How to Lose Weight

How to lose weight is the most common question asked by people who want to lose their weight but are not sure how to go about it. Fundamentally, losing weight is about burning more calories than you eat. This seems simple enough, but if it were really that simple, none of us would have a weight problem.

The healthiest way to reduce weight is neither fad diets nor long exercise sessions. Weight loss works on the simple philosophy of striking an optimal balance between eating healthy food and exercising regularly. Human body likes slow changes in terms of food and exercise. Though weight loss goals by most of us are usually set in term of weeks, the end game is to maintain these changes over months and years, hopefully maintaining the lifestyle change for life. Permanent changes in your lifestyle and food choices are what will work to remain healthy in the long run.

 

The following weight loss tips should help. If you follow then, it will certainly assist you to lose your weight effectively:

Burn More Calories than You Consume to Lose Weight: The tips that follow won’t work if you are consuming thousand more calories into your body on a daily basis than you are burning.

Healthy Diet: Eating a healthy and nutritious diet is most important factor to lose your weight other than exercise. We have a daily nutritional requirement that we have to meet and anything extra than this gets stored as fat.

- Prefer Complex Carbohydrates: Avoid processed and refined carbohydrates, e.g. white bread, white pasta, and sugary baked foods etc. and choose complex carbohydrates such as brown rice, oats, and legumes. Complex carbohydrates provide dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals, which decelerate digestion and make you feel fuller longer period. Refined carbohydrates are highly processed and often full of added sugars.

- Emphasize on Fruits & Vegetables: The high water and fiber content in most fruits and vegetables makes them hard to overeat. You’ll feel full long before you’ve overdone it on the calories.

- Don’t Drink Calories, Drink More Water: You can easily cut down your daily calorie intake by replacing soda, aerated drinks with water. Do not drink milk or fruit juice. The juicing process that turns actual fruits into juice actually removes the edible skin & fiber, which contains the majority of the nutrients of fruits and thus reduces the nutrients.

But Caution…!

- Fried vegetables or that have been soaked in heavy sauces are no longer low-calorie and don’t help to lose weight. Choose healthier cooking methods, such as steaming, and use low-fat dressings and spices for flavor.

- Salads are very good unless you soak them in high-fat dressing and toppings.

- Be careful when choosing the dried fruit, which is high in calories and, often, in added sugar. If you do choose to eat dried fruit, keep your serving size small.

Exercises: You may control your diet and eat as per your daily nutritional values but to burn the extra fat you will have to exercise.  In today’s busy world it is very hard to find time to go to gym or even go for a run. Start exercising at least 30 minutes per day. Regular exercise coupled with a healthy well balanced diet is enough to lose your weight successfully.

How Exercises Help in Losing Fat -

- Exercises increase the number of calories you burn each day.

- Exercises increase your metabolism as your body builds new muscle tissues. Muscles use more calories than fat even when at rest!

- Exercises help to use glycogen reserves which trigger the fat burning hormone called glucagon.

Don’t forget that you should focus on sports that increase your heart rate (aerobics). Every extra step you take helps to reduce weight. Always use the stairs instead of the lift.

For a week or so, keep an activity journal and use a calorie calculator or heart rate monitor to know how many calories you burn throughout the day.

Motivation: Diet and exercise are the most important but being motivated is equally required. When we are used to the habit of eating without any restrictions then following a fat free diet and no junk food makes us give up the resolution due to high desire. But once we are motivated nothing can stop us. See what motivates you, maybe celebrity fitness or some friends who worked out and got into shape or the best – a lifestyle makeover. High Motivation is among the most important how to lose weight tips.

Reduce Your Stress Level: Stress diminishes the efficiency of human body as well as the mind. Often, when people are stressed they conquer it by eating something sweet or something that suits their taste buds which don’t help in losing weight. While there are everyday stressful issues you cannot keep away from, there are certain things you can still do to reduce your stress.

- Avoid arguments; whenever you differ to someone then simply agree to disagree.

- Try not to think too much and if you feel yourself starting to tense up then just do some activity that can take away or reduce your stress level.

Get At Least 7 Hours Sleep a Day: Human body needs to recuperate and reboot itself to be energetic again. Irregular sleep patterns spoil the body cycle and reduce the efficiency and recovery time for the body. Lack of sleep makes people want more food, eating constantly and not be able to control hunger. The less you sleep each day, the more tired your body gets which leads to a desire for sweet and high carbohydrate foods to replenish the energy that is missing.

