subject: What should you do when diet and exercise are not working? [print this page] What should you do when diet and exercise are not working?
We all get low periods. No matter what we do during these times, there never seems to be anything that works. In this context, that means maintaining a strict diet and never missing a workout.
We go to the club everyday. We do the same amount of running around the track or the same number miles on the bicycle. One would think that that would eventually pay off, but it never seems to.
Then there is always our diet. We carefully watch the number of calories and food choices, never exceeding our limit. In conjunction with the regular exercise, This, we think, should pay off. But it does not seem to.
Because we are the same weight today as we were three weeks ago, we think that we look the same in the mirror. And, perhaps we really do. As a result, we find our dinners are boring and our workouts tedious. Feeling like failures as health magazine foldouts, we continue to see only the same average frame in the mirror.
Most of us have experienced this in the past--something which may have caused us to quit the whole process. The justification back then might have been that the reward somehow for us does not justify the effort. That may have been because a month's worth of effort should have done some greater tangible good, or so we deeply believed.
Nevertheless, we have begun again. And now we are now at the same point. Therefore, we should we do something differently this time, or so we think. But what will really do the trick? Are there any new solutions today that were not there back then? How about a wonder drug? After all, it seems there is a new pill every month, claiming to work when diet and exercise do not. Could we ever find the one that really does works for us, just like the manufacturer claims?
There is only one really effective answer to this dilemma. It is simple : a person should just grit his or her teeth and keep at it. What seems true is that some bodies simply need more time before they can respond in the expected way. To the medical profession, this may sound anecdotal or unscientific. Yet this is true in practice and more time at a program will simply prove it so, given the absence of something similar to a glandular disorder.
When nothing seems to change, it is most likely that a plateau has been hit. This is the period when the body prepares itself for a massive change--something which requires significant adjustments. Perhaps this is why nothing at all seems to happen for so long. But when it comes, It does so as if overnight, making one wonder what he or she had really done to cause it.
That is the truth, the progression of which science will someday be able to quantify. Whence, one should simply stay at it for one more week, one more month or one more quarter of a year.
For further thought on staying at it order my book "Think and Grow Fit."
Paste http://www.foreverfitness.info into your URL bar if the link to the publisher is not live.
