What Is A Healthy Weight Loss?

It is quite natural for anyone trying to lose weight to want to lose it very quickly. But there are many shreds of evidence that show people who lose weight gradually and steadily are more successful at keeping the weight off.

Healthy weight loss is not just about a diet or a diet program but it is about an ongoing lifestyle that inculcates long-term changes in daily eating habits and exercise habits. Once you have resorted to a healthy weight, by relying on healthful eating and physical activity most days of the week, you will more likely achieve success in keeping the weight off over the long term.

Losing weight is not an easy task and it takes commitment. Eating a balanced, nutritious diet along with being physically active is the best way to stay healthy and help reduce your risk of disease.

To maintain a stable weight, the energy you use needs to equal your energy intake. If you tend to use more energy than you consume, you will surely lose weight. On the other hand, if you tend to eat more than you use, you will gain weight. 

The sensible approach to losing excess body fat is to make small healthy changes to your eating and exercise habits. These changes should relate to the things that you can maintain as part of your lifestyle and that way you will lose weight and keep it off as well.  

Even Slightest Weight Loss Can Mean Big Benefits

The best news is that no matter what your weight loss goal is, even the slightest weight loss from your body is likely to produce health benefits such as improvements in blood pressure and reduction in blood cholesterol and blood sugars.

For example, if you weigh 180 kgs, a 5 per cent weight loss equals 9 kgs, bringing your weight down to 171 kgs. While this weight may still be considered as overweight or obese range, this modest weight loss can decrease your risk factors for chronic diseases related to obesity.

So even if the overall goal seems quite large, you need to see it as a journey rather than just a final destination. Try to learn new eating and physical activities and habits that will help you live a healthier lifestyle. These habits, in turn, may help you maintain your weight loss over time. In addition to improving your life in other ways.

It is found that those who had maintained a significant weight loss reported improvements in not only their physical health but also their energy levels, physical mobility, overall mood and self-confidence. Following are some of the habits that you can include in your daily routine to have a healthy weight loss:

Don’t Skip Meals

Skipping meals is definitely a big no for any individual. If fact, it is noticed that if you skip meals, you eat more when you do eat and this may lead to a larger stomach capacity. Studies have proved the fact that stomach capacity can increase if large meals are eaten by individuals.

This can then ultimately increase the amount of food you need at each meal before you feel full. You need not starve yourself if you are trying to lose weight.

Yoyo Diets And Metabolism

Many people who want to lose weight try crash dieting in haste. This is quite a short-term solution that will increase your body fat levels in the long term. A continuous cycle of dieting, weight loss and weight gain is termed as Yoyo dieting.

Yoyo dieting in no way helps you to maintain healthy body weight. At this point, your body responds to these periods of semi-starvation by lowering its metabolic rate.

When you lose weight too quickly, you tend to lose fat and muscle both. Generally, muscle burns calories but fat doesn’t. So, when you suddenly stop dieting and start eating normally again, your body will burn even fewer calories than before. This is because the relative amount of muscle in your body has decreased and your metabolic rate is slower now.

This kind of eating pattern can severely impact your general health as just one cycle of weight loss and weight gain can contribute to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, regardless of body fat levels.

That is the reason why maintaining a healthy weight loss is very important. Generally, it is considered that weight loss of about half to one kilogram per week is reasonable and more likely to be maintained.

When And Why You Overeat?

Few of the factors that can lead to weight gain include:

• Late Night Eating
• Social Eating
• Emotional Eating

One must avoid unplanned or habitual eating, and keep to regular meals and snacks as this will help you to lose weight. Keeping a track or a record of what you eat, when you eat and your hunger levels prior to eating can help you to identify why you consume certain foods at certain times of the day.

This can be a very useful step to try to identify ways in which you could decrease unplanned eating, emotional eating or eating less healthy foods due to hunger or habit. You must try to find healthy ways to cope with stress or emotional moments. 

A Healthy Approach To Exercise

One of the best approach to increase the level of physical activity in your life is to take it slowly. You can simply increase your activity levels by increasing movement throughout the day. Our body is designed in such a way that it is idle for movement and any physical activity that are quite beneficial for its well being.

Even moderate-intensity exercises like walking, gardening, cycling, or minor tasks like mowing the lawn have been shown to help reduce body fat.

