Losing Weight and Feeling Great

Archive for the ‘Weight Loss – Other’ Category

Whenever you join a diet club, or focus on any sort of healthy eating plan, lunch has the tendency to get skipped.  Everyone knows how important breakfast is; there is plenty of advice on snacking and an enormous number of ideas for dinner meals. And even desserts get their fair share of attention.

But lunch seems to be the red-headed stepchild (no offense to real red-headed stepchildren) when it comes to diet advice.  And it’s probably because well lunch is a problem.  It’s the meal you’re most likely to end up eating too much, or the wrong things.  Why? Because it’s the food that you have least amount of control over.

Consider this:  how many times have you eaten with friends out in a restaurant or even a fast-food location?  You aren’t at home, you don’t have the same kind of control you do for other times and places – which makes lunch planning an important step in weight loss.

Eating Lunch to Lose Weight

When it comes to eating lunch, you need to, plain and simple, plan ahead.

You need to learn what meals in various restaurants are healthy and helps stick to your diet, and which ones seem healthy but aren’t!  You may have to so some hunting around the area around your workplace for places that sell healthy, diet-friendly foods.

And Don’t Forget

Here’s a thought — you don’t really have to go and eat lunch in a restaurant.  You can bring your lunch.  Think about it — it helps you to control what you eat — both when it comes to items and amounts.  And there’s an added benefit of saving money!

Eating lunch to lose weight is actually an important part of your diet plan.  And remember to bring yourself a healthy snack as well, as you don’t want to eat your lunch as a mid-morning snack. 

We all know we’re supposed to drink plenty of water every day. It’s excellent for your skin, and it keeps your internal organs working smoothly. But did you also know that drinking more water can help you lose weight? It’s simpler than lifting weights and a whole lot cheaper than purchasing an elliptical machine.

Are You Drinking Enough?

Most people don’t drink enough water, which means they’re ordinarily dehydrated. When the body isn’t getting enough fluids, it does its best to retain water. The water it stores has to go everyplace, so it tends to get packed away where it makes unflattering bulges on your body–kind of like a camel! When you consistently drink more water, your body gets the thought that it doesn’t need to store water. By the way, if you’re worried about running to the bathroom more often, you’ll be pleased to know that this side effect wears off once your body gets accustomed to having all the water it needs.

Burn Calories Drinking Water

Drinking water helps burn more calories, too. Here’s why: The liver is reliable for metabolizing calories in your body, converting it to energy. Though, the liver also has the job of assisting overworked kidneys with their job of removing waste from your body. When you don’t drink enough water, the kidneys don’t function as well, which means your liver has to pick up some of the workload. When that happens, your liver can’t devote as much energy to metabolizing. Drinking plenty of water means your kidneys and liver have an simpler time doing their respective jobs, which leads to superior weight loss.

Finally, drinking water will encourage you to eat less. Most people are so used to being dehydrated that they mistake signs of thirst with hunger pangs. Instead of getting something to drink, they grab a muffin or a candy bar instead. Drinking water will cut down on snacking. Plus, drinking water previous to each meal will make you feel more full, which means you won’t eat quite as much.

There are oodles of other health repayment associated with drinking water, too. It can help clear up your skin, tighten your pores, and give you a healthy glow. You’ll also have more energy, and your joints will be well lubricated.

Drinking Water for Weight Loss

Get used to drinking more water, if at all possible eight to ten 8oz glasses a day. You don’t have to cut diet soda or coffee from your diet altogether; instead, you should commit to drinking two bonus glasses of water for every cup of soda or coffee you drink.  And if the taste of water isn’t appealing to you, add some lemon, or try flavored water instead.

And one more thing — always keep a bottle of water with you at all times!

If you have a jelly belly, you probably want to know how to lose abdominal fat.  Not to worry, you have plenty of company.  But just how can you lose belly fat, and be slimmer and trimmer?  Let’s take a look.

Losing Belly Fat is a Two-Way Street

There are two components to losing the spare tire, or making the muffin top into a sleek top.  And you probably don’t want to hear it, but here goes:

Diet and exercise.

Diet Isn’t a 4-Letter Word

OK, so maybe literally it is, but “diet” has so many negative connotations (like, “I’ll starve!”).

