Weight Loss Archives - Page 2 of 2

Stress eating, healthy eating habits, weight loss

Posted on: January 30, 2023February 17, 2023

Stress and Weight Gain — How Are They Related?

Are you feeling frustrated about your weight and what to do about it? Does your stress lead to weight gain?

Stress can be a powerful trigger of weight gain. The stress response affects many aspects of our lives, including food. When we are stressed, we have an overwhelming desire to ea, and if you try to eat in response to stress, it is likely that this will lead to weight gain. Being aware of stressful situations and avoiding eating as a way of coping with your emotions is a good way to ensure that you don’t tip the scales the wrong way.

How Stress Leads To Weight Gain

Stress can cause weight gain in a number of different ways. Stress can trigger the release of hormones that make you feel hungry, including cortisol and insulin.

It also affects the levels of leptin and ghrelin, which are responsible for regulating your cravings, appetite, and your feeling of fullness. With stress, these hormones are imbalanced, leading to feeling hungry and not feeling satisfied even if you’ve eaten plenty. This leads to overeating.

Stress also can make you so busy or tired that you don’t have time to eat right or get enough exercise. When you’re under stress, your body may crave high-calorie foods that are quick to digest and provide a burst of energy. Over time, these cravings can lead to weight gain if they aren’t satisfied with nutritious foods.

How to Break the Stress Cycle, Lose Weight, and Keep It Off

Stress causes us to eat more, and we may also crave high-fat, high-sugar foods when we’re stressed out. However, there are other ways that stress can negatively affect our health — including how much weight we gain. Here are a few strategies that can help you break the cycle of stress and weight gain;

Sleep well. Sleep is your Superpower. Sleep is essential for good health and weight management because it gives our bodies time to repair themselves from the day’s stressors. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep each night so that your body has enough time to perform its nightly repairs on your cells and muscles before the next day starts again!
Include stress management habits in your daily life. This could include making time for some deep breathing, even just one intentional breath per day, to pause and reconnect with your calm side. Being aware of your body, such as the tingling sensation in your hands and feet, is an excellent way to lead your attention away from the stressful thoughts and situation. Notice if you have tense muscles, and then gently release them. It’s impossible to feel stressed if your muscles are relaxed. Paying attention to your breath and your body is the best stress buster that you can practise, as you have your breath and your body anywhere you go. You can do it whether you’re busy or lying in bed, and it’s free!
Exercise regularly. It gets your body moving and helps relieve tension by releasing feel-good brain chemicals called endorphins. And regular exercise can help you control your weight over the long term.
Eat slowly. Slow down when eating meals, so that you don’t mindlessly scarf down everything on your plate — or even worse, eat other things throughout the day because you’re still hungry after meals. It’s important to eat slowly because it helps you feel full faster, which will help keep cravings at bay. It also helps you enjoy your food better, adding to your feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.
Stop skipping breakfast. If skipping breakfast works for you and your weight loss goal, go for it. But if it causes you to overeat in all your other meals, then skipping breakfast is not working for you. Skipping breakfast sets up overeating later in the day by making us ravenous and more likely to fall victim to junk food cravings. If you’re not hungry when you wake up, have something small like fruit or oatmeal with skim milk instead of skipping breakfast altogether.

The takeaway

Learning how to deal with your stress can not only reduce your chance of getting sick and lowering your immunity, but it can also contribute to weight loss. Work on your psychological health in order to be able to keep the weight off for good.

https://www.verywellmind.com/how-stress-can-cause-weight-gain-3145088

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/stress-weight-gain

https://www.orlandohealth.com/content-hub/how-too-much-stress-can-cause-weight-gain-and-what-to-do-about-

https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/stress-weight-gain

https://www.healthline.com/health/stress/stress-and-weight-gain#diagnosis

Posted on: January 23, 2023February 17, 2023

3 Strategies For Dealing With Stress Eating

Do you eat more than you normally would when you are under stress? How often does that happen? Is it time to make some changes around that area?

Stress eating is a common challenge for people who are dealing with difficult life circumstances. If you are stressed out, it can be hard to focus on the right foods and eating habits. This can lead to weight gain and a higher risk of developing chronic conditions like diabetes.

If you are dealing with stress eating, here are some strategies you can use to help keep your eating habits under control.

Strategy #1: Develop awareness around what triggers your stress eating

Become aware of your stress eating triggers. Identify the situations or events that often lead you to reach for food when you’re feeling stressed out. For example, if you tend to eat more after you talk to your mother on weekends, you’ve found your trigger. This will make it clear for you that it is that stressor that you want to deal with, and not really hunger. Hence, you need stress relief, not more food.

Taking the time to pause and listen to your body will help you develop that awareness. When you start to crave for food when you are under stress, pause for a moment, and ask yourself if you are indeed hungry. If you are hungry, then you need food. If you are not hungry yet you are craving for food, ask yourself, “What am I really craving for?” If you listen to your body, thoughts and feelings, you could discover that you are indeed looking for something else, such as love and care, or companionship, or acceptance, and so on.

