10 Lifestyle Changes Needed For Effective Weight Loss

By James Spann


There are a lot of people who are looking for the perfect diet in order to lose weight. The sad truth is, most dieters fail. This is because the period of weeks or months spent on a reduced calorie diet is often followed by a return to your old bad habits. To keep the weight off, you need to make permanent lifestyle changes. A few proven strategies:

Make Daily Workouts a Habit

Perfect practices will result in perfect habits over time. In terms of exercise, you must decide when and what time of day you plan to workout, and then stick to your decision. Repetition is the key to forming the perfect habits of an active lifestyle.

Your regular workouts should consist of some cardio exercise as well as resistance training. Both are needed for effective weight loss. It is best to alternate upper body and lower body resistance training on different days. Cardio can be done every day, if you wish. Include resistance training in your exercises. If you are trying to lose weight with cardio along, you will not be very successful. Resistance training produces muscle tone, which enables the body to burn calories even when you are asleep.

When you are lifting weights, remember to give yourself time to recover after each exercise. However, your recovery period should be no longer than 30 seconds. Your body will be more apt to maintain peak metabolism with a short recovery period compared to a long period.

Cultivate a Physically Active Way of life.

Walk to the corner store instead of driving. Swap the drive-through for parking and walking. Choose parking spaces far away from your destination and walk. Swap sedentary hobbies like gaming for active ones like skateboarding or gardening. By making your everyday life more active, you burn more calories and stay fitter.

Cook More at Home

Sometimes, our active lifestyle can prevent us from taking the time to prepare healthy meals at home. Instead, we hurriedly pick up something to eat at fast food establishments or eat out from time to time. This lifestyle, in most cases, results in you eating high fat entrees laden with too much salt and not enough fiber. In other words, your choices are limited, and over the long term, you will end up gaining additional pounds.

Avoid Late-Night Snacks.

One of the most essential reasons you need to stay away from consuming late during the night is due to the feasible risk of weight gain related to this behavior. While many individuals know the reality that eating late might add to weight gain, they are not always knowledgeable about exactly how this could take place.

Increases in your body weight throughout this time frame are triggered mainly by modifications in the rate at which your metabolic rate functions during resting versus waking hrs. When you eat during the day, you are relatively energetic, and your metabolic process is operating quickly. On the other hand, when you are asleep, your metabolic processes decrease - and due to this, the meals that you have eaten prior to bedtime will certainly be metabolized and digested at a slow rate. This adds to body weight and may lead to obesity.

Always Eat A Healthy Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Breakfast gives you the necessary fuel to energize your day. In a recent study, individuals who made breakfast their largest meal of the day lost an average of 18 pounds over a period of three months. The other people involved in the study ate meals with the exact number of calories per day but consumed the majority of calories at supper.

Drink Lots Of Water Daily

The majority of the human body is composed of water. Amongst other important functions, water also acts as a natural appetite suppressant and enhances metabolism - including burning calories. With so many significant functions, drinking adequate water is crucial to the proper functioning of the human body.

If you always feel lethargic in the afternoon or middle of the day, dehydration could be the cause. And if you are fatigued, it is very hard to workout or exercise. Also, if you do not drink enough water, you may also feel hunger pain sensations in your stomach. These sensations can lead to unnecessary eating and calorie consumption. Research has proven that there is a link between chronic dehydration and weight gain. It is recommended that the average individual drink from 8 - 12 glasses of water a day. Increase this amount if you are a very active person.

Learn to Love Healthy Foods.

If you are used to eating high-fat, salty, processed foods, a whole foods diet will taste strange to you at first. Learn a variety of healthful ways to prepare fresh foods. Instead of drowning broccoli in melted cheese or butter, toss it in olive oil before roasting it. Choose lemon juice, hot sauce and spices to add flavor instead of reaching for the salt. And, cut out the soda. Just removing highly sweetened drinks from your diet will help you adjust your tastes to prefer natural and healthy foods. You should eat every three to four hours throughout the day - 3 basic meals and 2 or more healthy snacks (fruit, nuts, dark chocolate, popcorn, peanut butter and crackers, etc.). This will keep your metabolism up, resulting in more calories burned than if you only ate 3 square meals, and, help to keep your appetite in check .

Schedule A Rewards Day

Boost your motivation to workout on a regular basis and eat healthy and balanced dishes by satisfying your own whims at the very least once a week. These incentives could be your preferred treat, a weekend break escape, or attending a wonderful play or music.

Acquire Enough Sleep.

Sleep loss can result in weight gain. So, try to obtain 6 to eight hrs of sleep a night. The weight gain is induced by the bodily hormone, ghrelin, which increases whenever there is sleep loss. This bodily hormone, along with others, stimulates the mind to hunger for additional fattening foods like onion rings, ice cream and other sweets.

Eat Mindfully

When we absent-mindedly snack on chips or cookies because we are anxious, bored or unhappy, we can take in hundreds of empty calories. When you sit down to eat, make the food the center of your attention. Savor each bite. Do not eat while watching TV or working. By engaging in mindful eating, you will find that you are more satisfied and eat less.

When it comes to weight loss, the most important point to remember is that the long-term success of your weight loss program will only come when you decide to adopt lifestyle changes that will result in you making the best choices related to healthy eating and regular exercise. These choices will ultimately determine the quality of the rest of your life.




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