Learn to Lose Weight Successfully

You can lose weight successfully without putting it back on after some time. Our diet guidelines will assist you to avoid diet weaknesses thereby experiencing a sustainable weight loss.

Which is the ideal diet for a good weight loss?

Many diet and recipe books will claim to have the most answers to sustainable weight loss to last for a long time. Others contend that the solution is eating less food and engaging in more exercises, or that low fat is the best method to follow and some others claim that the best way is to reduce carbs. Question: Which route should you believe and follow?

You need to understand that there is no universal solution for a successful and healthy weight loss. Individuals are different, which means that a method that works for you may not work for another person. This because our bodies respond in different ways to different types of food owing to our genetics as well as other health variances. You, therefore, need to exercise a lot of patience in order to work out the ideal method of weight loss that meets your needs. Also, you will have to be committed and be ready for various experiments with different diets before you get the ideal one for you.

Meanwhile, some individuals react positively to calorie counts as well as other restrictions with their diets. However, other people will respond better by availing themselves more freedom while planning their weight-loss systems. Such people may simply stay away from fried food diets or reduce refined carbs and eventually be successful in their weight loss journey.

In this case, you have to avoid being discouraged by the fact that a diet that worked for your friend or neighbour didn’t work for you. Also, avoid blaming yourself if a diet happens to be too restrictive for you to sustain. At the end of the day, a diet is only suitable for you when it’s one that you are able to maintain over a long time.

Please take note of the fact that while there’s no shortcut to losing weight, there are many measures you can follow to develop a healthier relationship with your diet, reduce emotional triggers to overeating, and realise a healthy weight.

Famous weight-loss strategies

1. Reduce Calories

Many experts claim that successfully managing your weight is enabled by a simple equation: If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. This sounds easy, right? But why is losing weight so difficult?

Weight loss can't be a linear event over time. When you reduce calories, you may lose weight for a few weeks, for instance, and then something changes. Soon you eat the same number of calories but you lose less weight or no weight at all. This is due to the fact that when you lose weight you lose water and lean tissue as well as fat, your metabolism slows, and your body responds in a different way. In order to continue losing weight each week, you need to continue cutting calories.

A calorie is not simply calorie. When you eat 100 calories of high fructose corn syrup, for instance, it can affect your body in a different way as compared to eating 100 calories of broccoli. The solution for sustained weight loss is to get rid of the foods that are packed with calories without making you feel full (say candy) and replace them with foods that fill your belly without being loaded with calories (such as vegetables).

Many people don’t always eat just to satisfy hunger. We tend to also indulge in eating food for comfort or to relieve stress, which can quickly jeopardise any weight loss plan.

2. Reduce Carbs

An alternative way of looking at weight loss identifies the problem as not involving the consumption of too many calories, but rather the way the body accumulates fat after consuming carbohydrates, especially the role played by the hormone insulin. When you eat food, carbohydrates from the meal enter your bloodstream as glucose.

In order to keep your blood sugar levels in check, your body always burns off this glucose before it burns off fat from a meal. When you eat a carbohydrate-rich meal (for instance, lots of pasta, rice, bread, or French fries), your body releases insulin to help in dealing with the influx of all this glucose into your blood.

Apart from regulating blood sugar levels, insulin does two other things: It prevents your fat cells from releasing fat from the body to burn as fuel (because its priority is to burn off the glucose) and it creates more fat cells for storing everything that your body can’t burn off.

This results in weight gain and your body now require more fuel to burn, so you eat more. As insulin only burns carbohydrates, you will crave for carbs and so now begins a vicious cycle of consuming carbs and gaining weight. In order to lose weight, the reasoning goes, you need to break this cycle by reducing carbs.

Most low-carb diets recommend replacing carbs with protein and fat, which could have some negative long-term effects on your health. However, if you do try a low-carb diet, you can reduce your risks and limit your intake of saturated and trans fats by choosing lean meats, fish and vegetarian sources of protein, low-fat dairy products, and eating plenty of leafy green and non-starchy vegetables.