Having this awareness will give you options. How else can you satisfy that craving that does not involve food (as you are not really hungry)? Maybe you can call a dear friend for support or companionship, or maybe you take a few minutes to remind yourself that you only need acceptance from yourself.

Remember, you have options on how to fulfil your needs. Create that list of options and place that list where you could easily see it, especially when you’re stress eating. It could include taking 3 deep breaths, taking a short walk, playing with your child, stretching, doing some house chores, and other things that can distract you from food.

Strategy #2: Practise mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a technique where you focus on what you are experiencing in the present moment. It helps you become more aware of what’s happening around you as well as inside yourself at any given moment.

Take a few minutes every day to sit quietly and focus on your breathing or listen to soft music. This will help reduce stress by focusing on something else other than the stressor. Then notice what thoughts pass through your mind, and notice how you feel physically (e.g., relaxed or tense). Relax your muscles as you breathe. It’s impossible to feel sterssed if your body is relaxed. Try it. This habit helps you in dealing with stress eating, because you can think about other options besides food to calm yourself down.

Also mindfulness when you’re eating. Be there 100%. Experience your food fully. Notice what you see, hear, smell and feel. Notice the colours, steam, texture, and just how the food feels in your mouth and as it travels to your throat and your tummy. Mmm yum.

Doing this will give you more pleasure and hence more satisfaction, which helps prevent over-eating. Mindfulness is such a great practice, not just with eating. It helps you experience the simple joys of life every day, it helps you live in the present moment, and it helps you stay out of your head (where almost all of the troubles begin).

Strategy #3: Take a self-compassionate approach

Negative self-talk, shame and guilt do not help you in developing healthy eating habits. Don’t assume that being hard on yourself will create change.

We all have difficult times. We all have food cravings. Seeking comfort in food does not make you a bad person, and it doesn’t make you lesser as a person. Your behaviour and your cravings do not define who you are. It’s okay that you are going through a difficult moment. Everyone does. It will pass, and you can handle it.

Remember that self-compassion is not an excuse to eat anything you want. Of course, you need to adopt habits that support you in reaching your goals. Practising self-compassion when you find yourself stress eating will remove the guilt that people normally feel when “giving in”, and guilt is not good for your health and well-being. Self-compassion means you give yourself a break sometimes, recognising all the factors that lead to your choices.

With self-compassion, you develop kindness towards yourself. This increases self-esteem and emotion quality, which help in creating better choices in your lifestyle. Small things that make you nicer to yourself can indeed improve eating habits.

Which new habit do you commit to develop? When are you going to start? What happens to your life when you develop that new habit? Who else will benefit when you can deal with stress and develop healthy eating habits?

Posted on: January 16, 2023February 17, 2023

6 Tips To Make Your Mind And Body Work Together For Your Weight Loss

Are you wondering why you want to lose weight so much but you can’t seem to stick to it? Is your mind not cooperating? Or is it your body that’s not cooperating? Find out 6 tips to help your mind and body work together towards achieving your weight loss goal.

1. Know your outcome and find your inner motivation to lose weight.

How clear are you in what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it? When you have clarity in your desired outcome, your determination and motivation to work for it increase significantly.

Ask yourself these questions:

What do I want? (State it in positive terms, so instead of saying “I want to lose weight”, say “I want to be healthier, look good and feel good.”)
Is it within my personal control?
Do I really want it, or am I just saying I want it? Am I just feeling external pressure, or is it something that I truly want for myself?
How will I know when I’ve got it? What do I need to see on the weighing scale or in your clothes size, hear from people around me, and feelings I need to feel for me to know that I’ve achieved what I want? (Make sure that you can get concrete evidences for your desired outcome.)
What will happen when I get my goal? How will this benefit me? How will achieving this goal affect other aspects of my life?
What would happen if I didn’t make the change?
What wouldn’t happen if I didn’t make the change?

2. Prepare yourself.

Long-term weight loss takes time and effort. If you truly want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to commit yourself to a permanent change in your eating habits and activity level.

To find out if you’re ready for long-term weight loss, ask yourself these questions:

Am I willing to make the time commitment to make these changes?
When, where and with whom do I want to do this?
What resources do I ned to get this outcome?
Am I ready to give up my unhelpful eating habits?
Who needs to know about my plan? What kind of support do I need from them?

Once you’re ready, staying committed and changing habits will be easier.

You are responsible for your behavior and for the successful achievement of your weight-loss goals. It is helpful to use support, of the right kind, which will help you stay motivated and focused. The right kind of support helps you develop a healthier lifestyle, encourages you positively without shame, embarrassment or sabotage, and listens to your concerns and feelings.

3. Change your eating habits.

Check out our blog post on 12 Eating Habits for Permanent Weight Loss. Here are some of our favourite tips:

Take time to eat mindfully and properly.

