Although it might not be easy, people every day achieve the goal of moving from Thick to Thin. You may be one of those people who feels he/she does everything right to lose the weight. Why then has your hard work seemed to have not paid off—namely, why do you still feel like your thighs, waist, and back-side are a bit “thick” for lack of a better term? The answer is simple, although admittedly just because an answer is simple doesn’t make implementation easy. My goal is to give you some ideas on where to start.

First, you must understand that the human body is a complicated system and you can only achieve your ideal weight by understanding how it operates. I can tell you that any program or person who promises you can achieve long lasting and healthy weight loss by taking a pill, giving yourself an injection, having a surgical procedure performed, or not eating, is just plain giving you poor information. You may achieve short-term results from these methods, but in the long run, the side effects to your metabolism and overall health are real. Once you disturb your complicated metabolic system, it can take years to get you back on track. And importantly to note, the older you are when try these “quick fix” solutions, the worse off you are. You see, when you are very young, your body can take abuse (to a certain degree), but as we approach age forty and beyond, the body is much less tolerant. My advice: Lose weight the right way so you can go from thick to thin forever.

Below are a few simple things you must know to be successful:

1) Understand Metabolic Rate. You don’t put on 30lbs in 2 weeks so why would you lose 30 lbs in 2 weeks? As you may have realized if you are battling your weight, it takes years of over eating to pack on the pounds. For example, in order to gain 1 lb of fat, you need to eat 3500 calories in excess of what our metabolism can burn So, how do we remove 3500 calories or better yet, 1lb of fat from our body? You must create a deficit either by burning those calories (e.g., through exercise) up or by consuming less food. The amount of calories your body can consume and not gain OR lose weight would be your metabolic rate. For example, if your metabolic rate is 2000 calories per day and you lower your consumption of calories to 1500 in a day, you have a deficit of 500 calories. A 500-calorie deficit over a 7 day period equals a total of 3500 calories which as stated above, equals a loss of 1lb of fat.

2) Starving yourself via caloric restriction isn’t a long-term solution. Eating a lot less (e.g., under 1000 calories per day) often seems like the easiest solution, especially for those of us who are a little lazy. That is, we’d prefer to just not eat rather than find healthy foods and exercise. The problem with this approach is something called homeostasis and the law of adaptation. Homeostasis means balance and law of adaptation means our body quickly settles into what we give it. So, if you reduce your calories to 1000 calories per day, your body’s systems will slow (i.e., your metabolic rate will go down) to be in balance. Once you have done this you have created a new state and your body seeks to adapt to this new state and now only wants/can tolerate this new caloric amount. So, if on the weekend you decide to splurge and eat more than your new metabolic rate that extra now gets stored as fat on our bodies. When you mess up the most sophisticated “computer system” in the world, the human body, you cause a “crash” just like on your PC. Case in point, I always hear heavier people say, “I hardly eat anything and I still gain weight” and therein lies the problem.

3) Fuel your metabolism. Stop being afraid to eat. Instead, start eating to fuel your metabolism so you can increase your metabolic rate. When you have a strong metabolic rate, which is only achieved by fueling your body, you can afford to splurge and not eat perfectly 100% of the time. With a brand new revved up metabolism your body now can shed fat easily. So, eat 5-6 small meals per day, and stop worrying about calories per say. Focus on the quality of food you put in your body. One note about age. It is true that our metabolic rate naturally slows as we age. This is a topic for another article, but given this fact, all the more reason to emphasize the tips here. You really need to keep that metabolism working for you as you approach age forty.

4) Exercise is still the king. As important as nutrition is, you must work out at least 3 days a week, more if possible (4 to 5 days per week is ideal). Every research study out there says resistance training is the most effective method to reduce body fat. Does that mean that no other forms of exercise are worthwhile? No, you can do all forms of exercise to help you and you should do what you enjoy, but there is no escaping the sheer science that weight training is the most effective.

5) Weight train the right way. Weight lifting isn’t about going in the gym and doing a few bicep curls. Unless you have a particular desire to just have bigger biceps, you need to trade in a few curls for a broader workout. When it comes to shedding the pounds, you need to burn as many calories as possible. To do that, you need to be working major muscles and moving from one exercise to the next with as little rest as possible. The bicep is a small muscle compared to your entire lower body. See the difference? The basic 3 exercises you can do at home to get major results and hit the larger/major muscle groups are pushups, pullups (horizontal rows if you can’t do pullups), and squats. These 3 exercises will work your entire body. You should drive to do as many sets as you can of these in lieu of a few bicep or tricep exercises, or some inner thigh machine. These are just not large muscles comparatively so working them out doesn’t burn the same amount of calories as working larger muscles. It is also important to note that working these larger muscles does not create the dreaded “bulk” that women worry about. Working these muscles simply burns more calories pure and simple. If you want well defined arms and thighs, you won’t get that through a bicep curl or a basic leg extension. You get that by getting leaner overall and leanness comes from burning lots of calories.

I hope this article helps you get on track from thick to thin. If you do need some help, you can go to the following free website: http://www.myweightworld.com. Here you can track how many calories you need to consume or burn to achieve your goal and watch helpful videos, and read articles for shedding fat, as well as have a support system to help you along the way. Good luck. Remember the body responds slower than we’d like so take measurements and focus on the progress you are making rather than instant results. Give yourself a solid 6 months to a year following these guidelines here and in future articles to come.