If you’re trying to lose weight, making simple changes for healthy living is absolutely necessary to achieve lasting weight control.
Even small changes can make a big difference for living a healthy lifestyle. Read on…
Strict dieting is a popular way to lose weight, but it usually doesn’t lead to lasting weight control. It involves deprivation or starvation which usually slows down metabolism… and makes it harder to continue losing weight. Instead, you can make simple changes for permanent weight control and healthy living.
Lasting Weight Control Can Help Prevent Premature Death and Harmful Health Effects of Obesity and Being Overweight
Obesity is a huge problem for many Americans. Millions of people are overweight worldwide.
Effective strategies for lasting weight control can help many people avoid harmful health effects of obesity and being overweight. Obese and overweight individuals have a greater risk of dying prematurely or living with disabilities associated with cancer, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and other largely preventable chronic diseases.
Weight-associated health issues can also lead to financial disaster for many families, including medical bankruptcy for many families due to staggering health care costs.
Strict dieting is a popular way to lose weight, but it usually doesn’t lead to lasting weight control.
Why?
Strict dieting involves deprivation or starvation which usually slows down metabolism. After losing a few pounds, having a slower metabolism makes it increasingly harder for dieters to lose more weight.
Although diet foods can help with weight loss, dieting often leads to feelings of deprivation. Any form of suffering related to weight loss can lead to higher incidence of cheating and failure.
What’s even worse is that even dieters willing to suffer through feelings of deprivation are not likely to achieve lasting weight control.
Why?
Being overweight or obese is not usually the cause of the problem — it is the symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle. By focusing on weight loss alone, the real cause of the problem does not get addressed.
For example: if you have a toothache due to tooth decay and you only treat the toothache, you will keep getting recurring toothache. Treating the toothache is not a permanent solution. The toothache is only a symptom associated with the tooth decay. Unless the tooth decay is addressed, you have not dealt with the real problem. So, you will keep getting a toothache, which is the symptom of tooth decay.
Similarly, treating obesity or being overweight is not a permanent solution. Unless the unhealthy lifestyle is addressed, you have not dealt with the real problem. So, you will keep dealing with obesity or being overweight, which is the symptom of the unhealthy lifestyle.
What’s the real solution?
How Do You Lose Weight and Achieve Lasting Weight Control?
Weight control has to be easy for people to stick with healthier habits for life.
The main problem is that millions of people in the United States are living a very unhealthy lifestyle. Americans are living such busy lives — they’re often over-worked, sleep-deprived and time-starved. They’re chronically stressed out.
Today’s environment also promotes obesity. It is characterized by decreased physical activity and increased intake of fast food.
For example, instead of being more physically active at home or at work, people often sit and work using their computers. Instead of exercising, people often watch television, play video games or surf the Internet to relax. Instead of cooking or preparing meals at home, people often buy fast foods which are usually loaded with fat and calories.
Increased stress and sleep deprivation lead to increased fatigue. In turn, this leads to decreased physical activity and exercise avoidance. In addition, tired and time-starved Americans are more likely to get unhealthy fast food instead of preparing healthy meals at home.
Obesity or being overweight is the symptom of unhealthy American lifestyle. Dealing with the real cause of obesity and being overweight can lead to more effective solutions.
By making simple changes, people can start living a healthier lifestyle and achieve lasting weight control without dieting.
8 Tips for Lasting Weight Control and Healthy Living
#1. Start where you are.
Don’t make drastic changes and expect rapid results. Unrealistic expectations can feel too overwhelming and may cause you to quit when you’re just starting out.
Trying to achieve too much too soon can lead to setbacks and higher risk of failure. Small changes can lead to big improvements in your health.
#2. Accept imperfections.
There’s no need to quit just because you ended up eating some junk food or skipping some workouts. Trying to do everything perfectly right can be too frustrating and overwhelming for most people. Instead, just focus on doing what’s good enough most of the time. This can be the easier way to start living a healthy lifestyle.
#3. Stress reduction is critical for healthy living.