Eating slowly makes you feel fuller and can help with weight loss. This is because chewing food longer slows down your eating, giving your brain more time to receive signals from the stomach that it is full. Research shows that chewing each mouthful until it is liquid helps digestion and promotes weight loss.

More importantly, being mindful, being fully present in your eating experience will help you enjoy your food, which contributes to your feelings of satisfaction and joy. This satisfaction with your food also helps prevent over-eating.

Eat within a 12 hour window to achieve optimal body fat levels.

By restricting your eating to a window of time each day, you can allow your body to undergo a process called autophagy, which involves the elimination of old and worn-out cells. In turn, this can have many health benefits, including improving blood sugar levels and weight loss.

Eat fruits and vegetables and boost your gut microbiome.

The diversity of your gut microbiome, the collection of bacteria that live in your gut, is lower in those who are overweight. Some gut bacteria extract energy from food better than others, so if you want a diverse gut microbiome, you should eat plant foods like fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains. Eating a variety of colours of fruits and vegetables will also support a wider variety of good bacteria in your body. As they say, “Eat the rainbow every week”. Frozen fruit and vegetables can be cheaper than fresh produce and can obviously last longer if price and longevity are important to you.

This also increases your fibre intake. Fibre prolongs your feeling of fullness after meals, reduces your feeling of hunger and appetite, and reduces your total calorie intake.

Reduce your alcohol consumption.

Alcohol contains 7 kcal per gram, whereas fat contains 9 kcal per gram. Drinking 4 bottles of wine a month adds up to a yearly consumption of around 27,000 kcal, which is equivalent to eating 48 Big Macs per year. Drinking 5 pints of lager each week adds up to 44,200 kcal over a year, equivalent to eating 221 doughnuts.

So, if you’re trying to lose weight you need to think about what you are drinking as well as what you are eating.

4. Move. Find a cardio workout that you like.

You lose weight when you are on calorie deficit, which means that you burn more calories compared to how much you eat. When you’re trying to lose weight at home, cardio is an almost mandatory tip. While it’s much easier to do cardio outdoors, you can do it at home as well. Here are some options of cardio you can do at home:

There are thousands of free exercise videos on YouTube. Experiment on which channels and exercise routines will work best for you.
HIIT workouts are high-intensity interval training sessions that are short in duration but maximize the amount of calories burned and muscle built. HIIT extends your body’s ability to burn calories even after workout.
Skipping rope can burn a great amount of calories and help you tone your muscles. You can even do it without a skipping rope! Try it.

5. Manage your stress and embrace good sleeping habits.

Even if you have a very good diet and you exercise regularly, your body will sabotage your weight-loss efforts if you are experiencing chronic stress or chronic sleep deprivation. Both situations increase your body’s cortisol level.

Long-term exposure to elevated cortisol has a number of negative effects on the body, such as increased blood sugar and decreased action of the hormone called leptin. When leptin levels decrease, this stimulates intense hunger and appetite and can lead to increased food consumption.

Cortisol also promotes protein breakdown, which means that if you are constantly stressed or sleep-deprived, your body is naturally breaking down the muscles you’ve worked so hard for!

6. Change your mindset.

You can’t just eat healthy foods and exercise for a few weeks or months and have long-term weight management. To lose weight, you have to take an honest look at your eating patterns and daily routine, assess your personal challenges to weight loss, come up with a strategy to gradually change these habits, and plan how you’ll deal with these challenges if you’re going to succeed in losing weight. After a setback, simply start fresh the next day. Remember that you’re planning to change your life. It won’t happen all at once; it’s an ongoing process. Stick to your healthy lifestyle and the results will be worth it!

Here are some questions to ask yourself to encourage your brain to support you in making the change:

What’s not working?
What triggers the problem?
What stops me from getting what I want?
What beliefs and internal dialogue are not helping me?
What stops me from fixing this?
Who benefits from me not fixing this?
When have I achieved something that was challenging at first? What did I do?
Who do I know who’s like me and successfully achieved their health and weight goals? What did they do?
If I had already achieved my goal and I were looking back, what do I see as the things I had done in order to lose weight?
What will I learn after I’ve reached your goal?
Who else will benefit once I’ve reached my goal?
After I reach my goal, what will happen next?

Practise self-compassion yet curious to find out what happens if you keep moving forward with your goal. Also recheck the ecology of your goal around various aspects of your life and your environment. Aiming for a weight loss goal of 1 to 2 pounds a week is realistic and attainable, but how do you know if it’s realistic for you? To reach this goal, you need to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you consume each day through diet and exercise. How can you manage this kind of calorie deficit?

Be flexible and be willing to adjust your plan, keeping in mind what would work best for you as a whole person, not just what would shed the most pounds the fastest.

Start one habit change now!

While every tip may not work for everyone, it’s likely that you’ll find several that will suit your way of living. Try applying a couple of these tips and begin to lose weight today.

Start by asking yourself the powerful questions we’ve shared with you above, and see what happens.

