Are you searching for healthy ways to lose weight fast? Are you asking what’s the best diet to achieve quick weight loss? Losing weight is challenging, but follow these weight loss tips and reduce your risk for diseases like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and many other medical disorders.
Weight loss involves consumption of a sensible diet that minimizes the production of insulin, exercise that stimulates the production of hormones, and maintaining hormones at optimal levels. Follow the weight loss tips below and take the first steps towards better health!
Weight Loss Tips for the Long Haul
A diet should not be something you go and off. It is far more helpful to think in terms of a nutrition plan that can be maintained throughout life. If you struggle with weight loss try some of the tips below. Not every suggestion is going to work for everyone. Some of weight loss is trial and error and you need find what works for you.
1. Eat low glycemic foods.
2. Avoid eating carbohydrates alone.
3. Eat every three to four hours (but meals have to be low glycemic)
4. Always eat breakfast.
5. Consume high quality protein with each meal or snack.
6. Consume natural foods.
As we mentioned above not all these tips will work for everyone. Some people do better with modified fasts where they avoid eating for 12 hours or more a day rather than having more frequent meals. And, some people just are not breakfast eaters. But, the other tips should work well for nearly all of us.
Low Glycemic Foods
In response to carbohydrate consumption the body produces insulin that helps to move glucose into the cells where it can be used for energy. However, if too many carbohydrates are consumed, especially simple carbohydrates, more glucose is available than the body needs, and through the help of insulin it is stored as fats. Excess insulin makes it difficult to burn calories from our fat stores.
Eating carbohydrates alone increases the rate at which glucose is delivered to the cells, and therefore elevates insulin levels. Consuming carbohydrates with protein or fat will delay the absorption of carbohydrates minimizing the spike in insulin levels.
It is vital to keep insulin levels to a minimum by consuming low-glycemic foods. For more information see www.glycemicindex.com. The glycemic index and glycemic load are measurements of the impact of a carbohydrate on blood glucose levels.
Other weight loss tips include the following.
Eating more frequent meals is associated with a lower risk of obesity, healthier cholesterol profile, higher energy levels, and reduced hunger.
Eating breakfast jumps start our bodies giving them an energy boost while improving our ability to concentrate and stay focused. People who regularly eat breakfast tend to be thinner than those who do not. People who claim not to be hungry in the morning usually are eating too late at night. Also, eating breakfast regularly is associated with a lower risk of a number of chronic diseases.
Our hormones and enzymes, which are responsible for the many biochemical processes that occur in our bodies, are comprised of proteins. These proteins need to be constantly replenished throughout the day. Proteins also are the key components of our muscles. Muscles burn more calories than fatty tissue. Therefore, more muscle makes our bodies more metabolically active.
Remembering to eat natural foods is easy. If it grows from the ground, falls from a tree, swims in the water, or flies in the sky – you can eat it. Also, avoid foods high in sugar, or that contain high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and trans fats.
Exercise: Fueling the Furnace
Strength training enables us to make more muscle and therefore burn more calories. Muscle is metabolically active even at rest. This means your are burning more calories when doing nothing. Moderate to vigorous strength training stimulates the body to produce growth hormone and testosterone. This leads to the development of increase lean body mass and a reduction in our fat composition. Women need growth hormone and testosterone as well as men.
Hormones: The Fuel Injector
Maintaining an optimal body weight becomes more challenging when we age because or hormones begin to decline after the age of 30 or so. Hormones enable the body to work and burn calories more efficiently. The hormones most important for weight control are growth hormone, DHEA, and thyroid in men and women, estrogen and progesterone in women, and testosterone in men. Low levels should be replaced with bio-identical hormones.
Healthier living is possible with these weight loss tips.
See also “Natural Metabolism Boosters“, “How to Lose Weight in a Week or 2”, and “Anti Aging Hormones“.
