Achieving our ideal weight goes far beyond merely aesthetic issues. It improves our physical and emotional health. But you have to know how to lose weight without putting it at risk.
To lose weight there are always two options:
the fast and less healthy way in which we cut out foods and nutrients and lose weight in the short term but quickly regain it, or the slower, reasonable, and healthier way, in which a balanced diet is maintained, but restricting calories and spending more on the basis of exercise.
If you want to lose 15 kg, you should know that you can achieve it through a change in eating habits, physical activity, and proper management of daily activities in general. That you achieve a change in habits will not only help you lose body fat but will also allow you to maintain the correct weight, unlike extreme methods that only manage to make the situation worse due to the yo-yo effect.
Losing 15 kg in 7-8 months implies that you will make an average decrease of 500 g per week, which is recommended to avoid muscle loss and nutritional deficiencies.
Here are in HEALTHY and FITNESS we will discuss ways to reduce weight in a healthy manner.
Obesity Is A Serious Disease.
Taking into account that 1,900 million people are overweight and 650 million are obese. The normal Body Mass Index (BMI) has to be between 18.5 and 24.9. If the BMI is between 25 and 29.9, we are already talking about being overweight and if it exceeds a value of 30, it is obesity.
Being far from your ideal weight increases the risk of suffering all kinds of diseases, from cardiovascular diseases to cancer, through depression, anxiety, diabetes, bone disorders, digestive damage. The impact on physical and emotional health is enormous.
Therefore, it is normal that you feel the need to lose weight when you see that you may have an overweight problem. But beware. Losing weight has to be done in the right way. On the Internet, you can find many hoaxes and “miracle recipes” that promise to lose weight quickly. But in the long run, this takes its toll.
In today’s article, we will give you all the information you need to lose weight effectively, with long-lasting effects, and best tips perhaps not to have resulted in a couple of weeks, but to lose weight gradually, without doing anything, with lasting effects and preserving our health.
How Can I Lose Weight In A Healthy Way?
The world of nutrition is full of myths and it is common to find on the net, posts that talk about supposedly miraculous diets or that present advice without any scientific basis that promise to lose weight quickly.
But not only is it that all these pseudoscientific habits do not allow us to lose weight effectively and for a long time, but they can damage our health more than being overweight itself. When it comes to health, there is no room for hoaxes.
Therefore, in today’s article, we collect the best tips perhaps not to have resulted in a couple of weeks, but to lose weight gradually, without doing anything, with lasting effects and preserving our health.
Each and every one of the habits that we present here has been collected from the most recent scientific articles published in the most prestigious magazines specialized in nutrition. All of them applied together and on a regular basis, will help you lose weight in a healthy way. (Note: The order in which they are presented is totally random. They are all equally important). In nutrition, there is no magic. It’s just science.
1. Drink Water Before Meals
Some portals say that drinking water helps you lose weight as it has 0 calories. But this is not true, at least not at all. Water by itself does not help us lose weight, but if we drink before eating, we are likely to feel fuller and therefore eat less. The effect is almost negligible. But habit to habit, it all adds up.
2. You Choose Whether To Have Breakfast Or Not
There is a lot of controversy about whether it is necessary to eat breakfast or not. What is clear is that the claim that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is just a myth. It depends on each person. If you don’t have the habit of eating breakfast and you feel energized all morning, you don’t have to start doing it. If you are in the habit of eating breakfast, you don’t have to stop doing it because otherwise, you feel drained of energy.
3. Try Eggs In The Morning
If you have the habit of eating breakfast, eggs are a good option (as long as they are not eaten fried, of course), as they provide vitamins, proteins, and healthy fats and, in addition, they provide long-lasting energy so that you are no longer hungry in the morning.
4. Always Eat At The Same Times
It is very important to adjust the body’s metabolic clock. By always eating at the same times, we get the body to regulate energy expenditure, making more efficient use of calories.
5. Do Not Skip Meals
Skipping meals does not help you lose weight, it is more than proven. In fact, skipping meals will only make you much hungrier the next time and eat more than usual. Similarly, it is not true that you have to eat five times a day. It is better to eat more meals with less content than a few meals with a lot.
6. Fruits and Vegetables, The Mainstay Of The Diet
Fruits and vegetables, in addition to being a magnificent supply of vitamins and minerals, are very important for weight loss: they are satisfied but have few calories. Studies show that people who eat several pieces of vegetables a day lose weight faster and more effectively.
7. Exercise Regularly
To lose weight, you have to burn calories. For this, you have to do exercise. There is no exception. No matter your age, there is always some physical activity that can be done. Adults should get at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week, alternating aerobic activities (such as brisk walking or running) and anaerobic (lifting weights).
8. Sleep The Required Hours
At this point, there are no exact figures. Each person needs to sleep for certain hours. As a general rule, adults should sleep between 7 and 9 hours each day. What is very important is to follow healthy sleep habits. Sleeping excess or less can be dangerous to your health.
9. Drink Black Coffee
Coffee is quite demonized, but the truth is that, as long as it is taken black (the problem is the milk fats) and without sugar (and if we do not tolerate it without, with as little as possible), it is very important to lose weight. In fact, due to its properties, coffee increases the metabolic rate by up to 11%, which translates into an increase of up to 30% in fat burning.