Suggestions for a more active lifestyle include:

• You can play a sport that you enjoy.
• You can go for a walk instead of taking the car on short trips. 
• You can get off the train, bus or tram one stop early and walk the rest of the way.
• You can include more outdoor games with your children in the daily routine.
• You can go on a walk with your dog
• You can take the stairs instead of lifts
• You should choose exercise activities you think are fun rather than those you think are good for you. You can also try dancing or kicking the foot around with some friends.

A Healthy Approach To Food

By following a few easy changes in your eating habits, you can simply lose your body fat:

• Simply avoid Yoyo diets
• Must eat a wide variety of food from all food groups. Check that you eat from the food groups like wholegrain bread and cereals, vegetables, fruit, milk and dairy, and meat, fish or legumes and if possible, choose low-fat varieties.
• You should increase your fruit and vegetable intake, particularly vegetables, as most are low in calories and contain fibre, which helps you feel full.
• Reduce intake of foods that are high in added fat, sugar and salt. You must make soft drinks, chocolates and other snack foods an occasional ‘extra’. Adults are advised not to eat more than one or two treats a day. In case you are overweight or inactive, you may need to limit treats to less than one a day.
• You should try to balance extra food with extra exercise like the more energy you burn, the more treats you can afford to have. Just know that you only add extra foods after you have covered your nutrient needs with choices from the healthier food groups.
• You must cut down on saturated fats and alcohol.
• Replacing sugary drinks with water can help.
• Avoid eating food for comfort, such as when you are upset, angry or stressed. You should explore other healthy ways to cope with these feelings.

Exercise Is A Must For Weight Loss

Exercise tends to prevent muscle loss so it is important to exercise when you are losing weight. Exercise generally protect your muscles and keep your metabolic rate ticking over at a healthy level.

The number of people who are overweight and are stacked with obese effects is increasing every year. One of the major reasons behind this is that we have become more inactive now. For most people, physical activity is no longer a natural part of our lifestyle, so it must be fitted into our daily schedule. 

Get Moving For More Energy

People often feel too busy or too tired to exercise regularly but exercise actually increase your energy levels and help you to feel less tired. The exercises you choose does not have to be overly strenuous, even moderate amounts of physical activity of about 30 minutes a day can speed up your metabolic rate and help you to lose weight.

The amount of energy you burn up in an exercise depends on your age, your gender and your activity level. Young people seem to burn more energy than older people likewise men burn more energy than women. And also people who are physically more active burn more energy than your average couch potato.

Weighing Yourself Regularly Can Work

The weighing scale provides the best evidence about whether your efforts are paying off or not.Seeing the numbers tick up or down or just remain to stagnate can be a great motivation to keep going or to rethink your approach.

Various studies found that daily weighings helped people to lose more weight, keep it off, and maintain that loss, even after two years.

You should step on the scale at the same time every day for the best results. In case your weight shoots up several kilograms from one weigh-in to the next, don’t freak out. Eating a lot of salt the night before or having your period is the likely culprit behind this. The number should return to normal within a day or two. It’s just a steady climb that you need to do something about.

Too Little Sleep And Too Much Stress Are Your Enemies

When you are extremely tired and frazzled, your body cranks up the production of cortisol (the stress hormone that can cause carb cravings). Not getting enough sleep also induces your levels of ghrelin, a hormone associated with hunger, while it suppresses leptin, a hormone that signals fullness and satiety.

A study shows that people on a diet who slept only five and a half hours a night for two weeks lost 55 percent less fat and were hungrier than those who slept eight and a half hours or less.

You must prioritize sleep, aiming for seven hours or more a night, which various research shows help lower stress and make sure you get quality sleep.

In case of a snoring spouse or a fidgety cat wakes you up frequently throughout the night, you may end up getting the equivalent of just four hours of sleep according to another study. So better keep pets out of the bedroom and use nose clips to drown out snoring.

You Can Surely Bust Through It!

As you slim down, your body seems to release much less leptin, the fullness hormone. Even if you lose 10% of your body weight, leptin drops by about 50% which makes your brain think that you have shed more kilograms than you actually have. As your brain is programmed this way to think, it tells your body it needs more food and should burn fewer calories.

In case you are not strength training you should start right now. Building muscle can actually raise your metabolism to help you overcome this scenario.

Moreover, to keep your body challenged and burning calories, incorporate new moves and workouts to your weekly routine. Alternatively, you can cut an extra 100 calories or so a day from your diet.

Once you have lost weight, your body simply doesn’t need as much fuel.  But if you are still stuck, try eating carbs last at every meal, after your protein and vegetables. Doing so will reduce your blood sugar by almost 40 per cent. As blood sugar influences weight so this strategy could definitely help.