One way to lose weight is to just stop eating. It sounds simple but in reality you have to know what you are doing to get any long term weight loss benefits from fasting. Let’s look at the weakness and strengths of fasting for weight loss.

Like most forms of dieting, fasting can be used to bring about dramatic but temporary reductions of weight. You can go on a long fast, taking nothing but juice or eating grapes or taking some other low calorie meal substitute for several weeks, and while you are on the fast you will certainly lose weight. However, during the fast you may not be able to carry on your normal social interactions. It’s not so easy to sit around sipping carrot juice while the rest of your family is eating a normal meal.

Another problem with long fasting is that your body requires vital nutrients (vitamins, minerals, protein) and your favorite juice may not contain them. Long fasting without proper medical supervision can be dangerous.

Finally, a major problem with this kind of fasting is that once you stop fasting and resume eating your normal diet, you are likely to gain back all the weight that you have lost during your crash weight loss fast.

So, does fasting have any place in a weight loss plan? Yes it does. Periodic fasting is one of the secrets of a long and healthy life. Our body’s digestive organs require a rest from time to time, just as we require days off from work. One-day fasting done in a methodical and regular manner provides the kind of rest that helps our digestive system, aids in the elimination of toxins from our body, and, yes, also helps us to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way.

How to Do Proper Fasting

Here is a method of doing one day fasts, taking no food and (if your body is strong) no water in a period from the sunrise of one day to the sunrise of the next day.

Successful fasting has three stages: preparation, the actual fast, and breaking the fast. Each one of these stages is important.

Preparation

If you are not prepared both mentally and physically you will find it difficult to go one day without food. The mental preparation is simple, but very important. The night before the fast you have to take a firm determination that tomorrow you are going to fast, that you are not going to eat any food. If you fix your mind in advance then you will not start deliberating during the fasting day whether you should continue or not to continue. If you are undecided or waffling you can always find a hundred reasons why you should start eating!

Physical preparation is also important. The day before you fast you should eat a normal amount of food and take a good amount of liquids (especially if you are going to be fasting without taking any liquids). If you miss some meals on the day before fasting, then you may start feeling hungry during the fasting period. If you do not take enough liquids, especially during the night before the fast, then you will feel uncomfortable when you are fasting.

If you are physically and mentally prepared you will not feel very hungry while you are fasting. Once you decide to fast, your hunger just “shuts off” for the fasting period. This sounds hard to believe, but if you do it a few times you will see that it is true.

The Fasting Day

It is best to do light physical tasks and concentrate more on intellectual and spiritual work during the fasting period. It is not a good idea to spend your time thinking about what you are going to eat tomorrow! If you have prepared yourself properly this shouldn’t be a problem and you can use the time that you gain by not eating to do some constructive things that you normally don’t get time to do.

Breaking the Fast

One of the benefits of fasting is that it helps to eliminate toxins from the body. However, you can only get this benefit if you break your fast correctly. On the morning following the fasting day, take two glasses of lemon water. Put the juice of have of a lemon in one glass and add a bit of salt. (The drink should taste both lemony and salty). After some time, you can eat your breakfast. The lemon water will help you to flush your digestive system with a strong bowel movement and many toxins will be eliminated.

One day fasts like this can be done twice a month. This kind of fasting will give rest to your digestive organs, help eliminate toxins, build your will power and strength of mind. On top of this, the overall reduction in calories that you get from going two days without food each month, will definitely be one of the elements of a balanced and sustainable weight loss program.

Here’s a great guide on a special method of intermittent fasting.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to complete a project or start a new one but can’t seem to make it happen? We all face these circumstances once and while, and there is one key factor that can help you overcome the inability to get started. That is short term goal setting.

By nature of it’s title short term goal setting is just that, goals set to be achieved in the near future. The near future for some may be one day to one month, there is no hard an fast rule about what is deemed to be short term. You need to feel comfortable about the time line you choose for completion of a goal.

Characteristics of a Short Term Goal

As with any goal you set you need to ensure a certain amount of exactness in your short term goal setting. Ambiguous goals rarely get achieved because they don’t have a finite outcome. Being specific about what it is you want to achieve allows you to set time lines for achievement, and break the goal down into smaller steps if required.

Once you have decided on a specific goal you need to set a time for achievement. This is where the short term aspect comes into play. We’re not really talking about a short term goal if it’s a year or two away. For short term goal setting we want to focus on things you can achieve in a shorter period of time. A good example is saving money towards a purchase or vacation. Generally you have anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months to set aside the money needed to possibly purchase something new or take that dream golf vacation.

While this isn’t a must with all short term goal setting some goals should be broken into smaller more manageable steps. Again this is dictated by how in depth the goal is. If you set a goal to bring coffee to work every day for two months, and not buy it at the local coffee shop that’s pretty much the one and only step there is. You could break it down into, buying ground coffee with your next grocery order, ensuring you have a thermal mug, but really that’s overboard. How ever if we revisit the above example of saving money for a trip or purchase there could be smaller steps taken out of that goal.

Short term goal setting is the best way to organize your life. Putting down on paper what it is you want and need to achieve, when it needs to be achieved by, and how you’re going to do it creates a road map for even the least motivated people. Of course there is still the element of action. If you’re not willing to do the work no amount of goal setting is going to help you achieve your dreams.  For those of us that are willing to do the work, but having troubles clearing our thoughts and deciding what needs to be done next goal setting will give you a blue print to work from.

In theory, perfectionism sounds like a good thing. After all, who doesn’t want to do a good if not “perfect” job at work… or even at play?

Indeed, it’s not a surprise if you have a tendency to be perfectionist at times. Ever since you were young, the drumbeat of perfectionism has been beating in rhythm to everything you do. Your parents and teachers probably told you, “Always do the best job you can.”

And now that you’re an adult, you can’t quite shake the feelings of guilt when you turn out something that’s not perfect. If it’s not perfect, then you probably didn’t do your best.

But here’s the thing: Sometimes we need to sacrifice quality just a little in order to gain the enormous advantages that speed brings us. This is especially true in business.

Think about it…

If you spend two months “perfecting” a product and then another month or so “perfecting” your sales process before you ever release the product, you’ll fritter away three or four months without making a dime. But if you release the product almost immediately and THEN work on improving it, you’ll actually make money the entire time!

Now maybe releasing a product first and improving it later doesn’t sound right to you. But just observe what big business does, and you’ll see they do exactly the same thing. For example, car makers roll out new cars quickly, and then later put stronger engines and better features in them. Software companies (like Microsoft) release software and then later fix the bugs with “patches” and upgrades.

And you know why they do it? Because getting products to market makes them rich. If you’re in business, you should be doing the same thing. Indeed, even your personal life can improve by finishing things fast and making improvements later.

Bottom line: People who are successful in business don’t necessarily strive to get it right the first time. Indeed, one of the biggest teachers is experience… and you can only gain experience when you stop being a perfectionist and start living life and running your business.

Incidentally, that also happens to be one of the quickest ways to getting rich, too. Ask a millionaire if his products and sales pieces are perfect, and I guarantee he’ll say no… at least not at first. But he’ll tell you that persistence and speed are far more important than perfection.