10 Ways to Healthy Weight Loss

Introduction

Sure there are plenty of ways to lose weight. Some people starve themselves. This works for a few miserable weeks until you get tired of feeling bad all the time and polish off an entire pizza by yourself.

Others buy those ‘diet foods’ like Slim-Fast. And yes they are low-calorie but they’re not really food. They’re laboratory designed products full of high fructose corn syrup along with a whole host things most of us can’t even pronounce.

The traditional view that weight loss is all about calories is drastically oversimplified. In this view somehow eating a couple apples will have the same effect as drinking a soda since they are roughly equivalent in calories—completely ignoring the fact that one is a natural food full of fiber and nutrients while the other will wreak havoc on your metabolism.

Real, healthy weight loss isn’t about fads or quick-fixes. It’s about eating real food and incorporating simple healthy practices into your life so that you lose weight naturally and maintain a healthy weight. That being said it’s amazing how quickly you can see results when you’re doing the right things—often equaling or exceeding the gimmicks and crash diets.

What follows are 10 keys to losing weight the healthy way from a Wellington personal trainer:

1. Avoid Sugar

It’s becoming increasingly clear that one the main culprits in increasing obesity rates around the world is overconsumption of simple, processed carbohydrates especially sugar.

How does this work? When you eat sugar containing products your blood sugar spikes. Left unchecked high blood sugar would be very harmful to the body. The natural response, therefore, is to release insulin. Insulin’s main job is to tell your fat cells to pull sugar out of the blood and store it as fat.

This is good because it protects you from the harmful effects of high blood sugar. But it doesn’t make you very happy because you’re trying to store less fat not more.

And if this wasn’t bad enough, insulin may leave your blood sugar even lower than it was before you ate (a.k.a. a sugar crash) thus leaving you craving more sugar and leading to overeating. Many people find themselves on this sugar rollercoaster of eating and crashing and subsequently craving more sweet foods.

Avoid this altogether by limiting your sugar in your diet from sodas, pastries, desserts, etc.





2. Eat Less

Yeah I know. Right now you’re saying ‘thanks a lot Einstein’—but hear me out. People tend to overestimate the amount of calories they burn during exercise. This leads them to say ‘well ok I can pig out now. I’ve earned it.’

Consider this: in a typical 130 gram muffin there are roughly 400 calories. How long would you expect to have to exercise to burn this many calories?

A person weighing 70 kilograms would need to run for half an hour or walk for over an hour to burn 400 calories! As you can see it’s very easy to sabotage the good work you’ve been doing by assuming exercise means you can eat whatever you want.















3. Work out smarter, not more

We’ve all heard that to lose weight we need to do long, slow, steady cardiovascular exercise (i.e. jogging, using the elliptical machine, biking, etc). New research, however, is showing that this is really the hard way to go about losing weight.

For instance: Japanese researcher Dr. Izumi Tabata took two similar groups of people. One group jogged for 45 minutes, 5 days a week. The other exercised 4 days a week doing eight cycles of 20 seconds max sprinting followed by 10 seconds of rest— for a grand total of 4 minutes of exercise—along with one day of jogging. Surprisingly, the sprint group, despite doing only an hour of exercise versus the jogging group’s three-and-a-half hours a week, lost more weight, had similar improvements in aerobic endurance, and greater increase anaerobic endurance.

Other research has found similar results: if you want to see more improvements in a less time, make your workouts shorter and more intense and use exercises which challenge the whole body to work as a unit.

So what’s the difference between high and low intensity exercise? When you go for a jog (low intensity) you burn heaps of calories while you’re jogging and then once you stop, your rate of calorie burning goes way down almost immediately. In contrast, when you sprint (high intensity) you burn a lot of calories while you’re sprinting and then continue to burn more calories for hours after your workout ends—even as you are sitting on the sofa.

What’s more, high intensity exercise is like a wakeup alarm to your body triggering the release of Human Growth Hormone (hGH) and other growth factors. If you’re not familiar with hGH, synthetic versions of it are used in anti-aging medicine and it causes lowered body fat and increased lean muscle as well as a host of other positive effects. High intensity exercise is a great way to get a little natural boost.

Of course, it’s not for everyone. Individuals with health problems, old injuries, or who are otherwise out of shape should talk to their doctor or friendly neighborhood trainer first.

















4. Don’t avoid fat

Fat has gotten a bad rap. During the end to the last century the message was drilled into the public that fat was evil and we could all live healthier, longer lives if only we ditched the fat. People all over the world responded by cutting out butter and buying low-fat and no-fat products.

The only problem: it didn’t work. It didn’t lower disease or make us any skinnier. In fact, rising global obesity and diabetes rates correlate neatly with the rise of low-fat eating.

