Excessive weight in a person may be because of heredity or genetic factors which is beyond the anyone's control, it may also be a result of the person's food eating habits, life style, the nature of work and activities the person routinely engages in, etc. Except in cases of genetic disorders or heredity, generally people gain weight over a long period of time and with reasonable awareness towards your well-being there is generally no reason for you to look for ways to achieve fast weight loss.

Excess weight condition matters; so weight loss also matters. Why should fast weight loss matter? And for whom does the fast rate matter?

There are two categories of people who look for fast weight loss methods - those who are very obese and have recently become conscious of danger to their health and those who are taken in by those very "alluring but misleading" advertisements showing that you could achieve mirror breaking looks and killing figure and features by following the slimming courses for two or three weeks.

Health experts agree that an average person can lose about 1 to 2 pounds of weight per week by adopting correct eating habits and doing reasonable exercises. This is a safe and healthy amount to lose; the results achieved are long lasting this way without any adverse effects. By adopting additional safe methods such as use of Proactol, a fat binder OTC product, you may be able to lose safely about 2 to 3 pounds per week; that itself would be high weight loss rate. The result you will get will definitely be satisfactory.

Many people are very keen on losing weight at much higher rate - something like 10 to 15 pounds a week. However take a moment to think. Do you gain weight at anything like 10 to 15 pounds a week steadily? Answer is big "NO". You don't because your body cannot gain weight in that proportion. And if your body cannot add weight at that rate, it will not be able to lose at that rate either without ill effects. This should be properly understood by everyone keen on loosing weight to become more attractive and fit.

By going on a starvation diet to lose weight at an unrealistic rate, all that you manage to lose is your muscles, body fluids - water - , your sleep and money, of course! You could do more harm to your body than good doing this. Achieving fast weight loss is violating the natural rhythm of your body. Quite often it is seen that such drastic results of weight loss achieved are equally rapidly rolled back and in fact you would gain more weight over a period of time.

On the contrary, there are those cases of extreme obesity whose need for faster weight loss may be reasonable because of health concerns. Bariatric surgery may be the only answer to the prayer of these obese patients. In these weight loss surgery techniques, called gastric bypass and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding ("Lap Band"), the capacity of the stomach is surgically reduced or limited. This limits the quantity of food the patient is able to eat. This automatically restricts the tendency of the body to have a craving for food and also restricts weight gain. Most of the persons are able to return to their normal work after a few weeks.