If you’re tired of losing weight, only to regain it and sometimes more, it’s time to learn techniques to burn fat and keep it off permanently. While you might think it means eating celery sticks forever, it isn’t. Taking weight off and keeping it from returning starts with making smarter choices when you eat. It can be as simple as planning snacks that are ready if you’re hungry between meals, such as apples, oil free popcorn or nuts. These are far healthier options than grabbing a candy bar or a donut and have more nutrients, including fiber.
Nutrition plays a huge role in your weight control program.
When you eat healthier, you do more than just cut calories, you eat foods higher in nutrition and ones with less or no added sugar. You not only consume vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, you consume fiber, protein and healthy fats. Fiber, protein and healthy fat makes you fill fuller for longer, so you’ll eat less at your next meal and not be tempted to eat more snacks. Fiber also helps keep blood sugar level, which can trigger a sudden rise in energy, followed by a huge drop, making you want to eat more sugar. That adds extra calories and that means extra pounds.
Exercise regularly and build muscles.
Exercise burns calories, but it does more than that. It builds muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance, so the more you have, the higher your metabolism. There are two types of fat, brown fat and white fat. Brown fat is actually a calorie burner. It has mitochondria that act like furnaces and burn 20% of the body’s calories. White fat is just lumpy and acts like an insulator or storage area for the body. The more you exercise, the more irisin is released. It’s a hormone that turns white fat to brown fat, which burns more calories and helps you lose weight, weight that doesn’t return easily.
Even if you workout regularly, but are sedentary the rest of the time, you might gain weight.
Living an active lifestyle is extremely important. One study shows that sitting or laying longer than an hour on a regular basis, wipes out much of the benefit you get from working out. Stay active. Get up and move around for five minutes every hour. Take the stairs and not the elevator. Park further from the store and walk. Briskly walk to lunch. Use your leisure time for active outlets like riding a bike or hiking. Even household tasks can be undertaken with vigor to burn more calories.
- Adequate sunshine is important for weight loss. It increases the production of leptin that makes you feel full. Do safe sunning, take supplements or eat with food high in vitamin D to avoid D-deficiency. Studies show that people who were D-deficient had more problems losing weight.
- Get adequate sleep. Lack of sleep upsets the hunger-satiety hormonal balance. It limits the satiety hormone—leptin and produces more of the hunger hormone—ghrelin.
- Stay hydrated and drink plenty of water. Water can fill you when a glass is consumed before a meal. An ice-cold glass of water also burns extra calories when the body tries to warm it.
- Keep portion control in mind. Eating healthy doesn’t mean you have to give up the food you love. It just means eating it less frequently and keeping portion control in mind. Super-sizing anything will super-size your waistline.
For more information, contact us today at Skin Sport Fitness Center