I’ve noticed that most people out there do not complete self imposed projects, be it a weight loss program, investing for the future, taking care of themselves, etc. When somebody else is ordering us around we tend to do it, even if we hate it (I know I do!), yet left on our own we tend to put things off for another day.

The solution: partner-up with a friend or an acquaintance that has basically the same weight loss goals that you have. I believe when two people partner-up on a project,
then each person does not want to let the other one down. Make sure you hold each other accountable. Don’t partner with a slacker that will bring you down.

Success is doing what you said you would do, long after the great mood in which you started your journey has left you. That last 25% of any project is the most important part. It’s also often the hardest part too. As you’re going through the process you may have lost some of the enthusiasm that drove you to do it in the first place. Maybe life is getting in the way, and work or family issues are interfering with your weight loss ambitions.

The solution: write your goals precisely of what you want to do, and emphasize the why, the reasons that drive you in the first place to begin a weight loss program. Imagine the shape you desire, the stares you’re getting, the new clothes you’re gonna wear. When later the times get a little rough, review this so you get back some of the passion you had when you started. Review them with your partner for added fuel.

We all know it’s not going to be all peaches and cream. There are going to be obstacles along the way. If you get discouraged or want to quit, it’s because you have taken your eyes off your goals and all you see are obstacles. Reading that piece of paper that contains your goals and emotional reasons will help you get back on track.

What’s great with a partner is their highs are contagious and you’ll help lift one another, and also you won’t be discouraged at the same time – so again you can help each other at different times.

Bottom line, follow these 5 tips to drive yourself to the finish line and claim your victory:
- Eat right for your nutritional type
- Select an optimal pattern for never ending results
- Add exercise to the mix
- Use great fat burning supplements to help raise metabolism and reduce appetite
- Have written goals and a partner to drive you to victory as explained in this article

Do you know your body fat ratio? Do you really care about that? Who really knows how to measure precisely their body fat anyway? It differs depending on what method you’re using. I’m sure though that how you look matters to you or you wouldn’t be reading these lines.

So I’m strongly suggesting that you take pictures of yourself – or have pictures taken of yourself. Just do it with uncompromising lighting, from all angles possible. In the past I would even suggested you do it naked, but as this is the Internet age and your pics can end all over the place, keep minimum clothing on OK?  And keep your face hidden too.

Those two warnings out of the way, I’m serious here. It doesn’t really matter where you’re going if you don’t even know your starting point. And as Anthony Robbins would say, the first step to major change is to get disturbed! Get real with what you see. Be honest with yourself and leave the excuses to somebody else. You deserve better.

Don’t do it to make yourself feel bad but don’t sugar coat it either. Do it to see all the things you can improve, that are not to your liking now. Remember you can change. You can control and drive yourself to where you want to go. Get angry first. It’s powerful and will shake you out of your comfort zone that led you to unwanted results in the first place. If you beat yourself down and then wallow in self pity it won’t do you no good. But if you use it as wake up call to get going, it’s a winner!

Then find a picture of the body you’d want in the next month, then another in the next 2 months, and use this to drive yourself to a clear, precise, attainable goal. Put these as a screen saver on your computer. Print them out and put these pictures in your wallet. Just do it! You might just be surprised how much this will drive you. The next time you feel like binging out and going off course, your “before” and “after” pics will pop up in your mind, and you’ll find out how willpower comes naturally when your subconscious mind is in tune with your desires!

Along with these pictures, use all the tools you can to get what you want faster and easier. For example, some supplements are great to boost metabolism and burn fat.

Here’s a hint: muscle weights more than fat. In theory if someone gets in shape he or she could actually gain weight! But most would agree he or she’d look better. And of course if you lose muscles you will indeed lose weight – but is that really what you want to do?
Muscles help raise metabolism, which basically, means you’re burning more calories whether you’re sleeping, working or watching TV!

If we stay on a restricted diet too long, or if you make the mistake of starving yourself, or eating just salads, or just bananas, or any such unhealthy unbalanced eating plan, most of the weight you’ll lose is muscle. When you stop starving yourself – and you can’t go forever doing this – you’ll gain the fat back but not all of the muscle, so your metabolism will actually be lower than it was, and you’ll burn less calories.

Doesn’t sound like a wining formula now does it? It’s part of the dreaded “Yoyo effect” where people get back all the weight they lost during a diet and sometimes even add a little more.