10. Eat Foods Rich In Fiber
Fiber is a carbohydrate present in plant products that we are not able to digest. Therefore, it fills us up but does not add calories. It adds volume to the diet to fill us up but does not contribute to weight gain. Therefore, it is important to include wheat, whole grain products, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, potatoes.
11. Read Product Labels
It’s important to get into the habit of reading product labels. In this way, we can select the most nutritious and those with a lower content of prohibited nutrients (or, at least, those that we have to moderate a lot), which are basically saturated fats, sugar, and of course Trans fats.
12. Don’t Eliminate Whims
It is important not to eliminate from your diet the products that, despite being unhealthy, you like. Doing so will only make you link weight loss to negative emotions by not being able to eat what you want. As long as it’s in moderation, you can eat them. Your body can process them without a problem.
13. Eat From Smaller Plates
It may seem silly, but the truth is that changing our dishes can help us lose weight. If we use smaller plates, we will eat smaller portions. It is proven that our brain feels full as soon as the plate is finished.
14. No Alcohol
Alcohol greatly damages our physical and emotional health, but as far as today’s topic is concerned, it is also the worst enemy. Alcoholic beverages, in addition to having very high sugar content, provide empty calories. Therefore, if we want to lose weight, we must eliminate it almost completely.
15. Plan Your Menus Weekly
One of the worst nutritional habits is improvising the menu every day. It is that this induces us to opt for the simplest dishes that, unfortunately, are usually the least healthy. Spending some time on Sundays to plan the week’s meals we make sure that this does not happen. In addition, we can also include whimsical days to face the week in a more optimistic way.
16. Drink Green Tea
It is common to hear that green tea makes us lose weight. That’s not true. What it can do is, like coffee; stimulate the fat-burning metabolism. This is scientifically proven, although it must be borne in mind that it is not a miracle cure.
17. Moderate The Sugar
Sugar is a carbohydrate that is very easy to assimilate, which means that it gives you energy very quickly but it is very likely that you will not consume everything, so it has to be stored in the form of fat. Therefore, it is recommended that sugars do not represent more than 10% of caloric intake. In other words, you must ensure that only 10% of what we eat is sweet.
18. Eat Only When You Are Hungry
To lose weight well, you don’t have to go hungry. But you also don’t have to force yourself to eat meals certain time a day. Eating five times a day is a myth. You have to know your body and see with how many meals you satisfy your hunger but without feeling too full. They are three? They are four? They are five? Only you know. Now, as soon as you find the optimal number, stick with it.
19. Avoid Copious Dinners
What if we want to lose weight, we do not have to have dinner, which is, again, a myth. If you are hungry at night, eat. What you do have to avoid is eating too much dinner and, above all, doing it shortly before going to sleep. If you want dinner, let it be at least two hours before going to bed.
20. Snacks Between Meals
Some say that if we want to lose weight, we cannot snack between meals. This is totally untrue. Taking a “snack” between meals, as long as it is healthy (a handful of nuts or a piece of fruit), not only will not harm us, but it will also make us arrive less hungry at the main meal.
21. Don’t Miss Out On Any Nutrient
There are supposedly miraculous diets that, to lose weight, say that you have to do without certain nutrients. Low carbohydrate diets. Low protein diets. Low-fat diets. They do not agree, as it seems. But the truth is that to lose weight in a healthy way, those may do it quickly, but it is neither effective nor durable or healthy. You have to eat foods rich in carbohydrates (be careful with sugars), proteins (be careful with red meat, for its contribution of saturated fats), and fats (better unsaturated).
22. Don’t Count Calories
Counting calories are useless, as the calories your need no longer only depend on your metabolic rate, but on the activities, you do every day. It is not how much you eat, but what you eat and how fast you burn it. Even, do not weigh yourself every day or constantly think that you have to lose weight. Weigh yourself every week or two and think it’s a long-term job, you don’t let the weight change your mood or dominate your life.
23. Don’t Go Hungry
To lose weight, you don’t have to go hungry. The idea that to lose weight you have to starve is so established that it is normal for people to give up halfway. Maybe yes, to lose weight fast. But never, if we want to adopt a new healthy lifestyle. If you are hungry, eat. As long as what you eat is healthy, it’s great.
24. Avoid Sodas and Pastries
Soft drinks, sugary drinks, and industrial pastries are great enemies for those who are trying to lose weight. In addition to the fact that they do not provide nutrients due to their processing, they provide huge amounts of sugar. In just one can of soda, there is already more sugar than should be consumed in an entire day. Therefore, we must eliminate these products from our usual diet. There may be whims, of course, we have already said it, but they are not part of our usual diet.
25. Do Not Diet
The biggest obstacle to losing weight is putting the idea of ”I’m on a diet” in our heads. And it is that we assimilate this as an obstacle, a struggle, and something negative. To lose weight in a healthy way, you don’t have to diet. You have to adopt a healthier lifestyle, but you don’t have to punish yourself by thinking that you are on an authoritarian (pun intended) regimen.
26. Chew Slower
No, we are not kidding you. Studies show that chewing more slowly can contribute to losing weight. The contribution to weight loss may be very little, but it is about adding habits to make them synergistic. It not only gives your brain more time to send the signal of “you are full”, but also by digesting food better thanks to the enzymes in saliva, you can slightly reduce the total caloric intake.