Downsize Your Kitchenware: A simple way to keep your food portions under control and to lose weight! Use smaller dishes, serve meals on a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, and use teaspoons instead of serving spoons to dish out. Using smaller bowls, plates, and containers can subconsciously influence how much you serve yourself.

Chew Your Food Thoroughly: Various studies have shown that the longer time you spend chewing your food, the lesser calories you consume. Chewing food for longer prevents over-eating, by giving the brain more time to receive signals from the stomach that it is full. This is good for digesting the food. Try chewing your food 30 to 40 times for every bite.

Avoid Distractions while Eating: When you do multi tasking during your meal times, your brain can’t focus on the amount of food that you consume and you are more likely to consume more calories than you requires. Try to avoid having food while working, watching TV, using a computer, reading or driving.

Do Not Abandon Your Favorite Foods: Although, it’s not practical to reduce your body fat while eating lots of food, cakes and sweets. Then how to lose weight by including your favorites? Well, it doesn’t mean that you can never have any treats; in fact you need to learn how to limit these foods to small size, e.g. for special occasions.

Many people do neglect that we all have different body types with different metabolism. So, you need to make sure that your weight loss program is individually tailored for you.

Anyone considering a weight loss plan for effective results should seek  advice from a reliable weight loss service – where the weight loss plan is customized to your needs, should have worked for other people (look for weight loss success stories), and should use the latest research to help you lose weight.

In case if you are looking for professional help to get you started on customized nutrition and exercise plans then write to us at fitness@fitho.in.

How to Manage Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is caused due to resistance developed by our body cells towards insulin produced by the body. This leads to a rise in blood glucose level as the cells natural tendency to absorb insulin as much reduces, preventing the body from using glucose effectively resulting in excess sugar levels in the body. Type 1 diabetes is genetic but Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease most commonly caused by obesity. The good news is that because Type 2 diabetes is not genetic and can be controlled, managed and sometimes even be reversed completely.

Recent study on diabetes suggests that you could reverse your diabetes to normal. That means you could balance you blood sugar levels in the body. The study by Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre at Newcastle University in England says that eating less calories about 600 per day for three months could reverse the diabetes. In the study 11 people with type 2 diabetes for four years were put on a 600 calorie diet with leafy green vegetables and liquid diet which reversed the diabetes of 7 people.

At Fitho we believe that you dont have to go on such a strict low calorie diet that can damage your daily nutrition intake. Read here to understand what is a  balanced diet and how it is essential for our healthy well being. Diabetes Type 2 can be controlled and managed through healthy diet and exercise without reducing the calorie intake to such low levels. A person diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes needs a special diet chart that ensures that mostly food with low glycemic index should be included. Here is a list of foods that you must include and also avoid.

5 High GI Foods                                              5  Low GI Foods

Potatoes                                                                  Green Vegetables

Rice                                                                           Lentils

Sweets                                                                      Fruits (Citrus)

Packaged Juice                                                     Oats

Pasta                                                                         Brown Rice

Lean Body Tips

You can get lean body as fast as you lose fat from your body and bring fat down to 10% of the body weight. Lean body mass is the weight of bones, organs and muscles in the body other than fat. Reduce the fat on the body and increase the muscle percentage for a leaner body with muscles.

Tips for lean body

Fat: Burn the fat in the body and get the fat percentage below 10%. Reducing fat from the body is important in getting a lean body. Quit eating fattening food and oily food.

Build Muscles: Building muscles will increase the lean body mass and also increase the metabolic rate to burn more fat in the body. Muscles will make the body toned and make you look fitter than usual.

Preloading: It is important to eat according to the body requirement because all the extra calories other than the daily body requirement gets stored as fat. Preload with water half an hour before the meal which will make you eat less along with portion control.

Nutrients: If you are looking for a ripped professional body then you need to balance the intake of protein, carbohydrates and sufficient vitamins and minerals. If there is more carbohydrates and protein in the diet than the body requirement then the extra calorie from them will be stored as fat. Read more

How to Reduce Weight

Reduce Weight by managing your diet and exercise. If you are over weight then it doesn’t mean that you have a disease and you need to go on a medication. Eating fat burners and  pills for weight loss will not be the ultimate step in reducing weight but you would gain it back in sometime. We spoke about liposuction and how one gains back the weight after an year at different places.

You have gained weight over a period of time by eating simply more than your body requirement. Suppose your daily caloric requirement is 1500 and you are eating 2000-2500 calories per day, then your body will save the rest 500-1000 calories as fat which adds on by time and becomes a problem.

