Achieving and Maintaining a Healthy Body Weight
Before you try to change your body weight, think about your motivation for doing so. Many people in our society are unhappy with their body weight, not because of potential health risks but because their weight fails to meet society’s idea of attractiveness. Yet people arrive in this world with varying weight tendencies; just as some tend to be tall and others short, some tend to be lean and others stout. No one expects tall people to grow shorter or short people to grow taller to become “normal.”
Adopting health as the ideal, rather than some ill-conceived image of beauty, can avert much misery. The human body is not infinitely malleable-few overweight people will ever become rail-thin, even with the right diet, exercise habits, and behaviors. Likewise, most underweight people will remain on the slim side even after putting on some heft.
What dieting strategies are the best for a healthy body weight?
Here we will talk about diet-related changes that most often lead to successful weight change and maintenance.
Tips for Accepting a Healthy Body Weight
- Adopt a new value system. Value yourself and others for human attributes other than body weight. Realize that prejudging people by weight is as harmful as prejudging them by race, religion or gender.
- Take compliments seriously. Positive comments from others probably reflect an objective viewpoint.
- Use supportive, nonjudgmental descriptions of your body; never use degrading negative descriptions.
- Avoid frequent checking of your weight or appearance; focus on your whole self including your intelligence, social grace, and professional and scholastic accomplishments.
- Accept that no magic diet exists.
- Stop dieting to lose weight. Adopt a healthy eating and exercising lifestyle permanently.
- Become physically active, not because it will you get thin but because it will enhance your health.
- For a how to guide on losing weight healthily click here.