That’s why adding exercise is such a good idea: you’ll keep your metabolism at a higher level. Maybe you dislike exercise now but if so, please notice the successful dieters you personally known. Those that were overweight at one time yet have been in great shape for a long time. Chances are they most probably found a sport or fitness activity they enjoy doing consistently. Success leaves clues. Follow them. Seek out people that have achieved what you want and follow a similar pattern – you’ll get similar results.

I know most people don’t want to get “too muscular” but I’m here to tell you that unless you’ve got freakish genetics, building muscles takes a long time so you’ve got nothing to worry about! The models you see with high muscle mass have worked at it for years, and it’s not a secret anymore that performance enhancing drugs are widespread among models and bodybuilders.

Fat burning supplements can really come in handy when you want to spare muscles yet lose fat at a faster rate. They help boost metabolism, get energy while eating less than usual, and control our appetite. All this is very helpful when trying to lose weight quickly!

The “Yoyo effect” has to do with our hormones, the leptin hormone mostly. Simply put, after a couple of weeks our body gets primed… for fat gain! Yep, our metabolism slows down so we burn less fat, and on top of that, we store fat more easily so if we binge out or overeat, we’ll put on the blubber quite quickly. If we have restricted our food intake for a couple of months – as most people do – then stop and eat like we used to before, we gain all that fat we lost back with a little extra added to boot.

The good news is it’s easy to restore our leptin levels back to normal: we simply have to eat a good amount of food for a few days and we can get back to fat burning mode! Yes, it is that simple. Sure, you will gain weight in those few days but overall, you’ll lose more than if you had restricted yourself for too long.

On the other end of the equation, if we have been overeating for a while then suddenly go a restricted diet, our fat burning hormones are primed to the max! That’s why we can get good results so quickly at first.

If we know how our bodies react, we can plan ahead and use this to our benefit, and “trick” our bodies for maximum results!

Here how it goes:

• Option #1: The 5 / 2 program
• Option #2: The 12 / 9 program

You go on a restricted calorie diet for the number of days indicated by the first number (5 or 12), and you follow this with your normal eating routine for the duration indicated by the second number (2 or 9). You can even overeat as long as you don’t binge out and you avoid those nasty trans fats. Those days will actually help you in the long run to keep on losing weight, as every time you switch back to your reduced calorie days, your body is primed again for fast weight loss!
Not only it’s much easier to stay on track for short periods like that, you can fit this so your restricted days are during the week, while your unrestricted ones happen to be on the weekend! For option #2, you can fit in 2 weekends out of every 3, so that’s easy to do as well.
To further maximise the effect and shape your body at the same time, concentrate on fat burning exercises during the restricted days, and on muscle building exercises during the “normal” days.
I have personally noticed the first two days back on a restricted diet are the toughest. Our mind starts to play trick with us. You’ll want to justify going off the diet, that you’re doing fine already, that you’ll start dieting tomorrow or on x day… Resist and stay on course! After those 2-3 first days, it gets a LOT easier and it works again super fast so you’ll see great results once more like the first time!

To put even more fuel to the fire and get even greater results, I use fat burning supplements during the restricted days. I also use them the first one or two days back on a normal eating pattern to minimize fat gain on… and resist more easily the tendency to binge after a bout of restricted calories.

Oprah Winfrey is quite famous for many reasons, one of which was her many attempts with losing weight using different diets. Did she succeed? Well she did slim down on almost all her diets… only to gain in all back a few weeks later after she stopped. Only when she finally added exercise has she maintained a fairly healthy weight.

That is a giant clue. Yes can succeed without exercise, but why not make it easier on yourself? “Eat less. Move more” is still a truism, however you go about doing it. Exercise helps with our mood, raises our metabolism, helps control appetite, helps stabilise our blood sugars. That’s a mighty impressive list isn’t it? Yes good fat burning supplements can also do all this, but again, why settle for less when you can have it all?

Add a good nutritional plan, a good fat burning supplement, plus exercise, and you’ll get pounds of fat melting off your body. Forget about “weight loss”, what you want is fat loss. Exercise will help you do that.

The key is finding exercises or sports you enjoy and that is doable with your level of fitness. It might be walking, ping pong, basketball, weight lifting, climbing, whatever floats your boat, do it! Weight lifting can be a great way to reshape your body… unless you hate weight lifting! How long will you last doing something you hate? 2, 3, 4 weeks? If you eat right for your type and do an exercise program you enjoy guess what, you’ll probably keep doing it! And of course if you keep doing it you’ll keep getting the results you’re after.

