One of the first things you do when you decide to lose weight is to set a weight to achieve. For most, that goal will be their “ideal weight” but to many the ideal weight may be exactly the wrong target weight!

In previous years the plan or overweight have the physiological effect of moving the concept of ideal body weight of what is really considered “ideal”. The benchmark is the weight which your body naturally feels comfortable. If you’ve been overweight for a very long time or if you’ve always done the yo-yo your body can respond to your initial weight loss by slowing down its metabolism because it thinks you are in starvation. This slowdown leads to discouraging plateaus that often are completely abandoning a plan, and lead to weight regain partial or total.

Rather than focusing on “ideal weight”, which asks you to lose weight steadily for months or even years, many experts recommend aiming goals achievable in the shorter term. Since the bulk of research on nutrition shows that most people plan to lose weight steadily for about 12 weeks, then reached a plateau, experts suggest having this “plateau” as the first goal. The best strategy for many people is the alternating periods of weight loss and stabilization, each lasting 8 to 12 weeks.

Choose a realistic weight that you can lose in 8 to 2 weeks. In calculating the rate of weight loss the most reasonable and healthiest is 500g to 1kg (1 to 2 pounds) a week, 10 kg (20 pounds) in three months is not unreasonable. So follow a diet until you reach “the goal”, or “12 weeks”, no matter whichever is reached, then go to a stabilization regime.

Why move to a system for stabilizing the time? Partly, to give you a breath of air, a break in a more restrictive diet. On the other hand, while you retrain your body by leaving it for a new “reference point”. Once you have stabilized your new weight for 8 to 12 weeks, set yourself another goal thinness, and return to a method of weight loss. By giving your body a break from deprivation, you will overcome its resistance to losing more weight, and will again follow a scheme; the first two weeks will allow most people to lose weight quickly.