Practical tips for healthy weight loss
Ever wish there was an easy-to-follow practical primer to tell you all the things you should and shouldn’t do to help you lose weight? I’m not talking about food choices here - there are ‘tons’ of eating plans available. I’m referring to a simple list that you can follow in your everyday life to make it easier to stick to your diet. Here are a few tips that I’ve found works wonders to help avoid temptation and keep me on track.
Shopping Tips:
1. Shop the outside grocery aisles.
Supermarkets are designed with the four basic food groups around the perimeter of the store. If you stick to the outside aisles, you’ll find produce, bakery, dairy and meat - exactly what you should be buying. Avoid going up and down the aisles where processed ‘convenience’ foods lurk to tempt you from your good intentions.
2. Never ever shop hungry.
It’s an old tip, but it works every time. When you’re hungry, everything looks good - especially quick, empty calories. Make it a point to shop on a full stomach and you’ll find yourself saving both money and calories.
3. Buy fresh whole.
Buy fresh, whole and organic whenever you can. Processing depletes vital nutrients and adds calories. If you have a choice, buy fresh vegetables and fruits and whole grain products. Skip the highly processed snack foods(twinkies and chips etc.)and ‘convenience’ dinners.
Setting Goals
1. Break your goals down if you have to. The thought of losing 100 pounds can be daunting. Instead, make it your goal to lose 10 pounds this month, or to get through the week without cheating on your diet. “Inch by inch life’s a cinch; yard by yard it’s hard.”
2. Set reasonable, attainable goals for yourself. Remember that a healthy, sustainable weight loss is about 1-2 pounds per week. Setting the goal to lose 30 pounds by next month is setting yourself up for failure. Don’t be taken in by the infomercials and false advertisements! Everyone is different! Being content with your progress will help you attain your goals. Discontentment leads to eating binges. Remember, you didn’t gain the weight overnight nor will you lose it overnight.
3. Reward yourself! There’s nothing more motivating than promising yourself a special treat when you reach a goal - but don’t keep rewards just for big milestones. Make a list of positive reinforcers that you can dip into whenever you avoid temptation or need a little boost. I always make Saturday by treat day. I stick to my diet goals all week then on Saturday I reward myself with a treat. Plus, it just makes it easier to get through the week knowing that on Saturday I can have that banana split.
Measuring and Weighing
1. Measure your progress by dress size or pants size instead of pounds. Use a tape measure instead of the bathroom scales. Why? One of the by-products of eating healthy and exercising daily is converting fat to muscle. Muscle is denser, and weighs more than fat - but you’re still getting smaller, and your clothing will tell you the truth.
2. Measure your day in steps - steps walked, that is. Counting the steps you walk each day and aiming to increase them to 10,000 steps daily is a great way to add exercise to your diet. By walking 10,000 steps a day, you can burn as many calories as you do when you do any of the following:
- Swim for 90 minutes
- Ride a bike for 70 minutes
- Play 10 holes of golf (without the cart)
- Walk 50 blocks
- Play soccer for 90 minutes
- Work for two hours in your garden
How do you fit in 10,000 steps? You can count every step you take during the day - clip on a pedometer first thing in the morning and take it off last thing at night. (Hint: Invest in a pedometer!)
3. Measure your food for the first month. Our concept of portion size has been greatly distorted by restaurants, magazine ads and our own eating habits. Invest a month in learning what a real portion looks like - weigh or measure everything. Stay away from buffets until you have reached your goals or for a special treat.
Attitude
1. Treat yourself well! Losing weight is something you’re doing because you love yourself. Remember to reinforce yourself regularly for your hard work. You can do it! “If one man (or woman) can do it, another can!” (Anthony Hopkins in “The Edge”)
2. Focus on your health, not your weight. Eat healthy, exercise sensibly, and focus on how you will feel when you reach your goal. See yourself the way you want to be, but be realistic.
3. If you slip, forgive yourself and start again. After all, just one banana split never made anyone fat. Every day is a new day, and every day brings you closer to the new you.
About the Author:
I have learned one important lesson in life; my health is my responsibility, not my doctors! Start here: http://www.ihealth-information.com
Be prepared to be less effective and waste your own time, if your weight loss programme does not contain these quick lose fat tricks.
1. Must have a Change in Lifestyle
Every effective weight loss programme will help clients change their lifestyle. This is absolutely critical to the long term success of the programme. Unfortunately, it is now fashionable to pop slimming pills or go for cellulite treatments to lose weight.