What this really means is to keep tabs on what you are eating, and how much.  In other words, cut back (way back in many cases) on the junk food, and focus on what your body really needs!

• Fat: Yes, you want to cut back on the fat you take in, but cut back does not mean cut out!  Your body needs a certain amount of fat in order to lose weight; it’s just too much that’s too much.  But just say no to anything with trans-fat in it.
• Carbs: Really, they aren’t the enemy.  Your body needs carbohydrates to function properly.  However, the carbs you need to be focusing on are the complex carbs found in veggies, fruits and whole grains.  Not bagels, chips, sugars or white rice.
• Protein: Protein can be a star in a weight loss plan, because it helps to build muscle.  And with the correct balance of protein to carbs, the weight loss can be accelerated.   Your best protein sources, though, are the ones that don’t involve fatty meats.
• Water: Most people overlook simply drinking enough water, so that your body doesn’t hoard it (also known as the dreaded water weight).  Take your body weight in pounds, divide that number in half, and that’s the minimum amount of water in ounces your body needs.  (In other words, if you weight 200 pounds, you should be drinking at least 100 ounces of water a day.)

So really, your diet is more of an eating plan to help the pounds to melt off, but still stay healthy.  And that’s a good thing when it comes to losing abdominal fat!

Exercise is Your Friend

Obviously, exercise that burns calories helps you to lose weight — which includes the excess weight around your abdomen.  So some sort of aerobic exercise is in order.  But it doesn’t matter what that exercise is; just that it keeps your heart rate up.  Dance around your living room if that’s what pleases you!

Next is strength training, which crucial for bumping up your metabolism.  Aerobic exercise burns a lot of calories in a short period of time, but strength training helps your metabolism burn faster, day in and day out (including when you sleep).  Strength training can be as simple as using exercise resistance bands, all the way up to the bowflex home gym.

And of course, there are the abdominal exercises.  One great way to get a sleek middle is to do exercise ball ab workouts!  Not only does an exercise ball support your back better, but you get a bonus workout because your muscles constantly shift in order to keep you in balance.

Lose Abdominal Fat

You’ve now seen the two-fold way to lose abdominal fat and get a sleek core.  One without the other will be make things more difficult to lose belly fat.

If you want to know how to lose weight and keep it off, you’ll need to realize one thing — and that these are two different goals!  And as such, they have different approaches.  Here’s what I mean.

Losing Weight Fast – Not!

When you finally decide you’re going to lose weight, you want it gone — fast!  But here’s the problem.  When you lose weight fast, you’re not changing your eating pattern, except temporarily.

By losing weight more slowly, you are giving new habits (hopefully healthier habits) to form.  And it’s these new habits that can help you keep the weight off.

I do want to mention one thing, though — when you start a new diet, you may indeed lose weight fast for a short while, then level out to a slower rate.  This is normal.  The “fast” I am talking about is continually keeping your body on an accelerated weight loss.

And just to give you a number, anything above 2 pounds a week continually is too fast.

Keeping It Off

This is usually harder than losing the weight in the first place — keeping it off.

On a weight loss plan (a.k.a. diet), you know what you should and shouldn’t eat.  But once you reach your goal and go off that diet — whoa!  The whole world is your oyster, so to speak.

Here’s where the “keep it off” part of how to lose weight and keep it off comes into play.  If you’ve given your body and mind a chance to form new, healthy eating habits, you’ll find it much easier to stay at your goal.

But if you’ve been on a “diet” mentality, you’re going to find it much easier to fall back into the old bad habits that got you into trouble in the first place!

Here’s a tip.  Keep on weighing yourself once a week and if you move up by 5 pounds, time to go back on that weight loss diet.  Catching it at 5 pounds is much easier to handle than waiting until that 5 pounds moves to 15…or 50!

How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off

So how to lose weight and keep it off once you’ve reached your goal isn’t as tough if you’ve found a healthy weight loss plan that lets you lose weight slowly and creates good new habits.

But you will need to monitor your weight for the rest of your life, in case those bad habits start creeping back.  And losing 5 pounds, which can usually be done in a few weeks, is much easier than if you wait until that 5 pounds is a lot more!