Do Online Weight Loss Programs Work?
Once upon a time “self help” was thought to be a fairly “soft” or ineffective way of improving health or wellbeing, and most people believed that online weight loss programs couldn’t possibly match the success of the live diet meetings.
With the benefit of modern scientific analysis, we now know that these old beliefs couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s become very clear that dieting and eating plans are a recipe for disaster (even so-called “healthy” diets), with experts saying that dieting adds, on average, an extra 6 lbs per dieter every year!
Secondly, studies also show very clearly that people DO get results from online help, and that those results are very similar to the effect of having your own personal therapist!
Of course people with serious issues like trauma or personality disorders will still require more intensive support, but for the overwhelming majority of people seeking help with weight loss, or smoking cessation, relationship problems, depression, anxiety, etc, online programs present the cheapest and best quality result that they can possibly get.
Any program, if it’s to be effective, must build self reliance and individual accountability - online programs utterly depend on those factors and work to enhance those in each individual.
In choosing a self-help program for weight loss, it’s really important that you choose one that has been proven in clinical trials. New-age methods are not generally successful and can result in wasted time, money and effort, and can even do damage.
Likewise be aware that not all conventional approaches to weight loss are worthwhile either! For example cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is often regarded as highly-effective, and many studies claim that this is the case. But analysis of those studies shows that the conclusions are not valid, and that CBT is little better than placebo (sugar pills). So you do need to do your research.
Another consideration in choosing an online weight loss program is whether or not the site uses testimonials to try to convince you to purchase. Professional therapists do not use testimonials for 2 reasons. Firstly it’s unethical, being a serious breach of the client/therapist relationship, and secondly all the testimonials in the world in no way provide “truth”.
Why should you ignore testimonials? Because it’s very possible that there are thousands of unsatisfied clients for every one testimonial. When was the last time you saw a site publish letters of criticism?
So the bottom line is, we encourage you to use a self-help approach to freeing yourself from your weight problems, and at the same time we urge you to examine your chosen treatment method carefully to make sure you select a proven method, with good support facilities.
I hope now that you know that online programs do work, and you appreciate the importance of ensuring they are backed up by clinical research and staffed by trained professionals, that you might like to grab a couple of freebies that give you a solid taste of what that’s like. Check out 2 free books, “17 Solutions” and “Stop Wishing and Start GETTING!”, just 2 of the range of freebies available as a free member of TopLifeSolutions.com. Why is all this free? Because TopLifeSolutions.com is part of the Kind Communities Initiative, and it wants to get real, proven, valuable information to you, so that together we can make a difference to community health and happiness.
