In my experience, and as I’ve lost weight, I’ve noticed that there are two main differentiators of how I stay motivated to lose weight: mental and physical.
Here are a couple of examples of that lead me to believe that motivation and a good plan is key to weight loss. Both of these examples are referenced in an article in The New York Times.
First, of the people who make New Year’s Eve resolutions to lose weight and sign up for gym memberships in December, around two-thirds of them stop going to the gym after only a couple of months and lose the benefit of that exercise and any weight loss they might have otherwise had as a result of that exercise. Thus, in my opinion, it seems as though at least some of those people lacked sufficient motivation to continue going to the gym after a couple of months.
Second, people tend to join commercial diet plans around December, as well, given that according to the above-referenced article from The New York Times: “Weight Watchers, too, ramps up advertising and marketing around New Year’s, says Cheryl L. Calla, the company’s senior vice president for marketing.” According to that same article: “A study financed by Weight Watchers that was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003 concluded that overweight and obese people who attended Weight Watchers weekly lost only about six pounds, on average, after two years.” That is an average of three pounds of weight loss, per year, over the course of two years. Additionally, Weight Watchers is the “best” weight loss diet, according to a 2015 ranking of diets by the U.S. News and World Report and Weight Watchers apparently advertises: “You’ll drop up to 2 pounds weekly”. Therefore, while Weight Watchers is the “best” plan, the referenced study on Weight Watchers (that was “financed by Weight Watchers”) has helped form my opinion that some people might have trouble staying motivated to continue with their diet plan – even though Weight Watchers is “best” diet plan, according to that ranking in 2015. I realize that the study apparently financed by Weight Watchers came out in 2003, so this is not a perfect comparison, and it might have been an anomaly, but it provides the basis for my opinions, which are what I am discussing, in part, in this book. I have no doubt that Weight Watchers is the “best” plan according to U.S. News and World Report for 2015. However, I have alternate ideas that I think tend to be effective for me, based on my own personal experiences with these methods.
Why is the pro ana lifestyle different? For me, it seems to work well at causing sustained weight loss because of the unusual variety of motivation that pro ana offers, in my opinion.
For more information on this topic, please review my other blog entries and visit http://chatzy.com/proana for pro ana chat, which has helped me personally in finding continued motivation for sustained weight loss.
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