How Long Does It Take To Lose Weight?
The question is wrong! Weight is relatively easy in the very short term. You can drop about 1lb per day by starving yourself and increasing your activity. This is pretty much how 90 plus percent of the miracle weight loss programs out there are designed. They just add in some sort of meal replacements, injection, or magic pill to suppress your appetite making the process more manageable. Of course, the problem with this approach is that:
- It’s unhealthy
- It’s unsustainable
- As soon as you stop starving yourself, you gain all the weight back
We pretty much all know this to some degree or another. Yet, millions of people still use this approach every year. Why?
I like to think of this thought process as going on vacation. Let’s say you decide to go to Costa Rica on vacation. Sound amazing right? The problem is you live in Montana. In order to get to Costa Rica, you must first drive 2.5 hours to the nearest airport. Then, board an airplane and fly 45 minutes to Salt Lake City where you’ll layover for 17 hours before flying to Atlanta, where you’ll have a 6.5 hour layover. Finally, you’ll spend 5 hours on a flight surrounded by a family of four with a baby constantly crying and a kid behind you that repeatedly kicks your seat.
You desperately want to go to Costa Rica, but after analyzing what it’s going to take to get to and from there, you decide to settle for a staycation at the Holiday Inn Express instead.
The moral of the story is, everyone wants to go on vacation, but nobody wants to put in the work to get there. Instead of spending their money and effort for what they really want, they take a shortcut and settle for something that in the end doesn’t even remotely compare in results or satisfaction.
In our case, sustainable weight loss is the vacation. Getting there is going to take time and effort. You must decide if you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifice to get there. If you’re not, don’t waste your time and money, making the situation worse by trying an effortless solution. Going to the Holiday Inn Express is going to leave you unsatisfied and still wanting to go to Costa Rica. The difference will be that you’ve now wasted time and money doing something you knew wasn’t the solution you were looking for in the first place.
The question of how long does it take to lose weight isn’t actually wrong, but it’s a clear indication that you have the wrong mindset. Instead of focusing on the vacation, you’re more concerned with the work to get there. I can tell you for a fact that if this is the case, then the vacation will never seem worth the work, and you’ll end up looking for a shortcut. If getting to Costa Rica was really important to you, then it wouldn’t matter what kind of effort it would take for you to get there. In order for you to be successful, you can’t focus on the time, effort, money, or sacrifice to achieve your goals. If you have the mindset that nothing will stand in your way and you’ll do whatever it takes, then you know you’re ready to start your last weight loss program ever.