3. Reduce Fat

Fat is a mainstay of many diets: if you don’t want to get fat, don’t eat fat. Walk down any grocery store aisle and you’ll be bombarded with reduced-fat snacks, dairy, and packaged meals. But while our low-fat options have increased, so have obesity rates. Why haven’t low-fat diets worked for many people?

You need to note that not all fat is bad. Healthy or “good” fats can actually help to control your weight, as well as manage your moods and fight fatigue. Unsaturated fats found in avocados, nuts, seeds, soy milk, tofu, and fatty fish can help fill you up, while adding a little tasty olive oil to a plate of vegetables, for example, can make it easier to eat healthy food and improve the overall quality of your diet.

Very often we make the wrong trade-offs. Many of us make the mistake of swapping fat for the empty calories of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Instead of eating whole-fat yoghurt, for example, we eat low- or no-fat versions that are packed with sugar to make up for the loss of taste. Or we swap our fatty breakfast beef for a muffin or doughnut that causes rapid spikes in blood sugar.

4. Follow the Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet emphasizes eating good fats and good carbs along with large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, fish, and olive oil—and only modest amounts of meat and cheese. The Mediterranean diet is more than just about food, though. Regular physical activity and sharing meals with others are also major components.

Control Emotional Eating

Whatever weight-loss method that you try, it’s important to stay motivated and avoid common dieting pitfalls, such as emotional eating.
We don’t always eat simply to satisfy hunger. Very often, we turn to food when we’re stressed or anxious, which can wreck any diet plan and pack on the pounds. Do you eat when you’re worried, bored, or lonely? Do you snack in front of the TV at the end of a stressful day? Recognizing your emotional eating triggers can make all the difference in your weight-loss efforts.

If you eat when you’re:

Stressed – find healthier ways to calm yourself. Try yoga, meditation, or soaking in a hot bath.

Low on energy – find other mid-afternoon pick-me-ups. Try walking around the block, listening to energizing music, or taking a short nap.

Lonely or bored – reach out to others instead of reaching for the refrigerator. Talk to a friend who makes you laugh, take your dog for a walk, or go to the library, mall, park or anywhere there are people.

Practice mindful eating instead

Avoid distractions while eating. Try not to eat while working, watching TV, or driving. It’s too easy to mindlessly overeat.

Pay attention. Eat slowly, savouring the smells and textures of your food. If your mind wanders, gently return your attention to your food and how it tastes.

Mix things up to focus on the experience of eating. Try using chopsticks rather than a fork, or use your utensils with your non-dominant hand.

Stop eating before you are full. It takes time for the signal to reach your brain that you’ve had enough. Don’t feel obligated to always clean your plate.

Stay motivated

Permanent weight loss requires making healthy changes to your lifestyle and food choices. To stay motivated:

Find a cheering section. Social support means a lot. Programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers use group support to impact weight loss and lifelong healthy eating. Seek out support—whether in the form of family, friends, or a support group—to get the encouragement you need.

Slow and steady wins the race. Losing weight too fast can take a toll on your mind and body, making you feel sluggish, drained, and sick. Aim to lose one to two pounds a week so you’re losing fat rather than water and muscle.

Set goals to keep you motivated. Short-term goals, like wanting to fit into a bikini for the summer, usually don’t work as well as wanting to feel more confident or become healthier for your children’s sakes. When temptation strikes, focus on the benefits you’ll reap from being healthier.

Use gadgets to track your progress. Smartphone apps, fitness trackers, or simply keeping a journal can help you keep track of the food you eat, the calories you burn, and the weight you lose. Seeing the results as they happen can help you stay motivated.

Get plenty of sleep. Lack of sleep stimulates your appetite so you want more food than normal; at the same time, it stops you feeling satisfied, making you want to keep eating. Sleep deprivation can also affect your motivation, so aim for eight hours of quality sleep a night.

