Reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is important for overall health, helping to prevent and control many diseases and conditions. Losing extra weight is critical for lowering your risk for developing heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, and certain cancers. This article provides comprehensive tips and strategies for embarking on a successful weight loss journey.
The Fundamentals of Weight Loss
Weight loss involves creating a calorie deficit, but it requires more than just eating fewer calories daily. No two weight loss journeys are the same, so there’s no one-size-fits-all way to shed pounds. Weight loss can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including genetics, environmental influences, metabolism changes, and emotional disturbances. Plus, other factors can add to the difficulty. For example, unrealistic expectations and lack of support can make it difficult to stay committed to your weight loss goals.
Balanced Diet: The Cornerstone of Weight Loss
Maintaining a balanced diet is fundamental to achieving and sustaining weight loss. When you eat a variety of nutrient-rich foods, your body gets the essential vitamins, minerals, and energy it needs to function optimally. When creating a healthy eating plan, focus on achievable weight loss goals rather than drastic changes.
Portion Control
Controlling portion sizes is key to managing calorie intake. Use smaller plates to visually trick your mind into feeling satisfied with less food. It's hard to keep track of how much we eat. But a lot of research shows that when we keep track of intake, we eat less.
Incorporating Fruits and Vegetables
Fruits and vegetables are high in fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants. They provide a sense of fullness with fewer calories, helping control overall calorie consumption. Eat mostly fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and dairy.
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Choosing Lean Proteins
Lean proteins like chicken, turkey, fish, tofu, and legumes are essential for muscle maintenance during weight loss.
Staying Hydrated
Staying hydrated is often overlooked but is crucial for overall health and weight loss. Drinking water before meals can help control appetite, and sometimes, thirst is mistaken for hunger. Your body is about 60% water, so drinking plenty of water maximizes your ability to metabolize foods. Good hydration also increases body fat metabolism and decreases appetite.
The Power of Physical Activity
Regular physical activity is crucial for weight loss and achieving a healthy weight. Engaging in physical activity helps burn calories, contributing to a calorie deficit essential for meeting your weight loss goals. Regular exercise also boosts metabolism, helping the body burn more calories efficiently even at rest. This can support weight loss efforts by promoting a higher calorie expenditure throughout the day. It's important to establish an achievable fitness plan that aligns with weight loss goals. Engage in activities you find the most enjoyable, especially if they allow for group classes or exercising with a friend.
Establish An Achievable Fitness Plan
Assess Your Lifestyle Habits. Body weight is affected by more than calories in versus calories out. Identify lifestyle habits that trigger weight gain and may derail select health goals. Common habits that may affect weight loss efforts include poor sleep hygiene, stress, dehydration, and poor mental health care.
Minimizing Screen Time and Sedentary Behavior
Prolonged screen time often leads to a sedentary lifestyle, where you may spend long periods of time sitting. Screen time is also associated with mindless snacking or eating. Establish specific time limits for daily screen use, including social media, TV, and video games. Finally, not every room in your home needs to have a computer or TV.
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Increase Your Daily Activity and Exercise
Exercise is a critical component of weight loss for many people. Creating an engaging and realistic workout routine can help you lose weight gradually and build lean muscle mass. For example, rather than jumping into 10,000 steps per day, start with 2,000 steps and increase it by 1,000 each day. Moving in frequent, short bouts throughout the day can help you keep your blood sugar stable.
The Role of Sleep in Weight Management
Adequate and quality sleep is arguably the most important component of a successful weight loss journey. Lack of sleep can affect various aspects of physical and mental health, directly impacting weight management. Sleep plays a vital role in regulating hormones related to hunger and satiety, such as leptin and ghrelin. Quality sleep also supports proper metabolic function, aiding in the efficient processing of nutrients. Establishing a consistent bedtime routine is crucial to getting adequate sleep. Plan to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, even on weekends. Make the bedroom conducive to sleep by keeping it cool, dark, and quiet. Avoid screens before bedtime, as the blue light emitted can interfere with the production of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Optimize Your Sleep Hygiene
Adequate sleep is essential to our overall health and necessary for many bodily functions. Not getting enough sleep can increase your risk of developing serious health conditions, affect your mental health, and lead to weight gain.