Even people who are exercising regularly and following a healthy diet may not lose weight and belly fat without stress reduction. Stress management is absolutely necessary for effective weight loss and long-term weight control as well as healthy living.
#4. Getting adequate amount of sleep is an important factor for healthy living.
Sleep plays an important role in regulation of endocrine function and metabolism. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation is associated with increased risk of weight gain and obesity as well as type 2 diabetes.
Chronic sleep deprivation can have significant health risks. For most people, getting six to eight hours of sleep can be adequate for optimal functioning.
You can try relaxing for an hour or two before bedtime in order to fall asleep earlier. If you have a sleeping disorder, consult with your health care provider for effective treatments.
#5. Healthy eating is critical for living a healthy lifestyle.
Even busy people can make easy and sustainable changes to their unhealthy diet slowly. For example, people who eat super-sized fast foods often, can start by eating one less super-sized, fast-food meal. Instead, they can exchange it with one regular-sized fast food meal and one healthy salad, fruit or vegetables.
In a week or two — as they re-train their brain and taste buds — they can exchange one fast-food meal completely with a healthy meal. They can continue to increase the proportion of healthy meals and snacks versus junk food until they are eating healthy meals most of the time.
Eating healthy most of the time can lead to health benefits long term.
Nutrient-rich healthy foods tend to be lower in calories compared to unhealthy fast foods. Therefore, eating healthy naturally leads to reduction in calorie intake which has been shown to have significant health benefits.
Studies have shown that as little as 10% reduction in calorie intake compared to the average high-calorie Western diet can lead to weight loss, lower blood pressure and cholesterol as well as other health benefits.
Calorie reduction has been shown to decrease the risk for many diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Calorie reduction or restriction has been shown to slow down the aging process and increase lifespan in many organisms. For humans, calorie reduction has been shown to decrease the risk for many diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Occasional cheating by eating unhealthy foods from time to time may not be that bad since it can prevent feelings of deprivation and resulting binge eating. Healthy eating most of the time can lead to health benefits long term.
#6. Exercise and physical activity are important for healthy living.
Lack of regular exercise is an important contributing factor for the growing obesity epidemic in the United States. The problem is that many people usually don’t have a lot of time or energy for physical activity. They are too exhausted to exercise after a stressful day at work or after a long commute. NEAT movements may be solution.
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) are small movements — such as, tapping your feet, stretching your legs or standing — which are essential for healthy metabolism.
These short bursts of exercise throughout the day can add up to big weight loss.They can burn as many as 500 extra calories a day or even more. NEAT can be the easy way for busy people to increase their physical activity and get regular exercise. In addition, they can include resistance training once a week or more often to boost metabolism further.
#7. Learn how to boost your metabolism and you can lose weight more effectively — up to five times faster.
Dieting and long workouts are not required to improve metabolism. For example, starting with just 10 minutes a day and increasing to 30 minutes of interval walking can boost metabolism and increase weight loss. Short workouts can speed up metabolism and weight loss.
#8. Having fun and boosting your happiness are important for healthy living.
Laughter and having fun can reduce your stress. This can help you avoid many stress-related diseases.
In addition, happiness and other positive emotions have surprisingly powerful health benefits. They appear to make the immune system function better and provide a protective effect against some diseases. They appear to decrease the risk or limit the severity of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases as well as colds and upper-respiratory infections.
Are you living a happy life? Take the free happiness test and find out.
The side effects of these healthy living strategies are easy weight loss and lasting weight control.
By experiencing the benefits of healthy living — including looking good, feeling better and having more energy — previously unhealthy people can be motivated to make even more health-promoting changes. Instead of long punishing workouts, maybe short workouts and physical activity can be done to achieve a more sculpted body.
By living a healthy lifestyle, not only can you avoid huge emotional and financial costs of obesity-associated chronic diseases and disabilities… but you can also avoid dying prematurely.
If you’re trying to lose weight, making simple changes for healthy living is absolutely necessary to achieve lasting weight control. Even small changes can make a big difference in living a healthy lifestyle.