Cut down on sugar and refined carbs

Whether or not you’re specifically aiming to cut carbs, most of us consume unhealthy amounts of sugar and refined carbohydrates such as white bread, pizza dough, pasta, pastries, white flour, white rice, and sweetened breakfast cereals. Replacing refined carbs with their whole-grain alternatives and eliminating candy and desserts is only part of the solution. Sugar is hidden in foods as diverse as canned soups and vegetables, pasta sauce, margarine, and many reduced fat foods. Since your body gets all it needs from sugar naturally occurring in food, all this added sugar amounts to nothing but a lot of empty calories and unhealthy spikes in your blood glucose.

Less sugar can mean a slimmer waistline

Calories obtained from fructose (found in sugary beverages such as soda and processed foods like doughnuts, muffins, and candy) are more likely to add fat around your belly. Cutting back on sugary foods can mean a slimmer waistline as well as a lower risk of diabetes.

Fill up with fruit, veggies, and fibre

Even if you’re cutting calories, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to eat less food. High-fibre foods such as fruit, vegetables, beans, and whole grains are higher in volume and take longer to digest, making you feel full and are great for weight-loss.

It’s generally okay to eat as much fresh fruit and non-starchy vegetables as you want—you’ll feel full before you’ve overdone it on the calories. Eat vegetables raw or steamed, not fried or breaded, and dress them with herbs and spices or a little olive oil for flavour.

Add fruit to low sugar cereal—blueberries, strawberries, sliced bananas. You’ll still enjoy lots of sweetness, but with fewer calories, less sugar, and more fibre.

Bulk out sandwiches by adding healthy veggie choices like lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts, cucumbers, and avocado.

Snack on carrots or celery with hummus instead of high-calorie chips and dip.

Add more veggies to your favourite main courses to make your dish more substantial. Even pasta and stir-fries can be diet-friendly if you use less noodles and more vegetables.

Start your meal with salad or vegetable soup to help fill you up so you eat less of your main meal.

Take charge of your food environment

Set yourself up for weight-loss success by taking charge of your food environment: when you eat, how much you eat, and what foods you make easily available.

Cook your own meals at home. This allows you to control both portion size and what goes into the food. Restaurant and packaged foods generally contain a lot more sugar, unhealthy fat, and calories than food cooked at home—plus the portion sizes tend to be larger.

Serve yourself smaller portions. Use small plates, bowls, and cups to make your portions appear larger. Don’t eat out of large bowls or directly from food containers, which makes it difficult to assess how much you’ve eaten.

Eat early. Studies suggest that consuming more of your daily calories at breakfast and fewer at dinner can help you drop more pounds. Eating a larger, healthy breakfast can jump-start your metabolism, stop you feeling hungry during the day, and give you more time to burn off the calories.

Fast for 14 hours a day. Try to eat dinner earlier in the day and then fast until breakfast the next morning. Eating only when you’re most active and giving your digestion a long break may aid weight loss.

Plan your meals and snacks ahead of time. You can create your own small portion snacks in plastic bags or containers. Eating on a schedule will help you avoid eating when you aren’t truly hungry.

Drink a lot of water. Thirst can often be confused with hunger, so by drinking water, you can avoid extra calories.

Limit the number of tempting foods you have at home. If you share a kitchen with non-dieters, store indulgent foods out of sight.

Get in Motion

The degree to which exercise aids weight loss is debatable, but the benefits go way beyond burning calories. Exercise can increase your metabolism and improve your outlook which is something you can benefit from right now. Go for a walk, stretch, move around and you’ll have more energy and motivation to tackle the other steps in your weight-loss program.

If you lack time for a long workout, three 10-minute spurts of exercise per day can be as good as one 30-minute workout.

Find an exercise you enjoy. Try walking with a friend, dancing, hiking, cycling, playing Frisbee with a dog, enjoying a pickup game of basketball, or playing activity-based video games with your kids.