The results from such programmes will never be permanent because the person’s lifestyle would effortlessly put back all the weight. The very moment that these artificial programmes are halted, weight will come rushing back.
When a person changes his/ her lifestyle, the unhealthy food and weight gaining activities will be eliminated from their daily lives. Hence, an effective weight loss system MUST have an in-built mechanism that helps clients refine their lifestyle.
2. Must include a Water Drinking plan BEFORE Meals
Drinking at least a glass of water half an hour before meals is critical to weigh loss and maintenance of a healthy body. The water replenishes the fluids that will be used to make bicarbonate solution on the mucus membrane of our stomach lining. This protects the stomach from being burnt by its own acid fluid.
Similarly, a well hydrated body reduces the urge to drink unhealthy drinks which introduce more toxins to your body. Furthermore, the body does not need to excessively retain water, thus making the body fatter than necessary.
Lastly, a majority of people are chronically dehydrated though they seem to be leading normal lives. It is a common sight to see my clients reduce the amount they eat after they begin the water routine. Many people have lost the ability to differentiate between food hunger and water hunger. A systematic water plan will help them regain this lost touch.
3. Must include a systematic plan for reduction of sweetened and diuretic beverages.
Sweetened drinks are beverages like soda, cola, diet cola, tea, coffee and beer. The three major groups of substances that would impede and slow down your weight loss are caffeine, sugar and sugar substitutes.
Caffeine – This is a diuretic substance that drains your body of water. It is roughly estimated that you lose 33% more fluid from your body then the amount you drank. If you drink one cup of coffee, you would lose all the fluid from the coffee plus an extra 1/3 a cup. This makes you body desperate to retain whatever water it can. In the long run, your body’s instinctive reaction is to retain water, hence giving out the round water-filled appearance. Diuretic drinks are coffee, tea, most colas, most sodas and beer (though it technically has no caffeine, it is a diuretic).
Sugar – Besides the numerous health damaging effects of sugar on your body, it also adds useless calories to your diet. When sugar enters the body it is broken down into glucose and the calorie that is created is termed “empty calorie”. It has absolutely no vitamins or minerals, hence it does not do any good to your body besides adding calories.
Sugar substitutes – Sugar substitutes like Aspartame (sold as nutrasweet) and Splenda cause you to overeat sugars (including carbohydrates) because receptors in the tongue have been trained, through the years, to expect “sugar” when it tastes “sugar”. Products like nutrasweet always tout that you get the taste of 8 (figurative number) spoonfuls of sugar but only half the spoonful of calories. In theory this sounds great, however, our receptors in the tongue will stop glucose production in the body and expect to be able to take it from the incoming food. So now it is expecting 8 times worth of sugar calories! But the sugar only provides 1/16th of that. The body now hungers for more food since it has shut down glucose production. All “diet” drinks that claim to be sugar free and sweets that are sugar free contain either nutrasweet or splenda, you can confirm it on the labels.
4. A Muscle growth programme
You need a proper muscle growth plan if you ever want to stop spiralling back to your heavy weight. Programmes that are based on pills and nutrition tend to neglect or gloss over the muscle building plan. This is very dangerous because your muscle acts as a buffer for excess calories and helps maintain your weight and figure. Furthermore, there is no such thing as eating to build muscles as popularly believed. Muscles can only be built in the good old fashioned way – make it do work.
5. A programme that focuses on the growth of the aerobic Type 1 muscle fibres.
On the other extreme there are programmes that are excessively focused on going to the gym. That would mean they ask you to go twice or three times a week to the gym for weights. This is a waste of your time and probably they are building up Type II (a/b) muscles instead of Type 1 muscles fibres. This difference is important because Type II muscles are big and showy, but they require a lot of maintenance and have poor fat burning abilities. Type 1 muscle fibres hardly bulge but contain the highest amount of mitochondria, an essential enzyme in fat burning.
6. You must want to lose weight.
Most people assume that being involved in an activity means that they actually want to do it. Many people busy themselves finding the greatest miracle weight loss cure or trying out every fad but never really achieving anything. Subconsciously, they do not want to lose weight, but the appearance of busy effort allows them to gain affection or acceptance by loved ones, peers and their own inner selves!
7. A Nutrition plan that reflects personal individuality.
When we buy clothes, especially expensive ones, we always insist on having it tailored to our size. Sometimes, the sleeve may be too long but the chest perfect fit. That is why stores have many different labels to suit different body size and shapes. Similarly, the food we eat should also be tailored to our body, not just in terms of size (calories) but also in terms of design. Nutrition programmes need to first assess and categorise our body type or blood type or metabolic type (not limited to these categories), before any recommendations can be made.