References

https://www.evergreen-life.co.uk/health-wellbeing-library/7-tips-for-weight-loss-how-to-reduce-bmi/

https://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/health/are-you-lactose-intolerant-here-are-food-options-to-fulfill-your-need-of-dairy-products-101672290559726.html

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/advice/a17162/lose-weight-faster-karas-0302/

https://www.godigit.com/health-insurance/weight-loss/weight-loss-tips-at-home

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/calories-in-alcohol/

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/managing-your-weight/12-tips-to-help-you-lose-weight/

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/losing_weight/index.html

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/weight-loss/art-20047752

Posted on: December 5, 2022February 17, 2023

12 Eating Habits For Permanent Weight Loss

Do you want to lose weight and keep your ideal weight forever? I know it’s easier said than done. I struggled to lose weight for three years after giving birth.

What I learned is that short and quick weight loss programs and quick-fix slimming products don’t produce lasting weight loss by themselves. They can help you lose weight temporarily, but as soon as you stop using them, you gain the weight right back up.

It’s because you haven’t yet developed the right daily habits that actually support lasting weight loss. What you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, how you choose and buy your food and how much you move all play an important role in your weight loss.

I know it’s hard to let go of unhelpful habits and it’s equally hard to develop new helpful habits. The key to creating a habit effectively is choosing the simplest, easiest habit you can start with. If it doesn’t work for you, try something else. If it’s too hard for you, dissect it and try one step at a time.

I’m excited to share with you the habits that have helped me achieve permanent weight loss in a safe and healthy way. In this article, I’ll only be talking about habits surrounding food and eating behavior. Stay tuned for my other articles on weight loss.

1. Track your calories.

You can only lose weight if your calorie intake from food is less than the calories you burn. If weight loss primarily involves calories, it’s worth your while to understand and track them.

If you want to learn more about calories and how to track them, please read my posts “Weight Loss: What You Need To Know FIRST” and “Weight Loss: How To Track Your Calories“.

Calorie mindfulness is the best way to lose weight. But if, for whatever reason, you find it impossible to do after giving it a try, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of good habits you can develop.

2. Eat more protein.

Protein is harder to digest compared to carbs and fats. It uses up more energy just by digesting it, helping you burn more calories. And because it takes longer to digest, you feel fuller for longer, which helps avoid cravings.

Examples of good protein source are fish, chicken breast, lean beef, pork loin, egg, greek yogurt, tofu, nuts, seeds, beans, peas and lentils.

Remember, though, that you should not eat too much protein in addition to your carbs and fats. Anything in excess will still be stored in the body as fat. Instead, you can swap your additional protein with some of your fats and sugars. Having 25-50 g of protein in most of your meals would be ideal.

3. Eat more fiber.

Fiber has a similar effect as protein: fiber prolongs your feeling of fullness after meals, reduces your feeling of hunger and appetite, and reduces your total calorie intake.

Notice, for example, that when you eat high-fiber unrefined whole grains for breakfast such as muesli, you feel full for longer.

That’s because fiber also takes longer to digest. It stays in your stomach longer. It absorbs water, providing bulk.

When you increase the portion of fruits and vegetables within your meal, the portion size will be the same but the calorie count will be lower, as well.

Fiber has many other benefits aside from supporting weight loss. It improves bowel movement and it also feeds your gut microbiome, which has diverse benefits to your health.

4. Choose low GI and low GL carbs.

The Glycemic Index (GI) ranks the carbohydrates in your food based on how quickly it affects your blood sugar. If it raises your blood sugar quickly, it’s considered high-GI (GI of 70+). If it raises your blood sugar slowly, it’s low-GI (GI of 55 or less). You can check the GI of your favorite foods in glycemicindex.com.

Examples of low-GI foods are:

vegetables
pulses (beans, peas, lentils)
whole grains (such as oats, muesli and quinoa)

Because low-GI foods raise your blood sugar slowly, your insulin will also be released slowly. Insulin is the hormone released by your pancreas to push blood sugar into your cells.

Low-GI foods help you avoid drastic changes in the levels of your blood sugar and insulin. The result is that you have prolonged energy and you don’t starve and crave shortly after eating. For this reason, low-GI foods are also called “good carbs”.

The opposite is true with high-GI foods, such as:

refined sugars, sugary foods and drinks
white bread
white rice
potatoes

High-GI carbs raise blood sugar quickly. Insulin is released to compensate for this. This leads to feeling hungry shortly after a meal.

Constant drastic changes in your blood sugar and insulin can eventually lead to insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.

Glycemic Index (GI) has some limitations mainly due to its changeability depending on how ripe the fruit is, how the food is prepared, and what other foods are eaten with it. It also does not reflect the level of vitamins and minerals the food has.

For example, chocolate cake with frosting has low GI (38) but it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy food. Watermelon has a GI of 72, but it doesn’t mean that it’s bad carbs. GI also does not reflect the amount of calories in the portion size.

These limitations have been addressed by Glycemic Load (GL), which helps you check the quality and quantity of the carbohydrates you eat. GL less than 10 is low, and more than 20 is high.