Paradoxically, the less fat we ate the fatter we became. Some have called this a public health disaster and demanded apologies from the public health community.

Why did this happen? Well as folks removed fat from their diet they naturally ate more refined carbohydrates. Fat digests slowly and leads to a feeling of fullness. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, move quickly into the blood stream and often leave the individual hungry just a short while after eating—thus more likely to overeat.

Now before you go to the fridge and start gnawing on a stick of butter, I’m not saying to overdo it—just don’t skimp on the olive oil, butter, coconut oils, and other healthy oils when you’re preparing your meals and you may find yourself eating less and feeling full for longer.

5. Get a good night’s sleep

What does sleep have to do with weight loss? A lot, actually.

Research has shown that less than optimal sleep is associated with weight gain as well the risk of developing other diseases. This happens because lack of sleep messes with the delicate balance of hormones that our body depends on to function at its best. Specifically affected are the hormones grehlin, leptin, and cortisol which, among other things, help to regulate appetite. People with poor sleeping patterns tend to crave food more and in particular simple, refined carbohydrates and sugars.

Plus, a good night’s sleep just makes you feel more hopeful and motivated to stick to your goals.

Obviously getting more sleep is easier said than done. But if you are doing everything right and still not getting the results you want, do a little research and see if you can’t improve your sleep. This may mean limiting caffeine or adapting to a more regular sleep schedule.









6. Get smart about the glycemic index

If you haven’t heard of the glycemic index, it’s a scale that measures how quickly different foods are digested and raise your blood sugar. High glycemic foods digest quickly and cause a rapid increase in blood sugar leading to increased appetite, uneven energy levels, and ultimately weight gain. Examples of high glycemic foods are foods containing sugar and refined, processed carbohydrates such as white flour and potatoes.

Low glycemic foods, on the other hand digest slowly and don’t spike blood sugar nearly as much. The result is long-lasting, sustained energy and better appetite control. Examples of low glycemic foods include most vegetables, whole grains, beans, and many fruits.

Type ‘glycemic index’ into Google to find lists of common foods and their glycemic indexes.

7. Keep a food journal

This is a great way to see where you may be falling short. Studies and personal experience have shown that people’s perceptions of how much they eat and how much they actually eat are often worlds apart.

You can start by writing down everything you eat or drink (besides water) for a week. Don’t judge; just write it down. It’s not necessary to calculate the exact calories for each item we just want to get a general sense of what we’re eating each day.

Then at the end of the week sit down and go over your journal. See what jumps out at you. Do you realize that you’re eating some form of sweets or other junk food nearly every day? Or maybe the beers are really adding up by the end of a week?

Use this information to make better decisions going forward. Also you may find you think twice about eating something you shouldn’t when you know you will have to write it down.

8. Move around more

This is another one of the obvious ones. If you want lose weight and feel better don’t look just at the one hour during the day you may be exercising. Look at the other twenty-three as well. See if you can’t find ways to incorporate more physical activity into your day. Try walking to places you might normally drive. If you live close enough, walking to and from work is a great way to be active. Use the time to clear your head and prepare for/unwind from the day.

Take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you have a desk job get up and walk to the water cooler every hour. This will get you drinking more water and then also get you to have to get up to walk to the bathroom as well (I know this is cheesy but whatever gets you moving).

The point is: work to incorporate physical activity into your life outside the narrowly defined window of the day called ‘exercise.’

9. Eat smaller meals throughout the day

Try eating five small meals a day instead of two or three big ones. Don’t wait until you are desperately hungry and then overeat; space your food out over the day. This will give you more sustained energy and keep you from hitting the low blood sugar lulls that may lead you to grab whatever is near (usually junk food).

Many people are caught in a cycle where they skip breakfast then eat a huge meal for lunch. Come mid-afternoon they crash again and crave sugar and end up eating something unhealthy. Set yourself up for success by having a decent breakfast and then continuing to eat healthy snacks throughout the day.

10. Watch the alcoholic drinks

Wine, beer, and other drinks do have calories. A typical pint of beer can have 250-300 calories and a typical glass of wine 100 (more for sweeter and dessert wines). It’s easy to see how quickly you could consume a substantial amount calories just by having a few beers. Multiply this over the course of a week and it could equal weight gain or stalled weight loss efforts (there’s a reason they call it a beer belly).

In addition, alcohol affects the hormones involved in regulation of blood sugar and appetite (remember leptin?). In studies, people tended to consume 20-30% more calories at a meal when they were drinking alcohol.

Now I love a good beer or glass of wine as much as the next person but if you’re trying to lose weight you might want to cut back a little.