Bombay is replete with signs offering guaranteed quick weight loss: 'Lose 10 Kilos in 1 month or Get Your Money Back!'

Warning! These gimmicks are potentially dangerous and are in reality your adversaries if you want to shed extra kilos permanently.

Crash diets radically slow down your metabolism. If a human body lacks sufficient calories, it will quickly learn to store fat as a defence mechanism against starvation, so in the future your body will be reluctant to part with your excess fat. The actual sustainable rate of weight loss for most of us is around one kilo every ten or twenty days. Any ongoing weight loss faster than three kilos per month could have a truly detrimental impact on other aspects of your overall health.

Even worse, diets below a minimum 1200 calorie threshold tend to lack the nutrients you need every day, often creating other health problems, in the present or later on, some of which may become chronic. Please say no to all quick weight loss gimmicks for your own sake.

To be healthy takes a sound mental approach to all you consume and to how you use your body every day, based on the science of how our bodies work as applied to the circumstances of your own life. The first thing I usually tell my new clients is that fitness and overall good health requires consistent attention and sustained effort for pretty much the rest of your life: There Are No Shortcuts To Good Health.

You absolutely must enjoy the exercise you do and love the food you eat. This is the second thing I inform anyone who enquires about losing excess weight and maintaining good health. One-size-fits-all solutions don't exist for diet or exercise. Some basic parameters relate to everyone, like we all must expend more calories than we consume to lose weight.

The ideal formula differs for each person. It requires consistent tweaking because our bodies keep changing in ways too subtle for us to perceive. While some things will always be wise health choices, like brown or red rice has and always will trump white rice nutritionally, the particulars, like how much rice you eat and when in the day, that may vary seasonally or depending on your activity level of the moment and will likely change as the months, years, and decades roll on.

Exercise works slightly differently on our bodies than diet. Recent studies have shown the barely perceptible changes in our bodies exercise induces do not generally motivate people to get and stay fit. What clearly is effective is to use your body in a way which is fun for you and makes you feel great today. This is why I always tell clients that if I am a good trainer, you will look forward to meeting me or else I am not doing my job. This is also why regular exercisers tend to feel better after an exercise session than before they began it.

Think of becoming fit as akin to learning how to play a musical instrument. Most of us would love to be masters of music. Those who achieve excellence are generally the ones who love practicing. Most humans cannot delay gratification for years and years without deriving some pleasure along the way. Our health is more important than mastering an instrument: it is what we rely on each and every day to get the most out of our lives, to be the best parents, spouses, friends, and colleagues we are capable of being.

So before you set out on your own path to good health and lasting fitness please be ready to make time in your day, every day. Better to make time to be healthy today by choice than to be forced by sickness or injury to take time out tomorrow.

You will not regret it.