A healthy weight is something everyone needs to maintain in order to keep away diseases that are related to weight gain or obesity – cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Tonia had emailed us, explaining how she got a result from her doctor who had cautioned her about her weight and the need to lose over 10kg of it.
It was explicit, but she had become afraid after she saw that her blood pressure had shot up, while her sugar level was also hitting the reds.
“What do I do now?” she asked our health coach.
Not A Heavy Eater?
The tone of her mail was so clear that you could feel her predicament and the need for her to come out of it as soon as possible.
Walking through the daily diet of persons who contact our health coach is something that is necessary to be sure of what to take off from their diet and what not to take off.
Tonia said she was not a heavy eater, just like many other clients claim before they begin to take note of what they eat and email to us.
What they see as not heavy, appears to be heavier than 4 wraps of fufu or garri in calories and that is worrisome.
Many have this notion.
It was not surprising to find that the daily calories she takes into her body far outweighs the recommended amount for a person with her Body Mass Index.
Her state, which has now improved, triggered the need to offer this effective, simple and healthy way of losing weight.
If you look at yourself in the mirror and wish you would return to the same size you were in college, or that size before you gave birth to your first child, then continue reading.
Also Read: Hormonal Imbalance: 5 Food-Triggers You Should Know
You may even want to return to that size you were before you got married – men will understand this one.
From where you are now, you may need to lose more than 10kg and that is a huge task for you to undertake.
Well, this simple ways of losing that weight will help you do it.
1. Set A Realistic Goal
Experts at the Harvard Medical School suggests that setting a more realistic goal of losing 5% to 10% of your weight in a specific time will help you achieve your goal.
Hoping to lose that weight that took you years to gain in few weeks is like sleeping in Nigeria and hoping to wake up in the United States the next morning.
Some flexibility in the way you go about losing weight will help a lot.
Most people take at least six months to achieve that degree of healthy weight loss.
So, target to lose few kilograms in few weeks or months and then continue until the weight is totally controlled.
2. Adjust Your Meal
One reason you will check your weight and find that it is not shifting even when you are exercising is what you eat.
Of a truth, it takes more than one mile walk to burn 500 calories from your body.
As much as exercise can help burn calories, adjusting your food is the first thing that you need to consider.
Instead of saying you want to eat less at dinner, find out the ingredients in your food that are contributing so much calories to your body.
Your shopping list should change, considering this formula showed in this plate. See the portion for fat in the plate.
Here are a few things that experts at Harvard suggest.
- Choose a few dinner recipes and shop for the ingredients on Sunday.
- Bring a healthy lunch from home instead of going out at least three times next week.
- Call a friend to take a walk after work on Monday and Wednesday.
- Reduce exposure to problematic food (“stimulus control”) to avoid temptation, such as keeping cookies and other junks away from sight.
Eat Breakfast Slowly
Another thing that has been recommended is eating breakfast slowly.
One thing you must not do if you intend to lose weight, is rushing your breakfast.
If you live in Lagos and are used to rushing out of home early, this is a time to adjust that. Go to bed earlier to enable you wake up earlier than usual.
Once you wake up, make out time for breakfast before you leave the house.
Harvard Medical School experts recommend that you practice eating slowly by putting down your utensil or sipping water, coffee, or tea between bites.
You are supposed to spend at least 20 minutes on each meal, but breakfast time may not be up to that.
However, you need to spend time eating your meal.
3. Exercise
We know that you have a tight schedule and in Lagos it is horrible, but unfortunately, we cannot tell you that exercise is not necessary in your weight loss plan.
This is one routine that people find difficult to maintain, but it is essential.
We are moving beings and this is why we have to ensure that we move our body as often as possible to help burn calories.
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Sedentary lifestyle has been identified as one of the dangerous routines to keep as humans and this means a lot.
Because you have children now, it is easier to ask them to get to the kitchen and get you water, but taking that walk to get the water by yourself will be of more benefit to you.
The World Health Organisation has set an exercise standard for people between the ages of 18 and 64.
The recommendation is that you should get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week.
If you have not been meeting up, you can factor in trekking into your daily life. When you need to cross the road, run a bit.
These exercises count each day.
4. Build Skill Power
The last is “skill power,” and it has been described as powerful set of specific habits that can make all the difference between setbacks and lasting success.
‘EatingWell‘ identified a set of skills that are necessary for people
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Adopt the Right Mindset Before You Eat
This requires that you understand the foods that could cause hormone disruptions and trigger weight gain.
It is good that before you buy your food stuff, be sure of the calorie content of what you are buying.
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Limit Variety
Variety is the spice of life, it has been said, but knowing where the variety should end is also very vital in managing weight.
Eating food with so much fatty oil just because you want variety will be a ‘cog in the wheel’ of your efforts to lose weight.
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Practice Conscious Eating
Most times people gain weight because they just grab anything they can find and eat without being mindful.
Knowing the content of what you are about to eat and ensuring that it aligns with your weight loss goals will be a good habit to form at this time.
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Rehab Your Sweet Tooth
There is this thing we call ‘sweet-mouth’ in Nigeria and that is one reasons people gain weight.
That your sweet mouth needs rehabilitation for you to be able to stop grabbing the sweetened drink and other foods that are too sugary and are full of sugar (junks) which all turns to carbohydrate when they digest.
Also Read:Top 9 Foods For Weight Loss
One way to begin to see result is for you to make these suggestions a habit and then turn them to a routine.
However, it is important to take them one at a time. Once you have mastered one, move on to the next habit and continue till you have imbibed all of them and have made them a lifestyle.
For us, healthy living is a lifestyle and not much of a choice that we should make.