I AM DESPERATE. I AM AT LEAST 20KG OVERWEIGHT AND HAVING TRIED MANY DIETS I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT!!??

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What a question! This must be THE million-dollar question in the world of health & wellness today. The truth is that more and more people want (and mostly need) to lose weight. A massive industry now exists to offer solutions, services, promises, products, etc. What is often missing is good honest advice on what works and what does not work.

The most important thing about weight loss is not medical or nutritional science. For the most part, most of us know what junk food looks like and what healthy food looks like. It’s true that the science is evolving and it’s true that there are controversial areas (e.g. no-carb diets) where even experts differ, but in the real-world this is minor compared to the real challenge: the challenge is more of an emotional or psychological or behavioural thing than a science-of-nutrition thing. This is a hugely complex and tricky matter of course, and well beyond the scope of this post, but it should be noted and it must be respected.

That being said, here are 5 key principles that can help with weight loss:

  1. Weight Loss is possible. It is often difficult but it is not impossible. If you ACCEPT this you can lose weight.
  2. Reasons for wanting to lose weight include energy, health, health risk, happiness & appearance. THINK about why you want to lose weight.
  3. Three great approaches to weight loss are eating less (fewer calories), eating Low GI (quality carbs), and eating low-fat quality-fat (avoid deep-friers). LEARN about just these three and you will have a great chance to lose weight sustainably.
  4. Exercise can help you lose weight but it is not enough on its own. You need to eat better too. GET ACTIVE, yes, but be realistic please.
  5. Crash diets and fad diets are the cause of much misery and ultimate weight-loss-failure. Please PROMISE yourself that you will never-again try these.

Giving some very careful thought to how you feel about yourself and your weight, your food, your lifestyle together with an honest effort to apply these 5 principles may well help you on your journey to a slimmer more-well you. I do hope so.