That’s what I mean by making it easy for yourself to succeed. When you do something you enjoy it’s not a chore anymore: it’s fun!

In your quest for that ultimate new you, you can pretty much expect you’ll fall off the tracks once in a while, and either binge out, party, eat junk or whatever. That’s almost normal. What is not though, is staying off track. When you fall off the wagon, get back on. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. It may seem obvious, but way too many people use an occasional set back as an excuse to go off their diet “till next week”.

First, don’t beat yourself up if you go off for a meal or two. That’s life. It happens. A business dinner, a family gathering, a party, your spouse coming home with pizza, heck the pitfalls are many, and you were not born to deprive yourself of simple pleasures!

Second, if you did go off for a meal or two, don’t use that as an excuse to binge all week long! “You know, I messed up this Wednesday so I’ll go back on my diet starting Monday”. Really? That makes sense? If you have a flat tire do you fix it, or you simply blow up the other three tires while you are it? You can even stop yourself in the middle of a meal. That’s right. As that chocolate ice cream is getting rammed down your throat by an unknown invisible force – yeah right – you can actually realize what you’re doing, stop yourself, and get back on the program.

You’ll feel a lot better about yourself. The pride that runs through your veins, that new found power you’ve experienced, that will get you going for along time, all the way to what you’re shooting for.

By the way, eating for your nutritional type will make it much easier on yourself to curb your cravings. A good fat burning supplement will also go a long way in reducing your appetite and smash binging before they happen.

If we take a look at the most popular fat burners, almost all of them contain caffeine in one form or another. That right there is one big giant clue! The thing to remember is as with any supplement or drug, if you use it all the time the effect starts to dry up. For an opposite example, I took some caffeine this afternoon, and as I’m writing these lines late in the evening, I still feel wired up and ready to go. Why? Because I’m not a heavy coffee drinker. So for me, you bet the slightest caffeine intake boosts me for a long while.

As I’m hoping from task to task like a raging Tasmanian Devil and running about like the Roadrunner, you bet I’m burning more fat than if I were sitting on the couch watching TV! And as it stimulates the adrenal glands, caffeine indeed helps to burn more fat by boosting metabolism. But, if you’re taking 3-4-5-6 cups of coffee, caffeine loaded drinks like colas and so called “energy drinks”, chances are the caffeine is not doing much of its magic anymore.

If you recognized yourself in the opening lines as one needing coffee to start the day, well, coffee alone has probably lost its effectiveness as good fat burner. You can consider caffeine driven energy as “borrowed” energy. Much like borrowed money, you’ll have to pay it back sooner or later… with interests. So called “energy drinks” are the worst in my opinions as they are also loaded with sugar. So you can a temporary sugar and caffeine boost, followed by a crash, the followed by a boost as you take another one, and on and on… It’s a roller coaster of crash and burn energy. Not only it’s not healthy, these constant highs and lows can create an addictive partner much like hard drugs do.

True energy should be constant and will help you feel lively and vibrant, and in the long run you’ll lose way more fat this way and be healthy as well. And that’s important. Do you really want to have the best looking body in the hospital? Don’t think so.

The solutions? First of all, try to stay away from caffeine loaded drinks for a few weeks. If you’re too addicted, at least reduce your consumption at least by half.

Second, as we hinted above, many fat burners do contain caffeine. But they also contain a lot more ingredients to work in synergy. You get the “pick me up” of straight coffee, and the boosted metabolism and enhanced fat burning of all the other ingredients combined.

The good ones will also elevate your mood and control appetite, and that can be important when you decide to go on a diet. Make it easier on yourself when you want to lose weight by giving yourself the best tools to get where you want to go.

If you train your abs, of course you’ll feel those muscles working, and as you tone these babies up, you might gain a better posture, and tighter abs can mean an inch or so that’s not hanging out anymore.

That’s it. You won’t be losing tons of fat, and it won’t work all the other muscle groups in your body! But yes, you can indeed fold these pieces of exercise equipment and glide them under the bed or in the closet

So am I saying they’re useless? No, they can really work the ab muscles, that’s what they’re designed to do. But they won’t help you lose “4 dress sizes” or build you incredible legs! That’s like saying since your new lawnmower has a great engine, you can use it to drive to work! Building ab muscles and losing belly fat are two totally unrelated things.

