If you have tried continuously to lose weight and have failed, you must know that there are several simple but powerful factors that could have been holding you back.

To start off I will mention a little basic knowledge here. Each pound of fat on our body has 3500 calories in it, so for each pound of fat you want to lose you must burn 3500 calories. That is burning an extra 500 calories a day for a week just to lose one pound of fat.

It is recommend that losing 1-2 pounds of fat a week for weight loss but that mean you would have to burn an extra 1000 calories a day.

This may sound like a lot but it can easily be achieved if you educated yourself, learn some weight loss tips, and stay away from these dead ends.

One thing I notice a lot is when people seek no guide ness and usually decreasing their calorie intake dramatically in their diet. To them it makes sense that the more calories they limit the more fat they will lose. Wrong!

If you decrease your calories too much it will cause your body in a starvation mode and force your body to store fat and burn muscle for energy. Not only that, your metabolism will plummet and one of your biggest sources in burning fat will be gone.

Another mistake I see is people eliminating a food source like low-carb, low-protein or low-fat diets. Each one of these food sources are needed by the body and continuous weight loss with any of these diets is impossible. Diets are not the problem as a diet is any thing a person eat, but a conventional diet like the Atkins diet made to trick the body into losing weight may be successful at first but most likely people end up heavier and doing harm to their body.

Weight loss without exercise. If you really want to lose 1-2 pounds a week without exercise good luck and prepare you for failure. Exercise not only burns fat, it also can act like a food depressant eliminating any disturbing food urges. Exercise speeds up your metabolism, increases your energy levels, adds muscle tone, decreases stress and strengthens your heart. Even though nutrition is 70 percent of weight loss, exercise is the factor that will make you or break you in losing weight. Straddling the fence. Not being fully committed to your plan and cheating, bending the rules or only giving 50 percent dedication on your goals. If youre not willing to give up a couple things or losing weight is just not that important to you and not a priority. First, I would ask yourself why you want to lose weight and if youre not serious about it be happy with yourself as you are because losing weight at half speed always ends up disappointing.

Now Id like to begin my talk about the first factor, exercise, with a little hand raising exercise. Most of you already know that a reasonable amount of exercise, on a regular basis, is a healthy thing for us to do.

This information should come as no surprise because the fact that exercise is good for us is commonly understood by most adults living in the United States today. However, not all of us are able to perform regular exercise. Our time and energies are constrained by the responsibilities in our lives. For example, have the responsibilities in your life ever STOPPED YOU from practicing exercise on a regular basis?

This failure to exercise is completely understandable because many of us have perfectly good reasons why cant exercise. Two of the most common reasons that I have heard and experienced are:

- I simply dont have enough time in the day to exercise, or - I have health challenges that prevent me from exercising.

If you, or any of your friends, are using these reasons not to exercise, I am going to share with you, a piece of information that has allowed me and an exceptional few other people to exercise EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Now Ive been running, biking, and lifting weights 2-6 times almost every week consistently for about 17 years, and I only discovered this strange technique just a few months ago, while listening to a lecture by the world class gymnast and author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman. Dan said, the way all of us can exercise every single day is to wake up every morning, get out of bed, and do ONE jumping jack! Now, of course, it doesnt have to be a jumping jack. It can be anything! For example, I was just looking at Bank of Americas new health website, and they had an exercise on there that I believe about 95% of the people on this planet can do

It was close your eyes really hard, and flex your lip and jaw muscles by pursing them together, like this (close eyes, purse lips and jaw) At first I thought, what good can such a small amount of exercise do anyone? But then I realized, that the most important GOOD it does, is that is creates a certain mind set, a certain habit, a time dedicated every single day to bettering ourselves with exercise. And as our time, and energy, and ability allow, we can increase that one jumping jack, to 2 jumping jacks, or 10, or 20. Again, it doesnt matter WHAT exercise you choose, just be sure to do it every single day, then INCREASE it when you can. Now because of this information, the next time someone asks you if you perform regular exercise, you can say, As a matter of fact! I exercise every single day!

Now I would like to talk about the 2nd fitness factor Eating healthy foods and supplementing if necessary in diets. Now materialistically speaking You and I have been given the greatest gift in the world! We have been given a body with which our souls can use to consciously experience life! And if we are lucky enough to have a fully functioning brain. And if we lucky enough to be able to decide HOW we want to treat our brain and our body Why would we want to tarnish this incredible gift by feeding it full of foods that accelerate our bodys degradation? Foods that accelerate our mental decline.

Well thats exactly what we do, when we eat foods with little or no nutritional value, and foods composed primarily of refined sugars. Our body is a very complex biological mechanism, and if we want to give it the nutrition it needs to function with absolute optimal performance, we need to seek the advice of experts. We need to talk to or read books written by appropriately trained physicians or nutritionists. Then we need to get a second option, and talk to another expert or read another book. Then get a 3rd opinion and continue to learn how feed our body, and how to care for it properly. Now, you dont have to wait until you talk to a physician or read a book to start eating healthy. You can simply use your COMMON SENSE to start eating healthy today!!

Eat more vegetables, eat more nuts and whole grains, eat more fresh fruit, and if mixed with exercise, eat more meat, fish, and real cheese. Not processed cheese foods, like cheese-wiz, or American cheese in those little plastic wrappers, those are actually quite bad for you. Now if you decide to eat healthy, and exercise regularly, keep in mind that fitness can only be achieved if you add the final ingredient, the 3rd factor, persistence over time.

And, if you persist, I promise you that, in time:

You will be able to look in mirror and feel proud. You will be able look back at your accomplishment and dedication and feel proud. And with the additional clarity and focus you have gained from the additional oxygen and circulation that you have given to your brain, you will be able to strategically share this information to help your children, and to help your family, and to help your friends to feel just as proud as you will.

This in one of the things that annoys me the most is hearing people say they have tried everything and they want to lose weight so bad but they do nothing or fail because they did it wrong. If you are serious about losing weight, make the commitment and do something. Quick weight loss is not difficult, if you educate yourself and stay away from all the fad diets that are advertised, you will too be able to experience a whole new world to nutrition, exercise and healthy living.