Maintaining a healthy weight is important for health. The key to maintaining a healthy weight is achieved through the process of adopting a lifestyle change that is based on your specific needs.
For many that includes not only following a healthy diet, but also increasing physical activity levels.
If you search on Google for weight management tips it’s a minefield of information; 70% of it completely pointless and dumb, with the remaining 30% actually being useful. But how do you decipher the truth from the web of lies, rumours and myths. The fact is it can be tricky, even for someone who works in the health and fitness industry. This is why I have put together my best tips and advice, from A to Z.
Hopefully these points can help you with not just weight loss, but also the ever so important weight management.
Adherence
How you manage adherence is down to personal preference. It can be determined by a number of factors, but finding the right diet and training strategy that suits your lifestyle is a priority. With out it your chances of success are slim.
Believe
What you believe is often just an assumption based on a perception. Your belief has the ability to affect your efforts and therefore your outcomes. If you believe that you can’t do something, most of the time you don’t put maximum effort in. Where as if roles are reversed and you truly believe in yourself, you will generally find a way to make it happen.
Consistency
Being consistent will help you develop a routine and build momentum. It is one of the keys that can unlock success; it leads to new habits forming, and these habits form the actions that we take each and every day that will eventually lead to success.
Diet but don’t deprive yourself
Diets do work, but eating crazy food combinations or eliminating entire food groups isn’t the way to go for long-term health. Aim to eat a nutritionally balanced diet with emphasis on whole grain foods and plants, with or without lean meats, fish, poultry and seafood.
Energy Balance
Weight management is all about energy balance i.e. calories in versus calories out. For instance weight loss will only occur when you are in a negative energy balance. This is when you are burning more calories than you consume. Other wise known as a calorie deficit. The opposite is true if you need to gain weight. The key is to learn more about the calories in the foods that you enjoy, as this will help you achieve your goals. Remember calories matter.
Fail
Failing is a fundamental part of every cognitive process that we make as humans. By failing you should be learning, which makes failure a necessary part of the learning process. A process that will only work if you are prepared to accept that as human beings we often fail and make mistakes more times than we succeed.
Goals
Short-term goals are great for giving you an immediate target to focus in on, but you should always have the long-term objective in mind. Write your main goal down and then make a list working backwards of smaller, achievable, short-term targets. Tick them off as you go along to help provide that extra bit of motivation.
Health Halo
Marketer’s use heath buzzwords such as protein, paleo, fat free and gluten free to help trick consumers that certain products are healthier than they actually are. Just because a food is gluten free does not mean it is healthier, it just means that it is suitable to eat for someone who has Celiac Disease, or intolerance to gluten itself. Don’t fall for it and always keep a check on the calories. A paleo gluten free muffin is still a muffin packed full of calories.
Interval Training
Interval training is based on the premise that a greater amount of intensity can be accomplished if the work is interspersed with times of recovery. If you find continuous cardio exercise mind-numbingly boring, incorporating interval training into your fitness regime may help. It will help improve both your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, basically meaning you have the potential to become fitter faster.
Just Do It
We make excuses for many reasons, but mainly because we’re not fully committed to what we want to change. It’s essential to have to right mindset if you’re going to succeed. Regardless of your goals, if you are truly serious and committed to succeeding then you need to stop making excuses and just do it.
Kitchen
One simple way to manage your weight that often gets overlooked is changing your kitchen, and I don’t mean re-decorating. I mean making small changes like changing the size of your plates to control your portion sizes, and only having food in your kitchen that you have to cook. You could even replace all the calorie dense, easy to eat highly processed foods, with healthier alternatives. Basically you want to change your food environment.
Lift
Lifting weights will not only build stronger muscles. It will also help to build and maintain lean muscle mass, improve your posture and also increase bone density. If you are on a weight loss programme, strength training will help to tone, lift, firm and shape your body as you lose body-fat.
Move
It doesn’t matter what the movement is, but you want to do it everyday if possible. Whether it’s walking, gardening, running, going to the gym, or strength training. It doesn’t matter. Just make your movement something you enjoy, and choose activities that fit in and around your current lifestyle that you think are sustainable long-term.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
Nutrition
Good nutrition alongside physical activity can help you to maintain a healthy weight. But the benefit of good nutrition is about so much more than just weight. Eating a healthy, balanced diet plays an essential role in your overall health. It can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis and certain cancers. Good nutrition also promotes healthy pregnancy and supports normal growth and ageing.