Professional Guidance and Support
The Center for Metabolic Surgery and Bariatric Care offers a medical weight loss program dedicated to helping you reach and maintain a healthy weight. For those who have struggled with severe obesity and its associated health risks, bariatric surgery is a potential solution. Doctors at Loyola use your health, weight severity and weight goals to develop a plan specific to your individualized needs and to gauge your progress. While traditional weight loss methods, such as diet and exercise, work for many individuals, there are cases where these approaches may not yield the desired results of reducing the risk of serious health conditions. These surgeries may sound complicated, but they are fairly common procedures that many have used to help them lose weight. However, know that bariatric surgery is not a quick fix but a tool to assist in weight loss. Post-surgery, individuals must commit to significant lifestyle changes, including dietary modifications and regular physical activity. Dr. Kevin Brown is a general and bariatric surgeon, specializing in minimally-invasive options for patients.
Consult a Pro
Losing weight can be challenging on your own. Healthcare professionals and certified personal trainers offer science-backed guidance and support from someone who isn’t family or a friend. A registered dietitian can help you calculate your macronutrient needs to ensure you’re meeting your daily requirements while also working toward your weight or fat loss goal.
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Thirteen Weight-Loss and Fitness Tips
- A calorie deficit is the only diet for weight loss: Eating less calories is all you need to do. You don’t need to only eat cheese or meat or stop eating bread or carbs or any food that you enjoy. Just limit your input of healthy heavy calories. And eat naughty calories occasionally in moderation. Pair this with increasing your output and it’s guaranteed success to burn fat and lose weight. Eat less. Move more.
- There is such a thing as too big a calorie deficit: Don’t interpret “eat less” as “eat little.” If you starve yourself you’re going to end up snacking or binging and giving up on eating healthy.
- Tracking calories isn’t as hard as you think it is - do it yesterday: Just use the free calorie calculator. Enter your age, gender, height, weight, and activity levels. Shave off 10% of your maintenance calories, then plan your meals and start tracking.
- Don’t overthink macros -focus on protein, carbohydrates, and fats: Aim for 50% of your daily intake to be protein, then 25% carbohydrates and 25% healthy fats. Eat real, whole foods and make healthy decisions. You don’t need to cut out carbs. My experience has shown that fats are sneakier and easier to overload on. Eat healthy carbs and fats like wholemeal bread, oats, fruits, nuts, and vegetables in moderation.
- Once you’ve tracked, you don’t need to do it all the time: Say you stick with it for 12 weeks, afterwards, you’ll be able to make smart intuitive decisions about types of food and portion sizes.
- You only need to train 3-4 days a week: You can find 3-4 windows of 45 minutes each week for some form of exercise.
- If you want to build muscle, you need to weight or strength train: Building muscle provides extra benefits on top of aesthetics. You’ll be more competent and capable with everyday tasks like carrying groceries and moving furniture. And beating up younger versions of yourself in hypothetical time travel scenarios.
- Prioritise training to failure over rep count: Start with failure as your guiding principle. This will allow you to gauge your development and increase your volume over time.
- Perfect the art of progressive overload: The aim of training is to gradually increase your capabilities over time.
- Focus on form before ego: Do those 10 bicep curls with 12.5kg again but this time concentrate on making each rep last five seconds on the way up and the way down. Do this until those 10 extremely slow reps don’t feel like enough anymore. Then when you bump up the weight, carry over the focus on form.
- Don’t be one of those cardio-skipping gym bros: Treat it as a lifestyle goal. And if you can regularly run 5-7km at a pace of 5-6 minutes per kilometre, your heart and life will be happier for it, I promise you.
- Cardio can simply be a daily average of 10k steps: Regular strolling is solid cardio for your heart health.
- Rest is just as important as work! When you’re asleep, your body eats fat, recovers, and builds muscle. If you’re sleeping poorly, you’ll hit a ceiling on your muscle building and weight loss. You’ll also struggle with motivation to train and eat well.
Six Weight Loss Nutrition Tips
- Indulge in Fiber: Fiber keeps you fuller for longer, helping to satiate your hunger and reduce the risk of overeating at your next snack or meal.
- Get Adequate Amounts of Protein: Our bodies use protein to build muscle, bones, and skin.
- Limit Processed Foods: Highly processed foods tend to be high in sugar or sodium.
- Monitor Calorie Intake and Portion Sizes: Calorie counts don’t often support sustainable weight management; however, it’s important to monitor your portion sizes and calorie trends.
- Avoid Empty Calories: Opt for nutrient-dense foods that provide calories and other essential nutrients, like fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean proteins.
- Minimize Added Sugars: Added sugar may help the product taste better, but it doesn’t offer many health benefits.
Identifying Your Triggers
Knowing your triggers can be a game changer. What causes you to eat when you’re not truly hungry? Triggers can stem from environmental, emotional, and social, often derailing your focus and slowing down your progress. Make note of instances that overshadow your weight loss goals, and try to set yourself up for success by avoiding those triggers.
