The 6 Most Important Weight Loss Tips

Although reducing food consumption can have an immediate effect on your weight it is a short lived effect and any weight loss will quickly stop once the body has adapted to a lower intake of calories. So what most people need are guidelines or weight loss tips so they can effectively and safely lose weight and this is what this article will provide you with.

1. Beware of Crash Diets:

Crash diets are not good for your health. By lowering the intake of calories, sometimes by enormous amounts depending on the diet followed, can cause serious problems to your health. What happens is that your body begins to digest the fat that is stored as there is no energy being consumed in the shape of food. This in itself sounds great, but the fat the body burns uses what little energy has been taken onboard. As a result you will suffer from extreme tiredness, illness and a weak immune system that leaves you less able to fight off even minor strains of infections.

A good way to avoid this problem is to use a weight loss program that uses a method called calorie shifting. This method encourages eating the right types of food, the foods in turn maintain a high metabolism and this in turn results in increase weight loss with the negative effects of a low calorie diet! You can check out such a weight loss program at the end of this article.

2. Eating properly:

This was touched on briefly at the end of point one. There are two types of food, good and bad. The good food contains lots of foods that have, what are known as, negative calorie values. A food with a negative calorie value is a food that contains fewer calories than what the body uses to digest it. Therefore, if you take an apple for example that has a calorific value of 100, and eat it, you will burn off 50 more calories than the apple contains, as it takes 150 calories to digest the apple! A diet that comprises completely of negative calorie foods will practically guarantee weight loss.

On the other hand though there are many foods that contain empty calories, and these are the nemesis of the negative calorie foods and are very much what we are looking to avoid or limit in our diet. All foods that contain empty calories are referred to as junk foods; and amongst these are items like red meat, white bread, cakes, biscuits, anything that has a high sugar count, chips and many more besides.

I’m guessing right now that you have just readthat short list and thought to yourself that you are going to have to give up eating everything you enjoy.

That is not what losing weight is about, it isn’t about not permiting yourself things you enjoy, it’s about managing what you eat so that you are able to eat things you enjoy without putting your health at risk by being overweight.

The Advantages of Slow Dieting

There is a certain mentality that says fast improvement is best for health situations. This conclusion doesn’t necessarily stand up.Let’s take the example of weight loss. I just saw an ad that said, “Take off 21 pounds in 30 days.” What do you think of that? Should one take off twenty pounds in a month?Wouldn’t most of us opt for this fast route? Get it over. Look good, feel good and regain health all in just 30 days!Have you known anyone who did that? And if you have, how did they seem four months later? There’s the rub – fast loss leads to fast gain.Check out some celebrities who’ve promoted the latest diets. Skinny one month and balloons a few months later.Ask yourself how come there are hundreds and hundreds of diets floating around. Many of these diets call for entirely different foods. One is high on protein. Another is high on carbohydrates. This or that diet. Cabbage soup diet. Grapefruit diet. Macrobiotic diet. On and on.The major reasons that most of these diets don’t work long term are,1. Not all bodies are the same. What’s beneficial for one person may not be so for another.2. Most diets do not contain what you want to eat. You can’t wait to lose that twenty pounds so you can go back to eating what you enjoy.3. Most diets are not healthy, so you end up malnourished while on them. Bodies are incredibly complex with millions of biochemical reactions occurring within them. These reactions require a wide variety of foods to supply all the factors necessary to run successfully.4. During a fast weight loss diet, your body adjusts to ride out being starved, then when you finally begin feeding it normally again, it packs on the weight in anticipation of future starvation.Fast weight loss diets work against health for the above reasons.So if we don’t take the fast route, what road do we travel? You guessed it – lay back and cruise the two lane highways. Take that extra two days to get to LA.This particularly holds true with high blood pressure diets where slow dieting is wise dieting, being effective in producing normal blood pressure.Nevertheless, the slow method has its downside: No one will admire your suddenly shapely figure. You can’t decide to go on a diet in June for your beach trip in July. After three months, your best friend will still urge you to join her or him on the latest fad diet sweeping the country. You won’t be able to brag. People won’t be able to admire the suddenly slender you.Still when you step on the bathroom scale and see that you have lost two tenths of a pound five weeks in a row, you will smile with self assured confidence that you are controlling your future health. You will know where you are going. You will drive the car to LA.When you get to LA, you will have permanently changed your diet and your health. You will live longer.The slow diet is not a canned “miracle” diet. To do it requires persistence and knowledge because only you can make it work.Too much weight is unhealthy. It leads to various illnesses that usually begin unnoticed in middle age. Sudden weight loss is unhealthy, too. It shocks the body. The body doesn’t like that and tries to defeat you.So, let’s not obsess on weight loss. Relax, educate yourself, and take the slow road to health.

A Quick Look at Some of Today’s Most Effective Diets

The idiot-proof diet is all about calorie shifting. That is, in this diet, you shift your food intake throughout the day instead of eating just 3 meals a day. The diet is popular because it’s actually very easy to follow and there are hardly any restrictions when it comes to the types of food you can eat.

mediaimage
The Idiot-Proof Diet

The idiot-proof diet is all about calorie shifting. That is, in this diet, you shift your food intake throughout the day instead of eating just 3 meals a day. The diet is popular because it’s actually very easy to follow and there are hardly any restrictions when it comes to the types of food you can eat.

The ‘calorie shifting’ model takes place because you eat every two and half hours. The theory is that because your body is consuming calories (energy) constantly throughout the day, it’s always in ‘burning calories’ mode instead of the ‘saving calories’ mode.

When you sign up for the diet, you get access to a diet handbook, an 11-day diet-plan and a diet calculator. You get to pick what foods you like to eat so don’t think that you’ll be tarving in this diet!

NutriSystem

The NutriSystem way of dieting is all about proper meal planning. People love this diet because it takes away the burden of trying to figure out what to eat during their dieting phase. You see, a lot of people actually get confused as to what they can eat when they want to lose weight. That’s not really surprising because there’s so much information out there and for every yay sayer, there is a nay sayer so it’s really tough to know what to eat.

However, with NurtiSystem, they do all the meal planning and portion controlling for you. You just need to sign up to any of their diet programs (e.g., Women’s Program, Men’s Program, Vegetarian Program, etc.) and order a multi-day (usually for 28 days) diet program.

After you choose your diet program, a menu is presented to you and you simply choose what you want to eat. The meals are then delivered to your doorstep at various intervals during your diet program.

The South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet is popular because the name alone conjures bikini-clad bodies! Add to that the fact that it was founded by a cardiologist, Dr. Arthur Agatston, then you have a sort of ‘doctor recommended, doctor approved’ seal on the diet as well.

At first glance, the South Beach Diet looks a lot like the Atkins Diet in the sense that it restricts carbohydrates during the initial phase of the program (there are 3 phases). The first phase (14 days) encourages ‘normal eating’ in the sense that you can pretty much eat whatever you want but you must NOT eat bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, or baked goods. Fruit is also not allowed. No sugar. No alcohol.

The second phase allows you to SLOWLY introduce these items back into your diet but at lesser levels that you consumed them before of course. The third phase is more about general maintenance.

Weight Watchers

Probably one of the longest running diet programs out there is Weight Watchers. It believes in the overall approach where food, exercise, behavior and support are addressed.

Weight Watchers is known for advocating a point system for foods. Using this system, one calculates the calorie intake of the foods he or she eats. The number of points you can have in a day varies depending on your weight. The beauty of the program is that there are no gut-wrenching food restrictions so you never feel deprived of anything. However, the point system teaches you how to balance your meals so that even if you indulge on one food item, you don’t go overboard and consume too much in a day.