Before you pledge allegiance to a particular diet plan, take heed. More often than not, weight lost through dieting finds its way back into your body.
But the news is not all bad: While prevailing lore states that 95% of people who lose weight regain it within a few months or years, recent research shows that roughly 20% of overweight people successfully manage to keep the pounds from coming back on.
Still, that’s a low success rate, and it underscores the inherent flaw of the dieting mentality — which seeks a quick, often drastic fix for habits that were years in the making.
So, what is the best approach to long-term weight loss? Rather than counting every calorie or scratching entire food groups from your diet, make healthful eating — along with fitness and stress reduction — a part of your daily lifestyle.
By thinking of weight loss not as a primary goal but rather as a by-product of making important health choices, you are on your way to addressing the underlying causes of weight gain — not merely the symptoms.
Healthful diet
Both American Eastern Institute and food journalist Michael Pollan succinctly advised in a recent New York Times article: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
These 3 points form the basis of a healthful diet:
1. Eat food. “If it’s something your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize,” says Mark Hyman, M.D., author of UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss (Scribner, 2006), “you probably shouldn’t eat it.” Choose whole fresh foods rather than processed food products. In other words, don’t just avoid processed and refined white bread, but also limit enriched whole wheat bread, which is loaded with processed nutrients and preservatives. Fresh whole grain bread straight from the bakery would be better, while a dish of cooked wheat berries would be even more nutritious. The greater amount of food you eat that is whole and unmodified (rather than being a food product), the more healthful (and — believe it or not — satisfying) your diet will be.
2. Not too much. There’s no getting around that one of the most healthful and effective techniques for weight loss is moderate calorie restriction. Since weight loss boils down to consuming fewer calories than you burn, portion control is a non-negotiable element. To safely lose weight, shoot for a deficit of 250 to 500 calories per day — anything greater could leave you very hungry and more vulnerable to impulsive indulgences with bad-for-you food.
Tip: Restricting the number of calories is one of the most difficult requirements to weight loss. Try substituting quality for quantity. You may find that by choosing organic whole foods, you’ll need less to feel satiated.
3. Mostly plants. Vegetables should make up the largest portion of your diet, as the antioxidants in fresh produce have a powerful effect against the free radicals in our bodies. Also, since vegetables (especially leafy ones) are low in carbohydrates, eating a plant-based diet translates into fewer calories overall. Remember, variety not only adds spice but longevity, too. As omnivores, we require a certain amount of complexity in our diet in order to stay healthy. Include as many different colours and varieties of fruits and vegetables in your diet as you can.
Proper hydration
Don’t underestimate the importance of drinking water for weight loss. Sufficient water intake is crucial for you to achieve optimal digestion, absorption, circulation and waste excretion.
Depending on how much produce you eat, the climate you live in and how much you exercise, you should be drinking an average of 6 to 8 glasses of water a day. Remember that fruit juice, tea, coffee and sodas don’t count as water.
We often misinterpret thirst as hunger — which throws off our natural appetite cues. By staying properly hydrated throughout the day, you will deter false hunger pangs and be able to more easily discern your true hunger levels. Another bonus? Staying hydrated fights fatigue, giving you more energy to stick with your exercise plan.
Tip: Carry a water bottle with you wherever you go so that you have no excuse for getting parched.
Natural supplements
While your focus should be on getting nutrition from whole foods rather than relying on supplements, ensuring basic nutritional support through a few well-chosen supplements is a reasonable backup. Begin with a high-quality multivitamin and mineral combination, and choose a brand that doesn’t contain fillers, binders, colorings agents, gluten or lactose.
For natural compounds that may speed up weight loss, consider calcium, chromium and green tea supplements. While it is unclear how effective these supplements may be in enhancing weight loss, they have few known risks and some potential benefits. Nonetheless, it is not standard medical practice to recommend them.
Calcium (400 to 500 milligrams daily) may play a role in weight control by regulating energy metabolism. Chromium (400 micrograms daily) appears to improve insulin function and blood sugar control — which may make weight control easier. The caffeine and antioxidant catechins in green tea can help enhance calorie burning by increasing thermogenesis (the production of heat in cells). You can either drink several cups a day or take it in capsule form (anywhere from 250 to 500 milligrams daily)
Tip: Taking your vitamins and supplements (either with a meal or just before) may reduce stomach upset.
Stress reduction
Stress and weight gain are closely related. Stress can cause your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol into your bloodstream, which in turn can cause the body to conserve fat.
Chronic stress throws your metabolism out of whack and can lead to weight gain regardless of calorie intake. Cortisol (the stress hormone) makes your body less sensitive to other hormones — most notably to leptin, the hormone that tells your brain when you are full.
There are other factors at work (i.e., the fact that people turn to food to comfort themselves in times of stress).
Relaxation, experts say, is the best defence against stress. “When someone learns how to consciously acknowledge the presence of stress, he can then make a deliberate choice in how he’ll react to it,” says Steven Gurgevich, Ph.D., author of The Self-Hypnosis Diet: Use the Power of Your Mind to Make Any Diet Work for You (Sounds True, 2007). “Instead of ‘emotional eating,’ they can take a brisk walk, do something productive or use an active or passive relaxation technique.”
Tip: Meditation, yoga, prayer, baths, music, tai chi, hypnosis and breathing exercises all may induce the relaxation response.
Fitness
For people who are more than moderately overweight, exercise can be daunting (at best) and even physically excruciating due to the pressure your weight puts on your joints. But you have to start somewhere: Wendy McClure, a fitness consultant and trainer listed by Men’s Journal as one of America’s 100 Best Trainers, says very heavy people should not jump into an exercise boot camp.
“I often suggest beginning with classes in a pool, because they can move freely in the water for a long period of time without joint problems,” she says.
Walking is another excellent way to launch an exercise program. Walking as little as 15 minutes a day could significantly improve your health. The more out of shape you are, the more fitness gains you will experience early on.
Use a pedometer — available for as little as $10 — and slowly build up to 10,000 steps a day (about 4 to 5 miles). Studies show that this level of activity can reduce blood pressure, significantly increase calorie burn and improve cardio fitness (again, particularly in people who are less fit to begin with).
No matter your baseline fitness level, choose activities you enjoy (ice skating, rock climbing, square dancing), and do them with people you like. Many studies show that people are more likely to stick with an exercise program if they have an activity buddy —the commitment drives people to show up even on days when their motivation is low.
Also, don’t be a fair-weather friend to exercise. “A consistent routine of exercising each day… shows the best and most successful results,” McClure says. It is healthier — and safer — to exercise for 20 to 30 minutes a day on most days than to procrastinate all week and try to punish yourself for 2 hours on a Saturday.
Success with a natural weight loss approach doesn’t equal quick results. By introducing long-term and lasting changes instead of drastic, unsustainable ones, you may lose weight more slowly — perhaps only a pound a week. Still, the more gradual the loss is, the more likely that the pounds will be gone for good.
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