10 Lifestyle Adjustments Needed For Effective Weight-Loss

By James Spann


There are a lot of people who are looking for the perfect diet in order to lose weight. The sad truth is, most dieters fail. This is because the period of weeks or months spent on a reduced calorie diet is often followed by a return to your old bad habits. To keep the weight off, you need to make permanent lifestyle changes. A few proven strategies:

Make Daily Workouts a Habit.

By some estimates, you can develop a habit in as little as three weeks. The key is consistency. Schedule your workout at the same time every day. If you miss a day or two, get right back into the routine instead of giving up.

Include resistance training in your workouts. This adds lean, toned muscles to your body and also increases your metabolism. You will be able to lose more weight, and keep it off, in the long run. Strong muscles also enable you to move more efficiently as well as prevent injuries. Your workouts should also include cardio. Cardio workouts strengthen the heart and blood vessels and increase your endurance.

While you are working out, remember to rest no more than 30 seconds between strengthening exercises. This will dramatically result in greater calorie burn than resting longer than 30 seconds between exercises.

Cultivate a Physically Active Lifestyle

Walk to the corner store instead of driving. Swap the drive-through for parking and walking. Choose parking spaces far away from your destination and walk. Swap sedentary hobbies like gaming for active ones like skateboarding or gardening. By making your everyday life more active, you burn more calories and stay fitter.

Cook Much More In The Home.

Twenty-eight percent of Americans say that they don't know how to cook. If you are living on a diet of convenience food and take out, it's much harder to eat a wide variety of healthy foods. An individual should learn how to cook and shop for fresh food regularly in order to take control of his or her diet.

Avoid Late-Night Snacks

You should finish your last meal at least three hours before bedtime. While you are asleep, your metabolism decreases, and your body changes from burning fat to storing fat, which can result in weight gain and fluctuations in your sleep cycle. Plus, you may have to get up and urinate more. If you have to eat late, consume foods that are low in calories and high in whole grains.

One of the most important reasons why you should avoid eating late at night is due to the possible risk of weight gain associated with this habit. While many people are aware of the fact that eating late may contribute to weight gain, they are not always aware of how this can happen. Increases in your body weight during this period are caused primarily by changes in the rate at which your metabolism functions while sleeping versus waking hours. When you eat during the day, you are relatively active, and your metabolism is functioning rapidly. In contrast, during sleep, your metabolism has slowed a bit-and because of this, the food that you have recently eaten will be metabolized and digested at a much slower rate than if you had eaten during the day. This contributes to increases in body weight, and possible obesity.

Always Eat A Healthy Breakfast

Morning meal is the most important entree of the day. It provides you the necessary fuel to energize your day. Also, consuming a healthy breakfast could lessen appetite throughout the day. This allows individuals to make better healthy food selections throughout the rest of the day. Many people believe that missing breakfast will help them reduce calories. This is not true. Commonly, hunger gets the best of breakfast-skippers, and they consume additional calories at lunch and throughout the day.

Drink Plenty Of Water

Why is drinking a sufficient amount of water daily necessary for effective weight loss? Simply stated, water reduces the appetite and increases the body's capability to burn stored fat. Research has verified that insufficient water intake causes fat deposits to increase throughout the body, while sufficient amounts of water can decrease fat deposits.

This occurs because when you don't drink enough water, the kidneys cannot function properly. Hence, the liver has to step up and carry on some of the functions of the kidneys. One of the liver's main functions is chemically changing stored fat into energy for the body to use. But when the liver has to carry on some of the functions of the kidneys, it is not able to metabolize as much fat. Hence, less fat is burned, resulting in more weight gained. It is recommended that the average individual drink from 8 - 12 glasses of water a day. Increase this amount if you are a very active person.

Learn to Love Healthy Foods

If you are used to eating high-fat, salty, processed foods, a whole foods diet will taste strange to you at first. Learn a variety of healthful ways to prepare fresh foods. Instead of drowning broccoli in melted cheese or butter, toss it in olive oil before roasting it. Choose lemon juice, hot sauce and spices to add flavor instead of reaching for the salt. And, cut out the soda. Just removing highly sweetened drinks from your diet will help you adjust your tastes to prefer natural and healthy foods. You should eat every three to four hours throughout the day - 3 basic meals and 2 or more healthy snacks (fruit, nuts, dark chocolate, popcorn, peanut butter and crackers, etc.). This will keep your metabolism up, resulting in more calories burned than if you only ate 3 square meals, and, help to keep your appetite in check .

Plan An Incentive Day.

Increase your motivation to workout regularly and eat healthy meals by rewarding yourself at least once a week. This reward can be your favorite dessert, a weekend getaway, or attending a great play or musical.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep loss can result in weight gain. So, try to get six to eight hours of sleep a night. The weight gain is caused by the hormone, ghrelin, which increases whenever there is sleep loss. This hormone, along with others, stimulates the brain to crave more for fattening foods like French fries, chocolate chip cookies and other sweets.

Eat Mindfully

When we absent-mindedly snack on chips or cookies because we are anxious, bored or unhappy, we can take in hundreds of empty calories. When you sit down to eat, make the food the center of your attention. Savor each bite. Do not eat while watching TV or working. By engaging in mindful eating, you will find that you are more satisfied and eat less.

When it comes to weight-loss, the most vital factor to bear in mind is that lasting success will come when you decide to take on the way of life that will lead to you making the very best options connected to healthy and balanced diets and routine workouts. These options will inevitably determine the high quality of the rest of your life.




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