Trying hard to lose weight and getting frustrated if you’re not getting any results? A lot of people are faced with the same issue. So why does this happen and what can be done to help you lose weight?
Usually, this happens because of a few glitches in your weight reduction technique. Thankfully, these are issues which you can easily solve.
Here’s how.
You’re Avoiding Fats, Even the Good Ones!
You must be avoiding fats, which is a good thing. Margarine, specific cuts of meat, processed food and other such edibles are popularly known to contain dangerous saturated fats.
But among the whole arena of fats, there are some fats which are actually good for your health. Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats do not contribute to obesity and should be consumed in a healthy diet.
These fats behave in such ways inside your body that your stomach doesn’t feel hungry for longer periods of time. These fats also contribute to process vital vitamins inside your body.
Food items like avocados, nuts, coconut oils, and olives may be fatty, but they are good for your health. Salmon, mackerel and tuna also contain these good fats. These are foods that you can enjoy from time-to-time and stay healthy.
Say No to Fad Diets!
Fad diets are known to be highly ineffective and not a good solution for losing weight.
First of all, these diets are way too hard to keep up with. Secondly, even if you do successfully keep up with these diets and lose lots of weight, all of the lost weight will come back once you resume normal eating. The catch with such low-carb diets is that they are perfect only if you wish to follow them for your entire life.
Fad diets are unhealthy due to many reasons. These diets disallow you from eating a lot of healthy food. In some cases, complete groups of food are restricted. These restrictions increase the chance of your body behaving normally when processing the energy.
So no, fad diets are to be avoided for healthy and long-lasting weight loss.
Be Aware of Hidden Sugars
The first order of a healthy diet is to discontinue any sugar intake at all. After some time, doctors recommend that you start taking sugar but in monitored quantities.
The problem that arises here is that sugar is sometimes present in unexpected food items, that too in a hidden form. This hidden sugar intake adds to the monitored sugar intake in your body, exceeding the acceptable limits you’ve set for yourself.
For reference: Any product which has maximum 5g of sugars per 100g of serving is good to consume
Hidden sugar can be found in products such as:
- low-fat yogurt,
- protein bars,
- breakfast cereal,
- bottled juices and much more
Always get into a habit of making a note that before you start eating any such item, scan the ingredients list of these products and look for:
- maltose,
- fructose,
- evaporated cane juice,
- sucrose,
- corn syrup,
- molasses
The aforementioned items come into the category of hidden sugars.
Eating With Peace and Ease is Important
The heading may not be comprehensible for you, but it is very important. Eating with peace means that you:
- properly sit down for meal,
- chew your food fairly good before swallowing,
- eat in small portions.
After following the above instructions, make sure that you take around 20 minutes to eat. Why? Because if your stomach informs the brain that it is full in around 20 minutes of eating, you can’t speed up that process. But what you can do is that you can slow down your eating process. This way your stomach signals the brain that its full, and you haven’t overeaten till then.
Hormonal Imbalance is Possible
Hormones like thyroid, insulin, and estrogen have a close connection with your weight. Increased hormonal levels above standard hormonal levels of these hormones can easily increase your weight.
If you are suspicious of any such hormonal balance, please don’t hesitate to consult your doctor.
Low Consumption of Calories
Never mistake consumption of calories with the loss of weight. Calories, even though they cause one to go overweight in high quantities, are still crucial for your body. The take away here is that enough amount of calories must be supplied to the body.
Low calories can cause a red alert inside your body, resulting in you having a slow and lagging metabolism rate which can’t burn calories properly and optimally.
These effects can often make you feel dizzy and cause an annoying bunch of headaches every day. More dangerous outcomes of such situations are that your body will stop listening to you.
Yes, your brain will stop responding to your calls of consuming less calories and before you can get a hold of it, you will find yourself binge-eating on high-calorie foods.
Drink Water, Lots of It!
Drinking a lot of water to stay hydrated is a very healthy habit if you want to lose weight. Staying hydrated will boost your metabolism and cause it to process energy more efficiently.
If you feel like you’re hungry, drink a glass of water immediately. If you really are hungry, the hunger will return after 15-20 minutes. If it doesn’t return, you’ll realize that it was just thirst.
Try to avoid drinking caffeine rich drinks. They are very popular dehydrating agents.
Balance Your Sleeping Hours
Working people are always depriving themselves of sleep. Don’t do that, it is an open invitation to unhealthy habits inside your body.
Sleep deprivation causes an increase in cortisol levels and it also increases the production of ghrelin. Cortisol is a stress hormone and ghrelin makes your body crave for high-fat and sweet food items.
Sleep deprivation will also decrease leptin levels, a hormone which signals the brain that you’re not hungry yet. Sleeping is very important regardless of the fact that you’re are trying to lose weight or not.
Avoid Carrying Out One Exercise Forever
The brain has a special type of cache memory known as muscle memory. Professional musical instrument players (pianist, guitarist, violinist) are able to play their instruments without even looking at it. This skill is developed when the brain saves the muscle memory for each action and recalls it every time they play these instruments.
The same effect occurs when you follow the same set of exercises forever. The brain will record the muscle memory and soon, the body will not be challenged any more, your muscles will be doing minimal work and you will burn fewer calories.
Keep mixing up your exercise routine to keep your mind working hard on figuring out the right way of doing it, you won’t lose focus, and you will “feel that burn” every time you exercise.
That sweet pain tells you that you have challenged yourself to your limits and burnt a lot of calories.
Don’t Be Stressed Out
The body behaves strangely under stress. The levels of cortisol increase in our body. Cortisol is a hormone that saves up fats in your abdomen for later use.
So it’s important that you manage your stress to tone down the cortisol levels in your body.
