[ad_1]
In a previous post, I talked about the reasons Why you are overweight—genes, your environment, and the food you eat.
In today’s post, I’ll be discussing ways you can help yourself achieve a healthy weight despite these factors, especially the ones beyond your control like genetics and part of your environment.
The weight loss market has over the years become a multi-million dollar one with intervention programs, prescriptions, pills, and products massively shifted to people who are frantic about their weight.
Fasting, starvation, dieting, and extreme exercise have been promoted as being answers to the issue of excessive weight gain and being overweight. However, how much of this has been helpful?
If these options are as helpful as they have been marketed to be, how come we still have people struggling secretly and openly with the problem of being overweight?
How do you identify which option is right and healthy for you? How do you lose weight without losing your health in the process?
One thing you should be able to understand, dear reader, is that weight loss is not just about dieting and exercising.
It shouldn’t just be about shedding unwanted weight; it should also be about being healthy.
Before I continue, I’d like to talk a little about the very familiar and bastardized concept of dieting.
I don’t think I’ve met any overweight person who hasn’t been given “dieting advice”. If you haven’t received this advice, hands in the air!
On the occasions where I’ve listened to someone market dieting, one thing usually stands out:
Dieting=Massive reduction in food quantity plus a cup of a “special” weight loss tea taken every day.
While dieting is not exactly bad for weight loss because it is quite effective, it is important to know that it is usually a short-term intervention.
This means that dieting works the fastest when it comes to weight loss, but can only last that far.
Once it is stopped (which usually occurs when the unnecessary weight is shed), certain processes within the body that were suppressed during the diet period will bounce back, and you will end up gaining back the lost weight faster than you could imagine.
That’s why it’s like a cycle, one that leads to frustration.
Overweight—Diet—Weight loss—Regular food. Rinse. Repeat
My point is, before you sign up for that dieting program, you should ask yourself this question.
Can I continue this for the rest of my life?
If the answer is yes, then by all means, go ahead. But if you’re unsure or your answer is no, then you need to have a rethink.
Weight loss is not about the things you do; it is about how often you do those things.
Achieving a healthy weight by weight loss is about sustainability.
Whatever tips you employ to lose weight, you must ensure that they are things you see yourself doing repeatedly for a long time. It is about habits.
You said you had tried everything. But have you really? By everything, do you mean you signed up for an exercise class and figured out it wasn’t working after just 2 weeks? Then you took off to try out dieting, and after 3 months of little to no results, you dropped it?
Is that your everything? Attempts at exercising and dieting? What have you tried and how long did you follow that program? What habits have you formed consciously that have helped you lose weight?
Maybe you’ve truly tried everything and they didn’t help much. Then it’s your genes. But, you aren’t going to let your genes stop you from having a healthy weight.
And that’s why you are going to help your genes do what they usually do—burn your calories.
Like I wrote earlier, genes are beyond your control, but you can develop habits that will help you burn calories faster than usual. This is the process of increasing your metabolism.
Here are 5 simple methods of increasing your metabolism.
- Drink water: Water has been found to burn calories in the process of heat generation for the body.
Drinking more water leads to the breakdown of available calories to generate heat for the body.
- Eat foods rich in protein: Foods rich in protein help you feel full faster, thus helping you consume fewer calories.
They also have a high thermic effect of food (TEF), which just means that proteins require a large amount of energy to be completely digested and absorbed into the body. This energy is gotten from burning already existing calories.
- Learn to move your body: You shouldn’t sit or lie still everyday of your life. Get up, move around.
It can be as simple as climbing the stairs, jogging your compound (if you have one), standing up for a while before sitting down, or taking a walk.
These activities involve energy, which is produced from the burning of calories.
- Don’t starve yourself: If you’ve been doing so, you should stop. At first, starving yourself may work, but after a while, it stops working.
In fact, it is counterproductive, especially as you’re looking to burn up calories. Eating less (dieting) is usually prescribed for weight loss. However, starvation is different.
In starvation, you eat so little that your body barely finds enough calories to work for the day. If this continues, your body will go into starvation mode.
In starvation mode, your body reduces the rate at which it burns calories in order to preserve some vital organs like the brain and protect you from death by starvation. You see why this won’t work, right?
- Eat a balanced diet: A balanced diet supplies you with all the necessary nutrients required to be healthy while you lose weight.
Whatever it is you do, make sure it is a deliberate action you take every day that becomes a habit to help you lose unwanted weight and maintain a healthy one.
Healthy weight doesn’t come in a day; it takes discipline and consistency to achieve it.
This was a long one, but I hope you found it very useful. For further health insights, follow me or subscribe.
I’m sure there’s a piece of information somewhere in my catalog that would be helpful to you.
Till next time
Bye💜🌱
[ad_2]
Source link