You can see the GI and GL values in the International Table of Glycemic Index and Load. Don’t worry if you eat high-GI from time to time. Just eat it or offset it with more nutritious low-GI and low-GL foods.

I’ve seen many studies studies that prove the ability of low-GI low-GL to support permanent weight loss as well as overall good health. However, there are also studies saying that the effect of low GI and GL on weight loss has been inconsistent. Check out this meta-analysis, for example.

Nevertheless, low-GI and low-GI particularly works for me and for many people and I recommend it to you, as well. I believe it can help you lose weight if you stick to it and if you are more conscious of your other eating habits, as well.

5. Eat because you are hungry, and stop eating when you’re just full.

Eat because you are hungry and not because it’s out of habit. Before you eat your meals, dessert and snacks, always pause for a minute to ask your self if you are hungry.

If you are, then it’s okay to eat. If you are not hungry, food is not necessary. Food that your body does not need gets converted into fat, leading to weight gain. Do not feel obliged to finish everything on your plate once you are feeling just full.

When tempted to eat when you’re not hungry or to finish everything on your plate even when you’re full, ask yourself the magic question: “Where do I want this excess food to go: to the bin or stored in my body as fat?” That question has been consistently helping me to control my eating. I hope it will help you, too.

Don’t wait for you to feel very full before you stop eating. Stop eating when you’re just starting to feel full. That way, you’ll feel hungry just in time for your next meal, which you’ll enjoy more because you’d be hungry.

Move away from the food, distract yourself and do something else to keep you busy if you find it hard to resist the temptation.

6. Eat smaller portions.

Reducing your portion size will reduce your overall calorie intake. Here are some tips for you to eat smaller portions:

Use a smaller plate. This produces an illusion that you have “plenty” of food on your plate if it somehow fills your smaller plate.

Remember what you ate in your last meal. This can help you decide to eat less for dinner if you remember what you had for lunch.

If you are still hungry after your main meal, you can have dessert but it would be better if you choose the healthier alternative such as fruit and yogurt, or something that is not as calorie-dense.

If you’ve been planning to have dessert, adjust the size of your main course.

If you’re really just craving for dessert, consider having a dessert-only meal.

Buy food in smaller-sized packages.

7. Eat slower.

If you eat slower, you give your body more time to digest the food and build up your feeling of fullness. It also increases the hormones in your digestive system which are responsible for detecting fullness.

Here are some tips on how you can eat slower:

Chew your food longer than you usually do. Chew soft food 5-10 times, and chew harder food up to 32 times before swallowing. I’ve recently counted the number of times I chew my harder food, it actually ranged between 30 and 35. How about you?
Put down your utensils while chewing.
Use your non-dominant hand.
Use a smaller spoon and fork.
Use chopsticks if you are not a regular chopsticks user. Have fun!

8. Eat mindfully.

If you are paying attention to what you are eating, you will experience more pleasure from it, it will satisfy your appetite more, and you will stop eating when your appetite is satisfied. Being mindful will also enable you to notice if you are starting to feel full.

Here are some tips on how you can be more mindful when you are eating:

Feel the pleasure of your food: how it smells, tastes, and feels in in your mouth
Use a heavy plate, heavy cutlery and a heavy glass as they heighten the pleasure of eating.
Sit down on the dining table for your meals.
Avoid eating on the go while standing up or walking.
Avoid watching TV.
Avoid browsing your phone.

When you are watching TV or when you’re browsing on your phone while eating, your brain is distracted, and so it is not able to accurately tell that you’ve had enough to eat. This can lead to overeating.

9. Use menthol mouthwash or brush your teeth after meals.

Menthol mouthwash reduces craving, appetite and hunger after meals, which means it can help you avoid snacking in between meals or just before bedtime.

Look for an alcohol-free mouthwash so you don’t kill the good bacteria in your mouth, which you need in promoting oral health.

10. Don’t buy calorie-dense snacks.

Do you eat snacks even if you’re not hungry, just because you have them in your house? Do you find yourself rummaging through your stash of snacks if you’re bored or stressed or angry?

If you don’t have the snacks in the house, you won’t be tempted to eat them. Don’t buy them. It’s a matter of resisting it once at the supermarket, or resisting it constantly if it’s in your house.

(Actually, my husband used to say that to me a lot, because I looooooove snacking. I didn’t listen to him at first, which led to more snacking and weight gain. But when I finally stopped buying my favorite snacks, I stopped snacking, as well! It’s a miracle!)

I’m not saying that you should never snack. You can, just make sure you don’t go over your calorie requirement because of them.

If having them in your house makes you go over your calorie requirement regularly, then it’s worth not having them in your house at all.

However, eating snacks does not necessarily mean it will make you gain weight. If you are hungry, it means you need food, but choose your snacks wisely, considering their calories so you can stay within your target.

Consider snacking on healthier options such as boiled egg or carrot, bell pepper and cucumber slices with hummus or nut butter without added sugar.

If you’re on the go, have a packet of nuts and seeds or fruit with you.