8. The plan should never come with food restriction.
Yes the unbelievable! Most of my clients are shocked when I advise this to them. It is an accepted fact that all diets mean that you have to give up on your favourite foods. This is totally untrue and will in fact destroy the sustainability of the programme. We are creatures of greed; we always want what we cannot have. That is hardwired into us. Hence, the command not to eat a particular food will conversely create a greater demand for it. The correct technique should be learning to manage the urge, rather than suppressing it.
9. It must have a component that includes aerobic walking or jogging.
Ultimately, our body thrives to walk, jog and run, that is our basic function as human beings. For many overweight people, this function has been dormant and numbed for too long. Aerobic walking or jogging is essential to any weight loss programme because it gradually helps your body to adjust to the change in weight load as you slim down. Swimming or carrying weights in an aerobic fashion is not a substitute because the whole body is not engaged in the activity.
10. The programme MUST be sustainable relative to your daily workload and commitments.
You cannot and should not embark on a quad weekly (4 times a week) get slim course if you already have to juggle two jobs and a family. Firstly, it is absolutely impossible for you to sustain the hectic schedule in the long run. Secondly, it would create a phobia within you, framing your mindset that weight loss is a strenuous and painful event. A healthy lifestyle is a fun activity that should preferably involve your family and loved ones, the last thing you would ever want to do is to sign up for a programme that is too daunting to complete.
Some Useful Resources
The Benefits of Water (One of the best resources around) – http://www.watercure.com
A Fantastic Muscle Building Programme – http://www.precisiontraining.com
A Bloody Type Diet System – http://www.dadamo.com
A Metabolic Type Diet System – http://www.turnuptheheat.com
A Health & Weight Loss System that contains all 10 of these core points plus more – http://phenogy.com
* All links are provided as is. We do not gain from commissions nor will we be held legally responsible. It is just us sharing with you some great gems.
About the Author:
The author, Winston Ng, is an avid peak performance coach and CEO of Phenogy Health Advisors Pte Ltd, based in Singapore.
There are a lot of “crash” diets out there that promise that you’ll drop a considerable amount of weight in days or a week.
I have tried a few of these, and in my experience the weight always comes back on, just as quickly since the weight loss tips given are not something that will work with your body.
One thing you don’t want to do if you are actually serious about losing weight is to follow these fad diets and their ridiculous weight loss tips.
After their ineffectiveness has been proven time and again, people will start to wise up to that particular diet, and will head off in search of a new craze.
Lets be honest, people are always searching for new weight loss tips because they want to lose pounds and they want immediate results, but this is just wishful thinking.
To lose weight permanently and effectively it will be a rather slow progress, all depending on your metabolic rate and how much you need to lose.
There are however some proven tried and true weight loss tips for aiding in the weight loss process, and I can make you familiar with them.
Weight Loss Tip 1
Don’t skip breakfast. Whatever you do follow this advice, because otherwise you are much more likely in fact prone to binge later in the day.
Weight Loss Tip 2
Don’t eat anything for at least an hour before going to bed.
Weight Loss Tip 3
Don’t snack while watching TV. It’s acceptable to eat a meal while watching television, but never is snacking at this time acceptable.
Weight Loss Tip 4
Substitute fruits like; bananas, watermelon, plums, peaches, and oranges for sugary treats like; cookies and candy.
Weight Loss Tip 5
Substitute honey for sugar, and carob powder for chocolate in all recipes. These taste just as good if not better when used properly.
Weight Loss Tip 6
Eat more vegetables. This can even be enjoyable if you have a good cookbook like Good housekeeping’s latest edition.
Weight Loss Tip 7
Avoid unnecessary high calorie foods. Instead of a high calorie salad dressing for instance try cottage cheese or yogurt to improve the salads taste and peel of the pounds.
Weight Loss Tip 8
Exercise at least a half hour each day for five days out of the week. Biking on a stationery bike while reading is a great form of exercise to slim legs.
In conclusion there is nothing stopping you from losing weight except yourself. Get off the “I can’t do anything about my weight problem” bandwagon and start dropping pounds today!
About the Author:
If you want to lose weight and keep it off visit fitness guru Brad Callen’s informative website at: http://snipurl.com/98g1
Everybody you know is on the latest weight loss bandwagon: The Low Carb Diet. They’ve seen the astounding results on the scale and have lost 10+ pounds in a short period of time. So you want to join in on this also?
