How to Lose Weight - The First Step You Need to Know - Avoid Failing at Weight Loss Programs

When you think about how to lose weight do you usually think about physical exercise and eating right? These are all activities, thinks we do.
Activities and what to do are important. You will only see progress on the scale and in the mirror if you do the right things. Now- you'll have to do the right things for an extended period of time, not just one time. You need to do them until you've accomplished your weight loss goal. You'll even have to do the appropriate things permanently, if you want to keep the weight off for good.
Unfortunately, weight loss efforts tend to fail at this stage. Many women over 40 can't keep up their activities long enough, although they initially put in a lot of time and energy in doing the right things.
Did you ever start a weight loss program, but couldn't carry through with it? Couldn't you reach your weight loss goals? This tends to be very frustrating. Frequently women over 40 stop their weight loss program too early- it feels as if this particular weight loss program wouldn't been able to answer the question "how to lose weight?"
With the next program the circle repeats: Not being able to follow through, becoming disappointed and stopping the program. The result of all of this is getting on and off programs and having no idea on how to lose weight.
This begs the question: Why are some successful long-term, can stick with their plan and other's can't? When asking "how to lose weight" what do some know and other's don't?
There is an highly important factor in knowing how to lose weight, and that's your motivation. Your motivation is what makes you do the right things, and if you want to do the appropriate things long-term, you need to keep up your motivation long-term.
Conventional weight loss plans take your motivation for given. Judging from what I learn from my readers, all women over 40, this is obviously not effective.
I'd like to give you three points to look into:

1. First of all, you need to have a strong enough "why to be able to follow through. Your personal "why do I want to slim down is specific to you, and you need to spend enough time to become clear on that. You might come up with easy surface answers, like "I want to be more attractive" or "I want to be healthier". Get deeper. Why do you want to be healthier? Why do you want to be more attractive? What would change if you were more attractive? Or, what would you have if you were more attractive? If you want to know how to lose weight then these are essential questions.
2. Second, your "why" and your individual reasons to slim down might shift from time to time. It's not sufficient to just repeat your subjective reasons to lose weight. What are your individual reasons to slim down right now? These reasons will change over time.
3. Third, motivation needs to be renewed and invigorated all the time- on a day-to-day basis works best. That's why each session of my "Lose Weight Permanently program begins with a look at your individual motivation.

If you want to maintain your weight loss going, I encourage you to find each morning your individual 10 reasons newly why you want to lose weight- and hold them on top of your mind all through the day. It will help you in hard situations and it will help you to do the right things- exercising and eating right, thus answering the question "how to lose weight?

Are you a women over 40? Do you want to lose weight? I've distilled what works in weight loss for women over 40 based on real life experience working with women over 40.

Perry Permann
Article Source: EzineArticles.com