If you take pieces of equipment like the bowflex – that works the total body as opposed to one muscle group – you’ll get much better results. Yet, couldn’t you get better results for your money? That should be the bottom line in my opinion; getting the best short term and long term results while spending the least amount of money possible.

First, before buying any such equipment: do you enjoy such kinds of training? The best kind of exercises are the ones you’ll actually do! If you like jogging but hate weight lifting guess what you should be focusing on. If you’d rather play outside, do it. If you love training at the gym, do it. Do what you love and the results will follow if you keep doing it, it’s that simple!

Also, for the price of a bowflex, you could be owning tons of free weights, benches, a punching bag, hire a personal trainer… and still have money to spare. Or buy years worth of gym membership. Or own that super tennis racket or golf clubs you’ve been eyeing lately.

Unless you’ll know these machines will fit in your current routine and you’ll actually use them, there are tons of ways for you to move more and lose fat while having fun! And having fun is key is any successful fitness plan.

And last but not least, many supplement companies are offering free trials in hope of getting your business.

The different types of fat are trans fats, saturated, and unsaturated fats. Only trans fats should be avoided since even a small amount can wreak havoc on your system and stop fat loss in its tracks. Trans fats are man made creations. Other forms are available in Nature and can be good for you. Funny how that works.

Fat helps with a lot of our hormonal system. I’ve had friends, and read on many forums from countless people, actually lose fat and get healthier… by eating more fat than before! So forget the 90s recommendations that were pushed in the mainstream media that low fat is the way to go. People have followed this advice and actually gained weight. Diabetes is becoming the 21st century epidemic. And we can absolutely change that! You and I control what we put in our mouths!

Fat helps with satiety as well. It fills us up. I can eat cereals and cookies like there’s no tomorrow, but it’s hard to swallow tons of butter.

On the other end, CARB can be a 4 letter word. It is actually: C – A – R – B… that 4! I told you my math skills were getting better To be more accurate, excess carbs are bad for you. Anything in excess is bad but it’s easier to overeat carbs than it is for proteins and fats. In fact, the % of obesity in these modern times is in direct proportion with the consumption of glucose / fructose.

I don’t want to confuse you. It’s fairly simple in fact. Excess fats are bad but usually, people ingest too much carbs and trans fats. Most people, even those that do well on carb rich diets, AKA the Carb Types, will lose weight easily by controlling their carb intake. That’s right, eat less sugar, less cola, less bread, less cookies, less cereal, less juices, less pasta, and you can lose a lot of unwanted body fat, even if you’re eating fat rich meals!

Try this out today. Don’t wait. To help control appetite, I’ve found good fat burners can really help.

Some dieters achieve way better fat loss on a high carb, low fat eating plan, while others are better off with a high fat, low carb diet. What makes this difference? Taste, upbringing, cultural influences? Maybe. I’m personally convinced the main factor is genetics.

For starters there is the self made genetic factor: the more fat we become, the more fat cells we actually create in our bodies. What does this mean to you and me? Well, if we are or have been overweight, our bodies are actually primed for easy fat gains since we have more fat cells that we used to… and that’s not a good thing obviously. When we overeat those fat cells actually swell, and we can even create some more. That’s one of the reasons why we can lose fat easily at first, yet gain it all back after we stop.

Solutions? If you haven’t been already, don’t get overweight in the first place. That being said we don’t control the past, we go from where we are right now. So don’t use it as an excuse! The two main solutions are first to go on an eating plan that fits our nutritional type. Refer to the article on this as this is the main element for easy success in my opinion. If you eat right for your own genetic make up, it actually feels good to eat like that way, so you’re less likely to binge or eat junk food.

The second is surgery. The famous liposuction actually gets rid of these fat cells for good – until we create new that is. But don’t be fooled in thinking it’s a magical, harmless procedure. It can be dangerous, it can go wrong, there can be long lasting consequences to this. And there are the costs involve! Think of all the gym memberships, personal coaches, training equipment, and fat burning supplements you can buy with the same dollars! You’d probably get results as good or even better, and you’d feel a sense of pride a surgeon simply cannot give you. You have to answer the question: have I done all I could realistically do to lose fat? If the answer is no, I’d recommend you forego surgery for now, unless strongly recommended by a doctor.

All in all, genetics do make an important part of how we look. But it’s not an excuse! Just a cold hard fact we have to deal with. The better we adjust to our body type, the easier we’ll lose fat and keep it off!