Before You Start Take Time to Look at How the Body Works with Carbs:
It is true that the weight that is lost starting out on the low carb diet is a lot in a short period of time, but most of the weight that is lost is water and carbs that are stored in your body. Carbohydrates are stored in the muscles. Each gram of a carbohydrate that is stored in the muscle is also stored with 3 grams of water. When you cut out carbohydrates your body uses the stored carbohydrates in your muscles for fuel. As these carbs are used up the water that is stored with them is taken out also, so the result is weight loss at the beginning of a low carb diet and some inches lost due to the depletion of carbohydrate stores in your body. As the carbs and water leave the muscles the muscles become depleted and loses volume.
Once carbs are added back into the diet the muscle take up these carbs along with water, so if the carbs are reintroduced into the diet in a couple days time the initial weight that was lost will be regained.
Your brain requires carbs for energy also. The brain uses 400 calories a day just for the standard thought process of staying alive. So this is 100 grams of carbs a day that is required for one body function. Any movement that you do for longer than 3 minutes requires carbs to be used for energy.
When carbs become scarce your body goes into a state of ketosis, that is the process of the body breaking down fat into ketones for the brain to use as energy because not enough glucose is available for the brain. The results of this can be loss in energy, fatigue, irritability and a slower thought process. Thus affecting your ability at work or school.
Eating Carbs But Not Gaining Weight:
You can eat carbs and not gain weight. It is in the choice of carbohydrates that you consume that will make the difference. Including more vegetables and whole grains in your diet and eating less simple carbohydrates like sugars that are in soda, candy, processed and refined foods will help you in losing weight. Paying attention to portion sizes will also help. Pasta is an easy trap for eating to much carbohydrates. If you like pasta add vegetable to you dishes, since vegetables are good carbs and have fiber in them they will help fill you up faster. Eat a salad with every meal, but pay attention to what you put on your salad, stick to low fat versions of dressings, like Italian and Vinaigrettes. Creamy dressing when they are low fat can be loaded with sugars to take place of the fat, so it is important to pay attention to the nutritional values of dressings.
Another way of using carbs in your body is weight training. Weight Training requires your body to use carbs for the exercise and to repair muscles after your workout. Finding a requirement in the body for the carbs that you eat is a great way to use the carbs that are consumed. By finding the requirement for use of carbs you do not need to worry so much on how many carbs that you consume but just the types of carbs. Always remember that no matter what sugars in abundance are not good for your body or your weight loss goals.
About the Author:
Josie Anderson is a personal trainer and is the owner of http://www.weight-loss-program-101.com providing weight loss resources to help with many weight loss goals and newsletter to keep you up to date on the latest in the health and fitness industry.
Quick weight loss is promised by diets all the time. “Lose 10 pounds over night,” the ads will scream. Most people know in the back of their mind that quick weight loss is either not healthy or is a short term fix.
Most quick weight loss pounds are only water. Your body will flush water out of your system and the scale will show a quick weight loss of 3 to 10 pounds. The quick weight loss is however short lived. The second you drink any fluids your body will hold the water and your quick weight loss will disappear.
The short tem success of quick weight loss in a low carb diet is also this loss of water. Dieters are excited when they see the quick weight loss however this excitement is short lived. Once carbs are introduced back into their diet, boom, there goes the quick weight loss.
Instead of being suckered into all the quick weight loss claims, why don’t your try these common sense weight loss tips to use when dining out to help you achieve long term success. You won’t see a quick weight loss by following these tips but you will see some really great long term changes in your body.
1.) If you must have a dessert, split it with a friend.
2.) Start your meal with soup and a salad. If you fill up on healthy foods first, you may eat less of the high calorie entries.
3.) Immediately ask for a box to go and place half of your meal in it. Not only will you cut calories but you now have an entire additional meal for later.
4.) Ask for non-fat or low-fat dressing on the side when ordering your salad. You can then control the portion size.
A high calorie dressing can add 200-400 additional calories to your health salad.
5.) At a fast food restaurant, always order the small size. Did you know a super size French fry at Mc Donald’s is 29g grams of fat and 610 calories??
Once again, these simple restaurant tips will not result in quick weight loss but if you start using these and other weight loss tips every day, you will start seeing the long term success you truly deserve. Always think long term and don’t be tricked by diets that promise “incredible quick weight loss”.
About the Author:
Are you a Mom who want’s to lose weight, have less stress, and look and feel better than you have in years? Go to http://www.EMomsFitness.com for free tips and bonuses.
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