To obtain successful weight loss, you must apply this rule: “Eat less and exercise more.” Eat less sugar, simple carbohydrates and saturated fats. The right dietary choices can have a profound impact on our health and longevity. The fact remains that none of the fad diets or supposed breakthroughs in weight control have made any difference in the epidemic of obesity. Obesity is a complex, complicated problem containing both physiological and psychological components that must be addressed.
About 66% of adults in the USA are overweight or obese, and a recent government survey showed that one-third of children and teens, about 25 million young people are either overweight or on the brink of becoming so.
According to the American Institute of Cancer Research (AICR), the best strategy to promoting good overall health is to eat a balanced, predominantly plant-based and nutritionally dense diet. Most of your daily calories should come from vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans.
Best Diet Tips
1. Think Lifestyle: Remove the word diet from your vocabulary. You will be making changes that will have a profound effect on your way of thinking, how you eat and most of all, your lifestyle.
2. Don’t Count Calories : But, be in tune to the total calories you consume daily, and make an effort to replace high-fat foods with low-calorie ones like vegetables and fruits.
3. The Glycemic Index: The glycemic index describes the difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Low GI carbs produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels and this is the secret to long-term health reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes and is the key to sustainable weight loss. You must try to eat low on the glycemic (sugar) index, in order to avoid highs and lows in your blood sugar that can lead to increased insulin production and conversion of calories to fat.
4. Alcohol is fattening: since it can’t be stored by the body and burns up right away, increasing the likelihood that the food you eat while you’re drinking will turn into fat.
5. Exercise is crucial: to successful weight loss. Not only does it help burn excess calories, but by increasing your physical activity you can modify the way your brain regulates hunger, making you less susceptible to food cravings.
5. Drink Plenty of Water: Not only will you loss water as you exercise, drinking water makes you feel full, therefore, not as much room for food.
6. Eat More, More Times: Eating the right carbs, proteins and fats should be consumed in small portions more times throughout the day. This keeps craving and blood sugar levels in check. Water, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are the basic building blocks of a good diet. By choosing the healthiest forms of each of these nutrients, and eating them in the proper balance, you enable your body to function at its optimal level.
7. Vitamin Therapy: is a good way to help your body regulate what you may not be getting through your diet. A good daily multivitamin is the best start.
8. Limit Animal-based Foods: such as meat and dairy products, which are loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol. Use olive oil or canola oil instead of butter or margarine to reduce your intake of saturated fat and hydrogenated fat (trans fat). Moderate your consumption of fried, salted and smoked foods.
9. Portion Control: Eat portions to satisfy hunger, not to clean the plate. By dinner, if you have complex carbs (potatoes, yams, brown rice…) with your meal; it should be no more than a cup full. Half of your plate should be vegetable. The meat, fish, chicken portion should be the size of your fist. Portion control is the secret to a healthy weight!
10. Believe: Your belief system has everything to do with the mental and spiritual aspects of weight control. Fight anxiety with relaxation exercises rather than food. Utilize meditation, yoga, stretching. By creating healthy eating habits and regular exercise, you are sure to lose weight without depriving yourself of nourishing food. And if you continue those good habits after you reach your goal, you will have an excellent chance of maintaining your desired weight and see it more as maintaining a lifestyle as opposed to a diet. Learning to have a more structured and disciplined lifestyle can make all the difference in your progress. You deserve it!
11. Sleep Well: Good quality sleep is important, especially when you are trying to loss weight. I think it is most important to go to sleep with a “Quiet Mind”. Sleep rejuvenates, detoxes and regulates the body.
12. Overcome Fear: Fear can be an underlining problem in many cases. There are many ways to quiet the mind. Doing 15 to 30 minutes of meditation or yoga can be very helpful. You must allow yourself to be distracted or get into your meditation or yoga and “let go” of the days thoughts.
Managing Your Weight
Sleep allows our body to rejuvenate and repair!
Don’t Smoke: Besides the fact that it can cause lung cancer and is the second leading cause of death for both men and women, nicotine is a stimulant and complicates weight control.
Life to Go: Everyone has a busy lifestyle. You plan your day’s meetings, schedule your kid’s soccer game or know when to pick up the dry cleaning. Do the same with your meals and snacks. Prepare food ahead. Make goodie bags with cut veggies, apples, grapes, pears, and bananas. Have some nutrition bars on hand or cook/pack your lunch the night before. Mix a salad or make a large pot of soup or hearty chili.
Shop Ahead: Go natural, go organic or simply go to your local food store, which seems to have fresh produce. The products you choose should be low in sodium and contain wholesome ingredients, and they should be trans-fat free. Plan meal ideas and shop ahead for them. This way, it gives you less of an opportunity to end up at a fast food restaurant.
Body Mass Index BMI
According to The Cleveland Clinic, A BMI (Body Mass Index) of 40 or more indicates morbid obesity, which increases a person’s risk of death from any cause by 50% to 150%. BMI is an indirect measure of your body fat, which is a quick way to see if you are overweight. BMI uses a person’s weight and height to gauge total body fat.
* A BMI of 18.5-24.9 is ideal.
* A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is overweight.
* A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity.
* A BMI of 40 or more indicates morbid obesity, which increases a person’s risk of death.
Exercise
Exercise is crucial to successful weight loss. Not only does it help burn excess calories, but by increasing your physical activity you can modify the way your brain regulates hunger, making you less susceptible to food cravings.