If you particularly love chocolate and won’t have no as an answer, have a small portion of 90%-100% dark chocolate.

11. Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re hungry.

Your senses can wreak havoc on your appetite when you go to the supermarket on an empty stomach. Trust me, I’ve been there many times.

Supermarkets release a distinct aroma of fresh bread which stimulates the appetite, making you more likely to buy extra food. The drinks and food will also look more visually appealing when you are hungry.

Do you remember how much you bought at the supermarket the last time you went there hungry?

12. Eat your meals within a 12-hour period.

Without food intake for several hours, your liver releases enzymes that break down your stored fat and cholesterol, which means that your liver is helping you burn fat. This also improves blood sugar control and appetite signalling.

Some people can go for several hours or days without food (fasting) and they report several health benefits with it. However, long periods of fasting can be problematic for some and impossible for many.

12 hours without food (micro-fasting) is manageable for most of us. If you finish your dinner at 7 pm, start your breakfast at 7 am. Outside your 12-hour eating window, you can have water and tea, but move away from caffeine at night.

This would also help you control your late-night snacking.

If skipping breakfast works for you, skip it, just make sure that you are not binge-eating at lunch and dinner. Skipping meals does not guarantee weight loss if you are eating excessive calories in your other meals.

Choose At Least One Simple Habit You Can Start Now

My goal is to inspire you to develop simple health habits one at a time. You’ll be surprised to see how your new habit will eventually make you feel better about your health and about yourself.

Your habits also have a compounding effect, and they’ll lead you to the kind of health and the kind of life that you’ll have 20, 30, 50 years from now. It would be great if you work towards the kind of health you want to enjoy in your retirement years.

Which one of these would you like to start with today?

Track your calories.
Eat more protein.
Eat more fiber.
Choose low-GI and low-GL carbs.
Eat because you are hungry, and stop eating when you are just full.
Eat smaller portions.
Eat slower.
Eat mindfully.
Use menthol mouthwash or brush your teeth after meals.
Don’t buy unhealthy, calorie-dense snacks.
Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re hungry.
Eat your meals within a 12-hour period.

Which new habit did you choose? Please let me know by commenting below. I’d also love to know your thoughts after reading my article.

References

“Nutrition: Maintaining and Improving Health” 5e by Geoffrey P. Webb (2020)

“Eat What You Like & Lose Weight For Life” by Grame Tomlinson (2020)

“Not A Diet Book: Lose Fat. Gain Confidence. Transform Your Life” by James Smith (2020)

“The 4 Pillar Plan” by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (2018)

“The Energy Plan” by James Collins (2019)

“How To Retrain Your Appetite” by Dr. Hellen McCarthy (2019)

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/86/4/972/4649359

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25926512

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27663531

Why follow a Low GI Diet?

Posted on: November 21, 2022February 17, 2023

Weight Loss: How To Track Your Calories

How many times have you tried to lose weight? Did it work? Did you achieve your weight goal and sustain it permanently?

If yes, congratulations! You don’t need to read this article.

But if you answered no, I feel you. I struggled losing weight for three years after giving birth. Only after I understood calories did I manage to enjoy permanent weight loss.

Indeed, the most common reason for not losing weight even if you’ve been dieting and exercising is that you don’t know the numbers involved.

The fact is, you can only lose weight if the calories from the food you eat is lesser than the calories you burn, and calories are your numbers. If you want to learn more about calories and weight loss, please read my post “Weight Loss: What You Need To Know FIRST”.

As the saying goes, “Numbers don’t lie”. If you can see the number of your calories and how they are affecting your weight and general well-being, you’ll be able to really know your body and your daily habits more.

And when you change your daily habits as you track your numbers, the most beautiful thing happens: you develop new helpful habits that will lead you to the weight and health that you desire, permanently.

Normally, you’ll have to pay a health coach or fitness coach to give you these numbers. It’s great if you can find an affordable and reliable weight loss coach to help you, but you can also learn how to do it yourself. I’ll teach you how I did it.

First, you need to know how much calories you need.

What’s Your Calorie Requirement?

On average, adult men need 2,500 calories from food per day, and women need 2,000 calories per day.

However, various factors can increase or decrease that requirement, such as your age, your metabolism, your level of physical activity at work and how often you exercise.

For example, your calorie requirement would be very different from that of an athlete who’s the same gender, height and age as you. Your calorie requirement when you had a very active lifestyle would be different now if your lifestyle has changed into a sedentary one.

Click the link below to compute your calorie requirement that will help you meet your weight goal considering the factors above. It will show you how much carbs, protein and fat you need in terms of calories and portion size. It will also give you a guide that you can print and email to yourself.

Click here to access Precision Nutrition’s calorie calculator to meet your daily goal. (link – https://www.precisionnutrition.com/nutrition-calculator )

Next, you need to start tracking your daily calorie and weekly calorie intake.

Tracking Your Calorie Intake

(1) Read food labels before you buy them and before you eat them.