Environmental Triggers
Seeing and smelling foods can make you want to eat, even when you’re not hungry.
Emotional Triggers
Sometimes triggers are emotional. Examples of emotional triggers include: Grabbing a salty, high-calorie snack when you’re stressed, mindlessly eating after an upsetting phone call or message.
Social Triggers
Social triggers can be hard to break because they commonly involve other people. To control triggers and avoid temptation, avoid buying high-calorie, processed foods that offer little nutritional value. Stock your kitchen with nutrient-dense, delicious foods that can serve your body well.
The Importance of Food Choices and Goal Setting
When working toward your healthy weight, it’s important to set realistic and specific goals to keep you motivated throughout the journey. Plus, it helps you see your progress along the way. Additionally, be mindful of your food choices. Nutrition selections are a cornerstone of any successful weight loss journey. Opt for nutrient-dense foods and include a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats in your diet.
Starting Your Weight Loss Journey
Starting a weight loss journey can feel both exciting and daunting. It’s a complex adventure that may require changes in several parts of your life. To set yourself up for success, consider these simple tips: Embrace the journey ahead, no matter how long it may look. Research continues to indicate that changing habits requires repetition over the long term. Give yourself realistic goals to work towards, and don’t rush the process.
Set Realistic Goals
Weight fluctuations caused by age, genetics, lifestyle habits, and hormonal shifts. Our bodies are designed to adapt to the changes that life brings, and weight fluctuations are often part of the process. It’s important to note that these changes are perfectly normal.
Weight Loss-Friendly Meal Ideas
Weight loss-friendly meals focus on more than just calories. Well-balanced meals provide a combination of complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, and healthy fats. They’re nutrient- and fiber-dense, meaning they are filling, nutritious, and delicious.
Breakfast
Hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, whole grain toast.
Lunch
Salad topped with tuna or chicken breast, a broth-based soup, brown rice and vegetables.
Dinner
Baked or grilled fish with roasted vegetables, salad topped with a lean source of protein, sheet pan-baked chicken breast with vegetables.
Beginner’s Exercise for Weight Loss
Exercise is important for your overall health and can help you reach your weight loss goals. However, to maximize your weight loss efforts, it’s important to design a workout routine that fits your individual needs. Incorporating a mix of aerobic and strength training activities into your routine can help you create a calorie deficit and build lean muscle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of intense exercise each week in addition to two days of strength training.
Cardio Exercises
Walking, running, biking, swimming, HIIT.
Strength Exercises
Kettlebell Swings, mountain climbers, inchworms.
How Fast Can You Expect to Lose Weight?
No two weight loss journeys are the same. The rate at which you can lose weight can vary based on several factors, including age, genetics, body composition, activity levels, and lifestyle choices. You may lose weight quickly during the first week or two. However, this is like water weight, and you will notice your weight loss gradually taper to a consistent rate and eventually to a plateau.
Personal Experiences
A few years ago, one doctor embarked on a personal weight loss journey. After gaining considerable weight from two back-to-back pregnancies, she realized that the "baby weight" wasn't going anywhere. She resigned herself to the fact that it would probably take 18+ months to lose it. She chose a well-rounded, nutritious diet plan consisting of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats (and also very low in carbohydrates). She got a small pocket notebook, and started keeping track of everything that she ate. Each page represented a day's intake, and she counted calories, as best she could. Yes, she had the occasional slice of cake, glass of wine, chunk of chocolate, piece of baklava (a major downfall), or other treats. She forgave herself those indiscretions, as well as any "vacations" from my dieting, logging, and exercising. She would just pick up where she left off and keep going. There were stops and starts, and the scale went up and down, but over time, the pounds slowly, slowly came off. As the months went on, she was able to rejoin her gym and add once or twice-weekly workout sessions. It took over two years, but she lost 50 pounds. Studies have shown that just about any diet will result in weight loss, if it's one that someone can follow.
The Happy Scale App
The Happy Scale app is a weight loss tracker. It doesn't tell you how to lose weight, and it doesn't track calories, exercise, or anything other than your daily weigh-in. But what it does, after just a few days of daily weight logs, is keep you posted on your progress: your current rate of weight loss, your overall rate of weight loss, and how that trend will play out over time. It is amazing in its simplicity, but it was the magic bullet because it takes away the occasional frustration of natural ebbs and flows of weight loss by giving you your moving average weight along with your literal weight. So if I had a day where I was up half a pound or had a couple of days where the scale didn't budge, it helped me visualize that the overall trend was still moving in the right direction.