight is to do it naturally. Natural weightloss is not a quick fix-it is a process that involves subtle shifts on many levels-our lifestyle, our eating habits, even our stress levels and mental emotional make-up.

Like so many things in life, the problem of losing weight is a challenge, which may make us at times feel miserable, but which also contains within it the seed to growth, expansion, and transformation. Natural weightloss, ultimately, comes about from small shifts like eating more healthy foods, getting more rest, cutting down on stress levels, and getting more in touch with your body. And that, of course, is something that brings with it positive effects that spill over into other parts of your life. In this way, like so often in life, the challenge of losing weight can set you on a path that not only solves the problem at hand, but you grow and reconnect with parts of yourself that you may have long since forgotten.