Losing weight and keeping fit and healthy is so much more than turning up at your local fitness centre or sports club. The ability to lose weight requires a particular mindset and one that you have to maintain. Weight loss plans and exercise programs are only a device which you can use to shed surplus weight and become healthier, but by themselves, in the box, they are pointless.

Predictably there is a big increase in the membership of health clubs and gyms, at the beginning of January. Everyone starts the New Year with a new resolution to lose weight after self-indulging over the Christmas period. Every year the health clubs attempt to understand why they have such a difficult job holding on to new recruits and then to make sure that they keep returning after February. The answer can be found in understanding what triggers a member to sign up to a gym in the first instance.

The answer is plain to see, you join a health club or gym to lose weight and make yourself healthier. You don't join the gym to buy a diet, or to be sold any other health services or products. A healthy body is about people and their dreams and not about taking a profit.

Ok, you need some advice 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 get blinded with all of the details planning of an exercise or diet program. Sometimes focusing too much on the details can and will result in losing sight of your original motivation and in the process, set you up for failure.

In place of thinking positively about losing weight and getting fit, which is the mind set that you started with, you may begin to worry that all of the calorie counting, reps, and heart rate tracking are too much to cope with. The numbers take over and you begin to lose sight of your targets. Now 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 unrealistic to think otherwise. It's not easy losing weight. It takes determination and discipline. But most of all, you need to be able to see through the hard times when it all seems pointless, and remember why you started. Whatever you do, you should not get too worried about meeting all the numbers on the charts all of the time.

The greatest 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 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 is fully aware 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 take support from others, but whatever it takes, it gets done. They know 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 reason for initiating a lifestyle change. Conversely they are bad because few people expect to keep their resolutions for very long and give up at the first sign of failure. If you didn't give up on your weight loss resolution then you would still be loosing weight. You would already be a Weight Loss Lifer.

Everyone is an individual. Each one of us is 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 fit the diet or exercise plan to match our own needs. You can buy different diet types and plans or exercise plans but what you can't buy, is the determination of a Lifer.

Do not get over-whelmed with the details of losing weight or getting fit. Make exercising and eating properly 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 happen, but they are much easier to get over if you are a real Weight Loss Lifer.