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Top 10 Weight Loss Tips |
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Top 10 Weight Loss Tips
1. Change your lifestyle. If you’re calling this a “diet,” then you’re going to gain all the weight back (and more) within a few months of losing it. Diets do not work. Diets are temporary. When you change your dietary lifestyle, however, you’re changing your habits – and you’re putting yourself on track for long-term, continued success and weight maintenance. Don’t ever tell anybody you’re on a diet – ever. You are not on a diet you are changing your habits and creating long term changes.
2. Start reading labels. You have to do it – and there’s no way to avoid this tip. If you don’t know what
you’re putting in your mouth, you are at the mercy of the big food corporations. They don’t really care about your health they just want to make money. Don’t assume, either – triple-check the ingredients list and serving sizes. You must rely on yourself for this; nobody else is going to be able to lose the weight. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it!
3. Eat more protein. I am yet to meet anyone that eats enough protein regularly. Eat protein at every meal and snack. It will stabilise your blood sugar levels and stop hunger and cravings. Protein is the building blocks for every cell in your body and your body will use it to improve your health and well-being.
4. Good fats are good! Not only are they good but they are ESSENTIAL. Your body cannot make good fats (EFA’s – essential fatty acids) – you have to eat them. If you are deficient if good fats it could lead to health issues such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, high triglycerides, rheumatoid arthritis, eczema, asthma, diabetes, depression and hormonal issues…just to name a few.
5. Eat small meals regularly. Eat every 3 hours, 5 meals a day. Make breakfast your biggest meal of the day and dinner your smallest. Remember the saying “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper” Starting the day without refuelling your body’s engine means poor concentration, irritability, low blood sugar and a dreadful craving for the biscuit or chocolate bar in the middle of the morning or at 4pm. Eating to much late at night and then going to bed leads to poor digestion, low absorption of nutrients and produces masses of toxins.
6. Drink adequate water. An oldie but a goodie! The amount of water that your body needs is dependant on your weight. A minimum is usually about 1.5lt a day – plus 1lt for every hour of exercise that you do. If you weigh more than 60kg add 500mls for every 15kg. Add lemon to your water to increase absorption. No, you can’t count tea (herbal is ok), coffee, juice or soft drinks – these will dehydrate you rather than hydrate you!
7. Know your body composition. Have a body composition analysis done to determine your muscle mass. If you do not have adequate muscle mass then you are always going to find losing weight difficult as it affects your metabolism. This way you can determine what type of exercise is best for you. Do you need to do more resistance exercise to build muscle or more cardio for fat loss? This can also help you to know what your meals should consist of – more protein to build muscle or less carbohydrate to burn fat.
8. Exercise for 3 hours a week. Do the type of exercise you love, one that isn’t too much of a chore for you to do regularly throughout the week. Don’t pick a routine that you don’t like – or you won’t want to do it, and you certainly won’t stick with it for long. Muscle weighs more than fat, but the last thing you want to lose is muscle! For this reason alone, it’s important to have a regular exercise routine somewhere in your schedule. Without exercise, your body is going to burn through muscle first – and you’ll wind up more imbalanced than you were to begin with. You want your body to burn fat, not muscle. You want to lose weight, but you want to lose “fat” weight – not muscle mass.
9. Don’t take a magic pill. There is no such thing as a magic pill. Don’t fall victim to the hype of the latest fat-burning drug commercial. If you listen or read closely, you’ll see that every single one of these things is effective when combined with proper diet and exercise (which they even state in their advertisements). The side-effects for these drugs are usually worse than your additional weight, anyway.
10. Sugar is bad for you. The more refined it is, the more your body is going to react negatively to it. If it’s sweet, it’s got sugar in it. There are all sorts of sugars out there, and all of them are ultimately metabolised by the body. Most sugar substitutes are more evil than sugar itself. These chemically-adjusted products are unnatural and affect your liver and weight! If you’re given a choice, it’s almost better to go with something your body knows how to deal with (real, unprocessed sugar) but remember it is still bad for you.
Disclaimer - Any general advice given in any article should not be relied upon and should not be taken as a substitute for visiting a qualified medical Doctor.