Here are tips to reduce weight Read more

Food With Fat For Health Benefits

Fat has an important role to play in the smooth functioning of body just like how protein is important for muscle building, carbohydrates for energy and vitamins and minerals for other nutrition. The minimum requirement of essential fat for men is 2-5% and women is 10-12%, anything below which physical and psychological health would be effected. When one consumes fat more than the daily requirement it then it gets stored in the belly, thighs and all over the body. Fat helps in healthy cell function and keeps the skin healthy and stores energy in the body and provides 9 calories per 1 gm of fat.

Essential fat is required for brain functioning, bone marrows, central nervous system muscles and healthy functioning of the body

It provides cushion to internal organs of the chest and abdomen.  These essential fats are often confused with the bad fats that increase the LDL bad Cholesterol. Essential fats actually increase the HDL good cholesterol levels improving heart health and improves the flow of blood in the arteries.

Here is a list of Fatty foods for good health

 

Read more

Is Sugar Healthy

We all know sweets, chocolates, candies, ice creams and sweetened food contain high levels of sugar and therefore stay away from them as much as we can. Sugar is addictive and is also a good source of instant energy. Eating too much sugar is unhealthy and leads to excess fat storage and increase of insulin.

Although we limit ourselves from the most obvious forms of sugar there might be ‘sugar coated’ ways that you are consuming sugar. Here are a few example of not so healthy ways that we might be consuming sugar without really being aware. Read more

Health News – Aerobics, Yoga & Diet

As long as you do some aerobic activity for at least 30 minutes, 3-4 times a week, you can stop fat gain in its tracks and start on the road to a lean sexy body. Let’s look at the best aerobic exercises for achieving weight loss.

Low calorie regimes lead to the paradox that the less we eat, the more our survival instinct drives our bodies to lay down fat reserves for fear of malnutrition. Calorie intake has nothing to do Read more

Manage Menopause Weight Gain

Weight gain during menopause is a big concern for women. The menopausal phase triggers changes in body shape resulting on an average weight gain of about  5-10 kg. This weight is primarily  hormone related and has a direct impact on appetite, metabolism, and fat storage.  Therefore controlling weight during this time becomes extremely difficult due to fluctuating estrogen, testosterone, and androgen levels. These added kilos further aggravate depression and anxiety which in turns can bring on the hot flashes and disturbed sleep.

Estrogen plays a big role in menopausal weight gain especially as the estrogen levels decline with age as the body stops ovulating. Due to the decrease in estrogen levels produced by the ovaries, body searches for other sources to substitute the shortage of estrogen in the body. Meanwhile fat cells in our body have the natural capability to produce estrogen, hence the body starts restoring to these cells  to convert calories into fat to increase estrogen levels. Unfortunately fat cells don’t burn calories the way muscle cells do, which causes this unwanted Read more

Whey Protein- For Healthy Diet & Fat Loss

Protein helps build/maintain muscle and perform biological functions. The Indian diet is high on carbohydrates and low on protein, so most Indians actually do not get their daily protein requirement. Its even harder for vegetarians- an egg contains 6 grams of protein, and a glass of milk contains 8 gms. The daily recommended intake for protein is 56 gms for men and 46 gms for women.

Without enough protein in your diet, your body will eat into its own muscle for maintenance. This slows down your metabolism- so you burn fewer calories, and store more fat! Worry not- Protein powder can supplement your diet to ensure you get the recommended protein intake. One scoop of whey protein delivers 20-25 gms of high quality protein. Mix it with juice or milk, yogurt, fruits and you get a delicious, nutritious snack! Here’s a protein packed delicious dessert recipe.

If you play sports, workout or have a physically active occupation, your protein requirements are higher- they can vary from 1.5-2 gms per kg of body weight. So an 80 kg athlete might need to consume 120-160 gms of protein per day. That much protein is hard to get without protein supplements.

A recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition, found that over a 12 month period, participants on a moderately high protein diet lost as much as 38% more fat, than those who followed the USDA Pyramid guidelines- more on how protein helps reduce fat

Myth: Whey protein is only for ‘body builders’. Fact: its for anyone who wants to ensure that they’re getting enough protein in their diet.

Note that not all protein supplements is equal. To make sure you get high quality whey protein- buy from a reputed international brand. Whey protein is higher quality than soy protein. Currently, Indian protein brands produce lower quality protein as compared to international companies like MegaPro.