How to lose weight without doing damage to your body?

  • 2010-01-07
  • By Darja Kuznecova

RIGA - After the long holidays our body is tired from the great variety of tasty dishes we ate. Some of these calorie-full dishes added several kilograms to our normal weight. How can we lose these unexpected kilograms and bring our system back to a normal work regime, without damage? We will tell you in this article.
Despite how it seems, losing weight isn’t a mysterious process. It’s a simple matter of burning more calories than you eat. But, if it were really that simple, none of us would have a weight problem, would we? Weight loss can be such a struggle that we start thinking we have to do something drastic to see results - diets, pills or those weird fitness gadgets on infomercials that promise instant success. The true secret to weight loss is this: Make small changes each and every day and you’ll slowly lose those extra kilograms. The key is to forget about instant results and settle in for the long run.

Rules of Weight Loss

To lose one kilogram of fat, you must burn approximately 3,500 calories over and above what you already burn doing daily activities. That sounds like a lot of calories and you certainly wouldn’t want to try to burn 3,500 calories in one day. However, by taking it step-by-step, you can determine just what you need to do each day to burn or cut out those extra calories. Below is a step by step process for getting started.

1. First of all calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate). You can find modern BMR calculators on the Internet. Your BMR is what your body needs to maintain normal functions, like breathing and digestion. This is the minimum number of calories you need to eat each day. Keep in mind that no calculator will be 100 percent accurate, so you may need to adjust these numbers as you go along.

2. Calculate your activity level. Use a calorie calculator to figure out how many calories you burn while sitting, standing, exercising, lifting weights, etc., throughout the day. It helps to keep a daily activity journal, or you could even wear a heart rate monitor that calculates calories burned.

3. Write down how many calories you eat per day. You can use Internet sites to count calories. It is popular to use a food journal to write down what you eat and drink each day. Be as accurate as possible, measuring when you need to, or looking up nutritional information for restaurants, if you eat out.

4. Add it up. Take your BMR number, add your activity calories and then subtract your food calories from that total. If you’re eating more than you’re burning (your BMR + activity is 2,000 and you’re eating 2,400 calories), you’ll gain weight. If you’re burning more than you eat, you’ll lose weight.

Mary’s BMR is 1,400 calories and she burns 900 calories in daily activity with regular exercise, walking around and doing household chores. To maintain her weight, she should be eating 2,300 calories but, after keeping a food journal, Mary finds that she’s eating 2,550 calories every day. By eating 250 more calories than her body needs, Mary will gain 500 grams every 2 weeks.

This example shows how easy it is to gain weight without even knowing it. However, it’s also easy to lose weight, even if the process itself can be slow. You can start by making small changes in your diet and activity levels and immediately start burning more calories than you’re eating. If you can find a way to burn an extra 200 to 500 calories each day with both exercise and diet, you’re headed in the right direction.

TIPS for weight loss

Many people who want to lose weight find it difficult to know which foods to choose for the best weight loss results. Losing weight by swapping and changing to different diets is not the best way; we need to find a way of reducing energy content from the normal foods we eat every day. We need to learn certain food rules to help form better eating habits.
We should learn to pick out the best foods from our normal daily diet and use them to form the basis for our new healthy eating habits. This gives familiarity to the new way of eating rather than the idea that the individual is “on a diet.” Trying to lose weight on a specific diet relays the message that it will end some day. When a diet ends, many people gain back most, if not all, of the weight lost.

Try not to have too much variety of food with each meal. Evidence has shown that humans always consume more food and calories when there is more choice on offer. For example, have you ever been at a buffet style meal where it’s “eat all you can,” and no matter how much we eat, there always seems to be room for one more item - maybe that delicious looking dessert or ice cream!

Be careful what you add to healthy foods. Salads are one of the best foods for losing weight; they are very popular for many dieters trying to lose the weight fast. The problem is people often add sauces or creams to add taste to an otherwise bland food. Mayonnaise is a common addition to salads but it is very high in calories and fat and a salad with too much mayonnaise can be just as high in calories as some of the worst weight loss foods.

Baked potatoes are also a great food to help lose weight when part of a small, low calorie meal, but again, some people spoil this great example by adding tons of butter. Filling a baked potato with baked beans or cottage cheese is probably the best way to add taste and more nutrition to this low calorie food. The idea is when choosing the best foods to help lose weight, try not to neutralize the food’s possible weight loss benefits; be careful with what you add!

Eat a little high quality protein food with each meal or snack. Adding protein to each meal, along with the idea of eating more meals in a day, may be difficult to keep calories low enough to lose weight. This idea means adding another “choice,” plus protein foods are often high in calories. To combat this problem some people combine protein foods, combining certain plant foods which can help lose weight because they are usually low in calories, high in fiber and it limits the choice of foods within each meal, as only two types of plant foods need to be combined.

In the morning it’s more preferable to eat a high protein meal, because if you eat cornflakes or cereal, your stomach will finish this meal very soon and you will become hungry very soon again. Specialists advise to snack with muesli during the day. You can combine cereal with fruit. Try not to use yogurt with cereal; change it to natural kefir, instead.
Don’t eat fruit, meat or a high protein meal after 6 p.m. More preferable is to eat vegetables and drink a glass of milk before going to sleep.