Reading labels is very important. Look at the calories per serving. Sometimes, “kcal” or “kJ” is used. I prefer using calories/kcal (which are used interchangeably).

Reading labels will make you more aware of whether your meals, snacks and drinks will take you closer or farther from your desired weight. It can help you make better decisions in the food you buy and eat, as well as portion sizes.

(2) Know how much calories are in your meals, snacks and drinks.

There are plenty of food that don’t have calorie labels on them, such as the curry you’ve just cooked. You can check the number of calories in your food by using calorie counter apps and various sites on Google, or you can buy a food composition book.

Click on the link below to go to one of my favorite sites that will show you how much calories are in your food, and how much physical activity you’ll need to burn those calories.

Check the calories in your food via Nutritionix database. (link – https://www.nutritionix.com )

If you know, for example, that the one medium donut has about 250 calories which would need about 68 minutes of walking just to burn it, you might just skip the donut, particularly if you’re not hungry, or you can choose a healthier alternative.

I’m not saying you should never eat donuts and other things you love. Weight loss will be very difficult if you have to ban everything you love from your life.

But if you are more mindful of how much calories are in the donut, you can make necessary adjustments in your other food intake and your movement, or it can even give you second thoughts about the donut, especially since you are more aware that you’re having sugar.

(3) Know your daily calorie intake.

You can write down the individual food and corresponding calories and get your total calorie intake for the day, or you can use online calorie counters and mobile apps, such as the ones mentioned here. ( link – https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/5-best-calorie-counters#section6 )

One example is myfitnesspal.com, which also has a mobile app. You can enter your food, select it from the database, and it will automatically compute the calories for you.

Click here to access your free daily calorie counter from myfitnesspal.com. (link – https://www.myfitnesspal.com/ )

Various users contribute to the database so you may find different calorie counts, but if you’re unsure which one is correct, you can double check it with other calorie counters such as Nutritionix.

Looking at the total calories weekly is better than daily to make room for adjustments in case there are social occasions or you ate more on a specific day for whatever reason. But remember that, although occasional single large meals won’t make you gain weight significantly, habitual large meals do.

Tracking The Calories You Burn

Based on your gender, age, height, weight and level of physical activity, you can estimate the calories that you burn using this calculator. (link – https://tdeecalculator.net/ )

You can also use a wearable fitness tracker and mobile app to help you track the calories you burn each day. These fitness trackers are not accurate and can even have up to 25% margin of error when telling you how much you burned.

Nevertheless, they can give you estimates and can give you an idea if you’re moving more, so it’s still a great tool to have.

If you don’t like wearing it on your wrist such as Fitbit, try something on your finger, such as Oura ring. I have both and I prefer wearing the ring.

Food And Movement Diary

Having a food and movement diary is not necessary, but if you’ve really been struggling to lose weight, I highly recommend having one.

Writing down your weight loss numbers would greatly help you in being more mindful of your eating habits and movement. If you are writing down what you’ve eaten, you’re able to reflect better on your food choices, and this can help you make better decisions in the next days.

It will also help you uncover any unhelpful habits and attitude towards food and movement. You’ll be able to pinpoint faster what’s helping you and what’s not.

Having these information on your food and movement diary would be very handy:

Date and time

Individual food and portion sizein your meals, snacks and drinks
Hunger levelbefore you ate (1-10, 10 being very hungry)
Physical activity(what kind and how long)
Whereit happened (at work, at home, with friends?)
Total caloriesfrom your food intake (use the calorie calculators online, such myfitnesspal or Nutritionix)
Calories burnedbased on your your fitness tracker
Notes(your mood, what happened in your life or work, or why you ate even if you’re not hungry, the number of hours you’ve slept the previous night, etc.)
Total calorie intakefor the week
Total calorie burnedfor the week
Your weekly weight and waist circumference taken on the same time and day of the week
Weekly change in weight

It’s Worth Trying

Does calorie tracking sound tedious to you? I feel you. That’s what I thought the first time I learned about calorie counting.

I used to count my calories manually using a calculator, pen and paper (I computed the calories per gram of carbohydrate, protein and fat in each food). That was quite tedious.

But now, it’s so much easier because of the websites, apps and wearables, such as the ones I mentioned above. Give it a try.

You don’t need to count calories forever. Once you have a good idea of how much calories are in your food because of your experience in calorie counting, it will be easier for you to assess the right portion size for you without looking at the calorie count anymore. The same goes for tracking the calories you burn.

If, for any reason, you find calorie tracking very difficult and unsustainable after giving it a try, don’t worry and don’t feel bad. You still have plenty of other helpful habits you can develop to achieve weight loss. Check out my post on helpful eating habits that will help you lose weight and maintain your desired weight.

Choose At Least One Simple Habit You Can Start Now

My goal is to inspire you to develop simple health habits one at a time. You’ll be surprised to see how your new habit will eventually make you feel better about your health and about yourself.

Which one of these would you like to start with today?

