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Losing weight and keeping fit and healthy requires more than turning up at your local fitness centre or sports club. The ability to lose weight is a particular mindset and one that you have to persevere with. Diet plans and fitness workouts are only a device which you can utilize to lose surplus weight and get fit, but by themselves, unused, they do nothing.

Predictably there is a boom in the membership of health clubs and gyms, at the beginning of January. It is so easy to start the New Year with a new resolution to do more exercise after self-indulging over the Christmas period. Each year the gyms attempt to find out why they have such a hard time keeping members and then to get them to keep returning after the muscles first start to ache. The secret lies in appreciating what triggers a customer to sign up to a fitness club in the first instance.

The answer is plain to see, you become a member of a health club or gym to lose weight 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. Health is about people and their aspirations and not about making money.

Ok, you need some direction on what to do and you require 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 number-crunching calculations of an exercise or diet routine. Sometimes focusing excessively on the numbers can and will result in forgetting 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 begin to worry that all of the calorie counting, reps, and heart rate monitoring are too much to deal with. The numbers take over and you begin to lose sight of your targets. At this stage 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 bad days, it would be unrealistic to think otherwise. It's not easy losing weight. It takes determination and discipline. More importantly, you need to be able to see through those dark days when it all seems pointless, and remember why you started. Whatever you do, you should not get too concerned 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 keep on going. In order to follow through, you have to be a Weight Loss LIFER!

The phrase 'lifer' comes from the military where it is a phrase 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 has a mindset that knows that there will be hard times 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 understand that losing weight is so much more than the result of a single day, or a single week. It is the summation 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 trigger for deciding upon a lifestyle change. On the other hand they are bad because few people expect to keep their resolutions for very long and give up at the first problem. If you didn't give up on your weight loss promises to yourself 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 buy a diet plan or an exercise regime and "guarantee the results." It just doesn't work that way. Each one of us needs to fit the diet or exercise plan to suit our own requirements. You can purchase different diet types and plans or exercise plans but what you can't purchase, is the mindset of a Lifer.

Do not get bogged down 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 focused. Bad days will occur, but they are much easier to get over if you are a true Weight Loss Lifer.

www.biggestloserplan.com is dedicated to helping you lose weight in an easy and friendly way. Follow the link for free diet tips delivered to you every day by email.