One More No More
One more cookie. One more sweet. One more glass of wine. One more always equates to extra calories. Controlling your portions is a fundamental part of understanding how to manage and control your weight.
Protein
Protein is involved in most biological processes within the human body. The benefits include increasing adaptation to training, helping to increase lean muscle mass, and helping with muscle retention whilst dieting. Protein will also help to increase the feeling of satiety, so in essence keep you fuller for longer. Aim for a minimum intake of 1.2g/kg of bodyweight.
Quit Old Habits
Quit old habits that can cause you to lose control by finding the cue that triggers the habitual behavior and replace it. Replace the bad habit with a healthier behavior that addresses the same need. Be aware that if you don’t replace the habit the likelihood is that your needs will be unmet, and you will struggle to stick to a new routine.
Rest and Recovery
Rest is the one thing that most people neglect. Not just for recovery purposes, but also to help keep unwanted stress at bay. Recovery is so much more than just muscle repair. Hydration, nutrition, stretching, and adequate sleep are just some of the facets that make up a good recovery strategy. Rest and recovery does not mean just sitting down on your couch and not moving for days on end.
Step Count
Wear a pedometer, Fitbit, iWatch, anything that can track your step count. Aim to walk at least 10,000 steps daily. Once you hit this consistently increase the figure by 1000-2000 daily. Every step counts, and each one will help to enable you to lose weight, and more importantly maintain weight.
Track
Tracking your progress can be a very important behavioral strategy that can be used to manage your weight and promote healthy lifestyle changes. One of the reasons people give up with their diet, or fitness regime, is because they feel like they are not making any progress, and this is because they have no tangible way of quantifying their progress. Tracking isn’t just about calories and macros. Track your training, measurements, skinfolds and bodyweight over a period of time, as well as taking photos to chart your progress to allow you to make adjustments where necessary.
Unique to you
When you undertake a new programme, or hire a coach, to learn a new skill, or to help improve your nutrition and dietary habits, it’s important that your goals are defined, and the advice and training that you receive is specific and tailored to meet these goals and the needs of you, and you alone. Not you, Sandra and the rest of the office.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin. It is produced by the body in response to sun exposure. It can also be consumed through food such as oily fish, egg yolks and meat. Having enough Vitamin D in your diet is important for many reasons. It helps to improve our immune system, and bone health, it supports calcium absorption which in turn can reduce the risk of bone loss and fractures, especially in the elderly. Deficiency of Vitamin D is associated with the development of certain diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease. Unfortunately Vitamin D can break down quite quickly which means that our stores can run low, especially in winter. Hence why it is often an important vitamin to supplement with.
Water
60-70% of our bodyweight is water, with up-to 73% of our muscle mass made up of water. This makes your water intake pretty much essential for life and toimprove your overall health. Our total body water is very tightly regulated continually being used, or lost, through the excretion of waste products and sweat. Whilst water has many functions such as helping to protect and lubricate tissues and joints, as well as to dissolve and transport substances through the body, and regulating our body temperature, it is also our first line of defense and helps fight off illnesses.
X Marks the Spot
Just like when you use a GPS; you set your destination and focus on making the right turns to get to there. If you slip up or make a wrong turn it’s ok, as the GPS will tell you what turn to take next to get you back on the right track. Keep moving ahead and don’t lose focus of where you’re going to.
Yoghurt
A bit of a random one here but I couldn’t think of anything beginning with ‘Y’ so ‘Y’ not. Yogurt is packed full of key nutrients such as calcium and protein, and if you make sure you choose the 0% fat option it will be lower in calories. This makes it a great option for a filling, and nutritious snack.
Zzzzz’s
Don’t underestimate the importance of sleep. Make it a priority. A lack of sleep can impair various cognitive functions, whilst it can also increase our responsiveness to food causing us to eat more without actually intending to. Whilst we sleep, our brain clears itself of excess waste products so by morning wakefulness is restored and we are ready to attack another day.
“The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.”