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Losing weight and keeping fit and healthy is so much more than turning up at your local gym or sports club. The ability to lose weight is a state of mind and one that you have to persevere with. Diet plans and fitness programs are only a device which you can utilize to get rid of excess weight and get fit, but by themselves, in the box, they do nothing.

Predictably there is a boom in the membership of health clubs and gyms, at the start of each year. Everyone starts the New Year with a new resolution to get fit after stuffing themselves over the holiday period. Each year the health clubs try to find out why they have such a problem keeping members and then to ensure that they keep coming back after the muscles first start to ache. The answer lies in appreciating what triggers a member to sign up to a gym in the first instance.

The answer is plain to see, you become a member of a health club or gym to lose a few pounds and make yourself fitter. You don't sign up to the health club to purchase a diet, or to be sold any other fitness services or products. A healthy body is about people and their dreams and not about putting cash into the till.

Ok, you will benefit from some guidance on what to do and you need a schedule 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 program. Sometimes focusing too much on the numbers can and will result in losing sight of your original motivation and in the process, set you up for failure.

Instead of thinking positively about losing weight and getting fit, which is the reason that you began, you may start to think that all of the calorie counting, reps, and heart rate monitoring are too much to cope with. The numbers take over and you start to lose sight of your goals. At this point it becomes more of a hassle than a hobby and instead of being a means of stress release the whole thing becomes very stressful! You may even be tempted to finish exercising and dieting as a result.

Yes, you are going to have some tough days, it would be silly to think that you won't. It's hard work losing weight. It takes determination and discipline. But most of all, you need to be able to look through the hard times when it all seems pointless, and keep the end goal in sight. Whatever you do, you should not get too worked up about meeting all the numbers on the charts all of the time.

The biggest 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 term '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 people who are in it for the long haul. 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 up ahead, but they get through them or they go around them. It may require support from others, but whatever is required, it gets done. They know that losing weight is so much more than the measurements of a single day, or a single week. It is the total 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 reason for deciding upon a lifestyle change. Conversely they are bad because few people 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 work that way. Each one of us needs to adapt the diet or exercise plan to match our own requirements. 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 trapped with the details of losing weight or getting fit. Make exercising and healthy eating a high 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 your eye on the ball. Bad days happen, but they are much easier to get over if you are a real Weight Loss Lifer.