Consider Power walking, Aerobics, Swimming or any cardiovascular exercise that you do consistently for 20-40 minutes. It is important to keep the heart rate up in your target zone during this time in order for cardio exercise to work effectively.
Stimulate your metabolism. Adding weight training and/or cardiovascular exercise to your routine will boost your metabolism. Cardio will burn extra calories while you’re doing it. Resistance training will actually increase the rate at which your body uses calories.
Exercise during the day to exhaust the muscles and the mind. The moving is good when we are depressed too! Aerobics, power walking, weight training, swimming are all great for working the muscles and the mind. Exercise gets the blood flowing and makes us move past many issues.
Exercise early in the day. Twenty to thirty minutes of exercise every day can help you sleep, but be sure to exercise in the morning or afternoon. Exercise stimulates the body and aerobic activity before bedtime may make falling asleep more difficult.
See a doctor before starting any kind of exercise program if you have never exercised before or have any other illnesses.
Nutritional Advice
Water should be a very important part of any nutritional program. Distilled water is best. 6-8 8 ounces per day. Water allows for the cleansing and hydrating of the system. It is also filling and a good substitute for soda or sugar-laden drinks. Although it may seem counterintuitive, drinking water helps you burn fat. Studies have shown that a decrease in water intake, will cause fat deposits to increase. Without water, the kidneys cannot effectively filter out the waste products and other chemicals which build up in the bloodstream and interfere with the liver’s ability to metabolize fat. As a result, you become more likely to store fat and less likely to burn it.
Ironically, drinking more water is the BEST remedy for water retention. When your body is low in water, you retain pockets of salt and water under the skin, as a defense mechanism. For your body does not know when it will get its next drink. This stored water and salt under the skin will create a puffiness and looks like fat. Drink plenty of distilled water or low sodium water and avoid high- sodium foods.
The FDA recommends limiting your intake of fat to 65 grams per day. By safely and carefully selecting your foods so that your fat consumption is about 30 grams per day, you can see a significant amount of weight loss, depending on your body mass index.
Your body expends a certain amount of calories upon digestion. Proteins are burned at the highest rate-20-25%, Carbohydrates 8-10%, and Fats only about 2%. This is known as the Thermic Effect of Food.
This fact cannot be stressed enough: EAT five or six small meals a day will prevent hunger pangs, provide constant energy, increase your metabolic efficiency, improving your fat lossing abilities and decrease your risk of heart attack.
Consume lean sources of protein such as skinless white meat poultry or fish, with fibrous water rich vegetables such as string beans, tomatoes, cucumbers. Protein shakes or meal replacement bars work well as one of your small meals. Be aware of the carbohydrates in most bars and shakes for they can be extremely high. Medium to low amounts of carbs 2-14 grams a bar is sufficient.
Reducing fat in the diet is an important component of weight loss. Foods with a high proportion of calories from fat should be eliminated or limited in the diet; these include red meat, poultry skins, dark poultry meat, fried foods, butter, margarine, cheese, milk (except skim milk), junk foods, and most processed foods. Vegetable oils should also be restricted, as should nuts, seeds, and avocados (although these foods are healthful for people who have no weight problem). Instead, the diet should be based on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and non-fat dairy products (and low-fat fish for non-vegetarians).
Hydrogenated oils are very bad, for two reasons. First reason is that hydrogenated fats are saturated fats, and saturated fats raise total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. Second reason is that hydrogenation also produces what are called “trans” fatty acids. Although these are unsaturated, with one double bond, they act the same as saturated fats. Some margarines are now available without trans fatty acids, these are better. a lot of convenience foods are made with hydrogenated fat, like cookies, crackers, etc. This increases the shelf life of the product but is bad for human life. Good question. We need labels that show amounts of trans fat as well as amount of hydrogenated fat.
A reduction of 25% of total calories will usually promote slow, steady weight loss. For some, weight loss is easier by changing the dietary content. By this, I mean reducing carbohydrates by 25%-30%. In my opinion, for the long-term, it is important not to increase fat when decreasing carbs. Most people who restrict carbohydrates tend to maintain the same total daily calories by increasing dietary fat. Avoid all breads and pastas (flour-containing carbs) and unprocessed sugars.
Avoid artificial sweeteners and synthetic fat substitutes and the foods made with them. They are unhealthy and not conducive to the kind of good eating habits you need to form in order to slim down and stay that way. Stevia is a natural sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar but contain NO calories. It is also safe for people with diabetes and hypoglycemics.
Eating adequate amounts of fiber is believed to be important for individuals wishing to lose weight. Fiber contains bulk and tends to produce a sense of fullness, which allows people to consume fewer calories. However, research on the effect of fiber intake on weight loss is conflicting. Some studies have shown that supplementation with a source of fiber accelerated weight loss in individuals who were following a low-calorie diet.
In another study, supplementation with a bulking agent called glucomannan (1.5 grams before breakfast and dinner) promoted weight loss in overweight individuals who were not following a special diet. However, other researchers found that increasing fiber intake had no effect on body weight, even though it resulted in a reduction in food intake. Different types of dietary fiber are available from a variety of sources, and the amount recommended depends on the kind being used. Individuals wishing to use a fiber supplement should consult with a nutritionist.
About the author
Andrew Pacholyk, MS, L.Ac. - http://www.Peacefulmind.com - Therapies for healing mind, body, spirit
