It certainly won’t come as a big shock to find that people who lose weight, even successfully will struggle to keep it off in the long term. This is caused in part by our own body’s and their ability to fight back whenever we lose weight, trying to regain the level of fat reserves we had originally. Another factor that seriously impacts progress is our body’s own resistance to weight loss, given that fat cells send out hormonal signals indicating hunger whenever they begin to shrink. These two things can be a nightmare for people that try to lose weight and keep it off permanently. While it’s true that eventually our bodies to back to a more normal hunger level, research has shown this can take years to occur.

A recent study examined just this problem, finding that individuals who continue to engage in modified diet and exercise programs are more successful long term.  As a result, most physicians and clinicians have advised people to maintain a “new lifestyle” rather than just a temporary fix down the road.  If a person thinks about a change as something that will remain with them for “life” they are far less likely to fall into these patterns that typically lead to failure or going from “crash diet” to crash diet.

Yet, there was a lot of recent research seeing if this worked and how it worked. Though the original findings that this sort of behavior does lead to better outcomes. Though there’s tremendous emphasis on behavioral approaches to obesity control, motivational forces were found in studies to offer equally profound results.  Among dieters, though that also worked on motivational aspects of their weight loss lost considerably more than their counterparts.  A novel maintenance program for weight loss focuses on motivational factors that influence behavior.

How our Thoughts and Motivations Impact our Success

It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to those of us familiar with career goals, educational goals or even personal goals that our motivation and our attitude has a huge impact on whether or not we’re successful. In a recent trial, it was tested whether a motivation-focused protocol could actually succeed. The desire to achieve positive future goals as well as the motivated desire to avoid the bad aspects of weight gain were tested in this study. It was fund out that, among those who have cyclically had issues maintaining weight loss after losing weight, they were able to achieve some excellent outcomes.

The results of this study were indeed quite promising.  Among participants, it was found that those with a motivational focus had just as good of long term results as those that were on a “skill-based” maintenance.  How is this possible? Well the researchers linked it to a positive reinforcement and continual self-awareness of a person’s situation. By considering the consequences as well as the benefits for a behavior, motivational factors impacted weight loss the same as those concentrating on maintaining a diet or new lifestyle.  This offers a tremendously useful outcome, particularly on patients who are resistive to this more common treatment of skill-based changes.

The goals of weight loss hinge upon a variety of factors, including motivational factors and also our ability to adapt to new routines or changes to diet/exercise. Yet this new strategy offers clinicians an alternative method, as not all patients are able to follow a more skill based approach. The fact that outcomes are similar offer a lot for people who struggle to lose weight and continually battle the ups and downs of weight loss year after year.

We recently had a reader send a message to one of our writing staff requesting information on how she can tighten up a lot of the loose skin she has experienced after she lost a lot of weight.  We passed this message along to our personal trainer we have with us, who indicated it was one of the biggest issues with weight loss for normal people.  There just wasn’t enough room or opportunity to answer her individually, and to be honest, we felt it was unfair to do so for the rest of our readers.  So, ultimately, this post will discuss just how to handle this problem best and also help to tone up the sagging skin that often accompanies weight loss.  Though there’s no “workout moves” a person can do to tighten up skin that’s been stretched out, there are some ways to make our body do this for us.

When your body loses weight, it loses it from the fat right below the skin.  This often results in significant sagging of that skin afterwards.  There are methods like the use of HCG which allow people to tighten their skin as they lose weight, but many people often have to do surgery to get rid of it all, particularly the more weight that’s been lost.  We have people here who have lost around 160 pounds, The result was a less than ideal body at the end.  Though you certainly feel better, you often don’t feel as “sexy” in the mirror as you would like, due to how your body deals with losing so much weight.  It can be an incredible challenge.

The fact of the matter is, how loose your skin becomes once you lost weight is dependent on many factors including: the total amount of weight lost, how old you are (younger skin is more resilient), and how many times you’ve lost weight and gained it previously.  The faster you lose weight the shorter the time your skin has to adapt to the change.  There are many surgical options out there, such as a tummy tuck or a body life, but these are expensive and leave many scars.  There are actually many natural options out there that can help instead.  Using proven skin tightening treatments, and losing weight in a controlled manner can go a long way to help cut down on the folds of skin, though it’s not likely they will disappear entirely.

Your Body is Capable of Pretty Amazing Things

One of the major problems that actually is faced by people once they lose weight isn’t the skin that they have, it’s actually their own perspective on how their body looks.  This can be a huge challenge to overcome, but we believe there’s a few ways to do so.  It’s just too difficult to hate your body id you’re working out and lifting weights.  Endorphins produced by exercise as well as the increased strength just make you feel great.  However, if you’re struggling with body image, just remember, you are far far better in appearance now than when you were overweight.  Clothes fit better, people are looking at you more, and you are so much healthier than you were before.

Stop Comparing Yourself To Teenagers

Yes, we all do this.  You have to get over your expectations that you will fit into your clothes you work in high school and look the same way again.  There are beautiful people of all ages, and not surprisingly, men do not want a child any more than you’d expect them to.  It’s seriously not something you should concern yourself with.  We are constantly bombarded with images of gorgeous models and advertisements, but you don’t have to have that body to be beautiful.  In fact, many of those people are probably not considered beautiful by men anyway.

Cut Out the Negative Self-Talk

We’ve all done this, talking to yourself in the mirror and the self deprecation.  It’s absolutely useless to do this, and what’s more important is finding the things about ourselves that are actually good and excellent.  You’ve lost weight! You’re healthier and better looking that you have been in years, this is what matters.  Negative thoughts just don’t get you anywhere.

A great way to overcome this for good is to take time to go out and buy clothes that fit and show off your new figure.  This is one of the best ways to feel tremendous self esteem about your progress. You will fit into so many more clothes, and better designs and more fashion forward ones.  This is always something that boosted my confidence tremendously.