Know and remember your target calorie intake based on your weight loss goal.
Read the labels of the food you buy and check the calories.
Know how much total estimated calories are in your meals, drinks and snacks.
Track your calorie intake versus your target intake.
Track your movement and calories burned.
Keep a food and movement diary.

Which new habit did you choose? Please let me know by commenting below. I’d also love to know your thoughts after reading my article.

References

“The Energy Plan” by James Collins (2019)

“Eat What You Like & Lose Weight For Life” by Grame Tomlinson (2020)

“Not A Diet Book: Lose Fat. Gain Confidence. Transform Your Life” by James Smith (2020)

Posted on: November 7, 2022February 17, 2023

Weight Loss: What You Need To Know First

Have you ever been confused about the right way to lose weight? Perhaps you heard these before and you believed what you heard, only to hear something different later on:

Carbs make you fat.
Fat makes you fat.
Low-carb makes you lose weight.
Low-fat makes you lose weight.
Giving up sugar makes you lose weight.
and so on….

You’d find it hard to know which one to actually eat!

And there are so many kinds of diets our there: keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, alkaline, organic, intermittent fasting, juicing, superfoods, raw food, diet tea, and the list goes on. Which one should you follow?

I personally found it confusing before, as well. I know how you feel.

In this post, I aim to cut through the confusion and simplify weight loss.

The Only Way You Can Lose Weight

Weight loss only comes when your calorie intake from food is less than the calories you burn. This is called the calorie deficit.

That is the only way that you can lose weight, regardless of the kind of diet and exercise you do. If you are asking why you are not losing weight, the most likely answer is that you’re not in calorie deficit.

If your calorie intake is equal to your calorie expenditure, you maintain your weight.

If your calorie intake is greater than your calorie expenditure, you gain weight. Excess calories are stored as fat.

The more calorie deficit you have, the faster the weight loss.

Calorie Deficit	Weight Loss
300-500 calories / day	300-500 g/week
500-1,000 calories / day	500-1,000 g/week

The desirable rate of weight loss for most people is 0.5 – 1 kg per week. The initial weight loss in the first month is usually faster, and then it can slow down or come to a plateau.

You then have to readjust your calorie intake and calorie expenditure to maintain calorie deficit. Once you’re reached your desired weight, you’ll have to readjust your targets to move to a new goal, such as weight maintenance or muscle gain.

So, yes, your weight loss is really about your calories. Because of that, it’s worth your while to be learn more about them.

Where Do Calories Come From?

Calories are units of measurement of energy. You get your energy from the food that you eat and that energy is measured in calories.

The four sources of energy from your food are called macronutrients (macros), which are the following:

Fat – 1 gram of fat has 9 calories
Carbohydrates – 1 gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories
Protein – 1 gram of protein has 4 calories
Alcohol – 1 gram of alcohol has 7 calories

For example, you ate 50 g of protein. It will give you 200 calories (50 g X 4 calories per gram of protein = 200 calories).

Calories from Fat + Carbohydrates + Protein + Alcohol = Your Calorie Intake

P.S. If you see “kcal”, it’s short for kilocalories, or 1,000 calories. However, kcal and calories are used interchangeably, even in food labels. We’ll use “calories” as our unit of measurement in my blog.

How Do You Burn Calories?

You burn calories because of your movement and everything else that happens in your body to keep you alive, which are basic metabolic stuff.

It’s hard to control the energy you burn with your basic metabolic stuff, but you have plenty of control over your movement.

You can burn more calories by increasing your exercise and day-to-day movement such as walking, going up and down the stairs, playing with your kids and doing household chores.

Are Calories Created Equal?

100 calories from fat are the same energy as 100 calories from protein. 200 calories from “healthy food” are the same as 200 calories from “junk food”.

So even if you eat “healthy food” but you eat too much of it, you can still gain weight. Calories are equal regardless of their source and they are burned the same way.

Calories then are about quantity of food but not about the quality of food. But remember that the quality of your food is important for your overall health.

The food you put in your belly for your energy requirement and enjoyment is also the same food you give to your brain, your heart, your arteries and all important parts of your body. To me, being healthy on the inside is more important than looking good on the outside.

Aside from calories then, you also need to look at the quality of the food you eat so you can enjoy your weight loss with good health, as well. Eat more whole, unprocessed food (made by nature) and eat less processed food (made by man).

Putting It All Together

To achieve weight loss, you need to be in calorie deficit: your calorie intake from food should be lesser than your energy expenditure. You can therefore lose weight by:

Eating fewer calories
Increasing your movement

If calories are the foundation for weight loss, it’s really worth learning about them, tracking them, and developing helpful habits around them if you want to lose weight permanently.

Check out my post on how how to set your target calories and how to track them, and stay tuned for my post on helpful habits that can lead to permanent weight loss. (How to Track Your Calories)

Choose At Least One Simple Habit You Can Start Now

My goal is to inspire you to develop simple health habits one at a time. You’ll be surprised to see how your new habit will eventually make you feel better about your health and about yourself.

Which one of these would you like to start with today?