How to lose weight healthy? Here are some pointers.
1) Be happy and relax. Emotional stress is can cause one to gain weight because when we are stressed our body releases the hormone called Cortisol. Cortisol also encourages your body to store fat—especially visceral fat, which is particularly dangerous because it surrounds vital organs and releases fatty acids into your blood, raising cholesterol and insulin levels and paving the way for heart disease and diabetes. If you look around, you may find people who are already exercising regularly, reduced calories, eating healthily but still they couldn't lose weight.
2) Eating healthily. This goes without saying. We are what we eat. But don't force yourself to eat stuff that you don't like. Imagine eating salad all the time? We may feel like a cow or sheep...haha. Thats stressful and leads to point no 1. If you are stressed with what you are eating, then no healthy food is going to help you lose weight. Do some research on healthy food and select those that you like. It also adds variety to your diet and you are in control. Don't just follow a dietician food guide or from a friend who had successfully lose weight through his/her food plan. We don't like the same food.
3) Sleep more. Do you agree that if we are awake longer, we tend to feel hungry and start looking for food. Sometimes we take a biscuit or a cup of hot Milo. This is the problem. Everything adds up. In research presented at the American Heart Association’s 2011 Scientific Sessions, it was shown that women who got only 4 hours of sleep at night ate 329 additional calories the next day than they did after they slept nine hours. (Men ate 263 calories more.) In another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 11 volunteers spent 14 days at a sleep center on two occasions. During one period, they slept 5.5 hours a night, and during the other, they slept 8.5 hours. When the subjects were sleep-deprived, they increased their nighttime snacking and were more likely to choose high-carbohydrate snacks.
4) Regular exercise. Why do we need to exercise? To lose weight? If you use exercise to lose weight, you are having the wrong concept. Regular exercise makes us healthy, have stronger heart and build up muscle...of course we have to do the right exercise to build muscle. Just think about it, when we have more muscle mass, do you think it will be easier for our body to burn off those extra fats? If you have strong heart and can pump more blood with oxygen to your entire body, it will help to burn more fats. Exercise to build muscle, strength and strong heart...not to lose weight.
5) Do you need supplements to lose weight? Well, it depends on how fast do you want to see the results. There are many ways to lose weight. Going on a weight management program with supplements and meal replacement is just another way. If you cannot do point 1-4, then forget about getting any supplement program to help. If you can commit 1-4 and add on the supplements, then the result will be faster and better. Supplements do help by giving the necessary nutrients to our body when we are undergoing a change on diet and lifestyle. Take it as it helps cushion the mental, physical, emotional stresses that our body is going through when subjected to a weight loss regime.
As for me, I did all the 5 items to the best that I can. Of course, not everyone can follow these but even if you can follow just about 60-70%, you should start to see result. When you want to lose weight, you have to be patient. Sometimes, when we have high expectation on the outcome, it can turn out to be stressing out mind. So don't keep looking at the weighing scale every morning. You will feel depressed when you don't see significant result. Do it like once or twice a week. You will see a bigger difference in result and you will feel happier with your achievements.
Hope this helps. I am open to chatting with anyone to share my experiences and also those who wants to share about their experiences.
Have a great day.