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Losing weight and keeping fit and healthy means more than arriving at your local fitness centre or sports club. The ability to lose weight is a particular mindset and one that you have to maintain. Weight loss plans and fitness programs are only a tool which you can use to get rid of surplus weight and become healthier, but by themselves, in the box, they don't achieve anything.

Predictably there is a boom in the membership of health clubs and gyms, at the start of January. Everyone starts the New Year with a new resolution to lose weight after self-indulging over the holiday period. Every year the gyms attempt to understand why they have such a problem holding on to new recruits and then to ensure that they keep returning after the muscles first start to ache. The answer lies in appreciating what drives a customer to sign up to a health club in the first instance.

The answer is obvious, you join a health club or gym to lose a few pounds and make yourself fitter. You don't join the health club to purchase a diet, or to be sold any other health services or products. A healthy body is about individuals and their dreams and not about making money.

Alright, you need some guidance on what to do and you need a plan of how to go about it. You may benefit from a particular diet type and you may benefit from vitamins and healthy food types, but it is all too easy to become seduced by all of the details planning of an exercise or diet routine. It is possible that focusing too much on the numbers can and will result in forgetting your original motivation andas a result, set you up for failure.

Instead of thinking positively about losing weight and getting fit, which is the reason that you started, you may start to worry that all of the calorie counting, reps, and heart rate tracking are too much to deal with. The detail starts to take over and you start to lose sight of your goals. Now it becomes more of a job than a hobby and instead of being a means of stress release the whole thing becomes very stressful! You may even be tempted to stop exercising and dieting as a result.

Yes, you are going to have some tough days, it would be unrealistic to think that you won't. It's hard work getting thin. It takes determination and discipline. More importantly, you need to be able to see through the hard times when it all seems pointless, and keep the end goal in sight. Whatever you do, you should not get too worried about meeting all the numbers on the charts all of the time.

The toughest challenge for anyone who is going to lose weight or get fit is to be able to follow through. In order to follow through, you have to be a Weight Loss LIFER!

The phrase 'lifer' comes from the military where it is a term for 'a person who has been in the military a long time or plans to stay in long enough to retire'. These are individuals who have the commitment to finish the course. If you are serious about losing weight or improving your fitness, then you have to be Weight Loss Lifer. Are you a Weight Loss Lifer?

A Weight Loss Lifer understands that there will be potholes to go through; that there may even be really bleak times in the future, but they get through them or they go around them. It may need support from others, but whatever it takes, it gets done. They understand that losing weight is so much more than the result of a single day, or a single week. It is the culmination of everything that you have done to date.

You may not be a lifer today, but you won't ever become one if you don't make changes now! New Year's Resolutions are good because they are a great excuse for deciding upon a lifestyle change. On the other hand they are bad because few individuals expect to adhere to their resolutions for very long and quit at the first sign of failure. If you didn't quit on your weight loss resolution then you would still be loosing weight. You would already be a Weight Loss Lifer.

Everyone is an individual. We are all different. You cannot just purchase a diet plan or an exercise regime and "guarantee the results." It just doesn't happen like that. Each one of us needs to adapt the diet or exercise plan to match our own needs. You can purchase different diet types and plans or exercise plans but what you can't purchase, is the determination of a Lifer.

Do not get over-whelmed with the details of losing weight or getting fit. Make exercising and healthy eating a true priority in your life but make sure that it is not the only thing in your life. Be aware of the long term picture and make sure that you keep focused. Bad days happen, but they are much easier to deal with if you are a true Weight Loss Lifer.