8 Simple Strategies to Losing Weight

     The most common reasons for losing weight is looking attractive and being more self- confident. There抯 more to weight loss however than aesthetic reasons. Not feeling good about your weight can be debilitating emotionally and spiritually as well.

Not only will you feel great and look good with less weight but you抣l experience better health too. In reality, the most obvious reasons for losing weight are for your physical health and emotional wellbeing. Having your health in mind plus the desire to feel and look great will motivate you to pursue it in tough times so you抣l succeed on the long run. In this article I抣l focus on the physical aspect of losing weight.

In fact being overweight will pave the way for variety of diseases. If you抮e carrying many extra pounds, you face a higher-than-average risk of a whopping 50 different health problems, from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and musculoskeletal problems among others. Compared with people at a healthy weight, those carrying extra pounds have a harder time walking a quarter-mile, lifting 10 pounds, and rising from an armless chair. In short you cannot be fit and fat.

Insulin resistance and fat: When you have excess fat on your body the extra coating of fat around your cells make it difficult for the hormone insulin to transport glucose into the cells. That is the condition known as insulin resistance. To overcome this problem your body produces more insulin from the pancreas. Insulin resistance creates increased levels of insulin and glucose in the blood stream and more demand on your pancreas. As a result, excess glucose is sent to the liver. Once there, the sugar is converted into fat and carried via the blood stream throughout the body. This process can lead to weight gain and obesity. Insulin resistance is determined by diet, lifestyle, body fat and genetics.

The more fat you have and the more demand on insulin, sometimes up to ten times with obesity. Even as little as 5 pounds of extra fat may inhibit insulin to carry glucose into your cells. More insulin will also produces more fat hence a vicious cycle.

How to stop insulin resistance and lose fat? The diet that is best for good health is also the best diet for losing weight, that is eating whole foods, plant strong and a balanced high raw diet. When you are healthy your body weight normalizes.

Major complications develop as the overweight person gets older. Thus, there are plenty of health reasons to lose weight as soon as possible. Living a long and healthy life is in your hands and you can start by shedding those extra pounds now. Why wait? Slimming down will make you feel so much lighter, graceful and more energized. You are worth it.

Here are a few tips to help you lose fat and gain insulin sensitivity.

8 Simple Strategies to Losing Weight

Eat raw vegetables at every meal. Vegetables with their high water content, fiber and a plethora of nutrients such as phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals to help you with fill up your stomach with low calories. As a result you抣l be more satisfied and will prevent overeating. The same with steamed non starchy vegetables. Eat them with your dinner meal and again you抣l feel satisfied with fewer calories and at same time you抣l get high nutrient foods. Vegetables will up your nutrition and will curb your cravings.

Leave out processed foods especially transfat and fried fatty foods and sweet foods. The less you eat processed foods the less you crave them. Once they leave your body and cells then your cravings will go away mostly if you replace them with high nutrients whole foods and raw vegetables.

Avoid snacking: Strive to eat 3 meals a day, well-spaced apart. Stop eating 3 hours before bedtime will help you sleep better. Contrary to popular theory eating many smaller meals each day is not beneficial to health and weight loss goals, but will cause blood sugar to remain elevated and bring up insulin level up. If you have too much insulin you don抰 burn fat. When you eat too frequently your body never has the chance to return to an optimal metabolic state, blood sugar remains high and the stage is set for weight gain and disease. A study conducted at Purdue University confirms that overweight men were less hungry and ate less when eating three times a day compared to eating six smaller meals.

Sleep 8-9 hours a day. Sleep may be the most important lifestyle factor for weight loss and health in general. Lack of sleep bring cortisol level up and make you store fat and prevent growth hormone which help burn fat. Another thing of the puzzle is that when you don抰 sleep enough you crave sugar and sweets the next day. Researchers found that women who slept 5 hours per night were 32% more likely to experience major weight gain (an increase of 33 pounds or more) and 15% more likely to become obese over the course of the 16-year study, compared to those who slept 7 hours a night. Those who get less than eight hours of sleep are far more prone to produce higher levels of cortisol. Cortisol is frequently referred to as the 搒tress hormone?because it抯 also secreted in higher levels during the body抯 fight or flight response to stress. People who are sleep-deprived tend to have more secretions of the hormone cortisol, so they抮e more stressed out. And that抯 going to trigger fat storage as well. Also when you抮e in bed early there抯 less chance to raid the fridge.

Physical activity: To lose weight, experts recommend that you do 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity on most days of the week. Regular exercise can naturally lower cortisol levels and maintain good blood sugar regulation. You don抰 need to get all your exercise need at once. In fact doing ten minutes of exercise such as walking or body resistance before work, ten minutes at lunch break and ten minutes before dinner can have wonderful results. Add some burst exercises for a couple of minutes such as running in spurt, doing jumping jack, or running up stairs three times a day will help you burn extra glucose and extra fat and improve insulin sensitivity.

Love yourself. Losing weight can be a roller coaster of emotions although it is not about punishing or depriving yourself梚t's about embracing yourself. Be loving, kind and patient to yourself. Love your body and be grateful for it every day. Stop striving to be perfect. If your thoughts are based on feeling fat, feeling like a failure and hating certain body parts, you are just going to attract more of the same. If, on the other hand, you focus on appreciating your body, right where you are now, then you start attracting something delightfully positive. Spend the first precious minute of every day 璸raising yourself and do care as you are worth it. When you start to 'love yourself slim', you also start to care about how you treat your body so making the right choices becomes effortless and everything starts to flow in the right direction. Your actions will soon start to become aligned with your thoughts.

Stop dieting: Diet plans with caloric restrictions are not the answer to weight loss. Typically one will go on a diet to lose the desired weight, all too often feeling hungry and deprived the whole time. Then eventually they go off the diet, back to the lifestyle that they had prior to starting the diet, the one that got them to where they did not want to be in the first place, and they usually gain the weight back, and often times more. If you have poor eating habits and want to lose fat, then you need to improve your nutrition to make significant progress. Eating more raw and living foods makes shedding pounds easy and effortlessly. People eating in this way usually find that their weight normalizes over time, without feeling hungry or deprived. It抯 not just another diet, but a healthful and delicious way of eating that keeps you full and satisfied with just the right amount of calories. Most importantly sustainable way of changing your eating habits that you can happily maintain for a lifetime.

Get support: Losing weight梕ven just five or 10 pounds梩akes true commitment and dedication to your wellbeing. It can be hard to lose weight if you are alone without a support system of friends and family cheering you on. Women trying to lose weight appear to do better if they have a "coach" or weight-loss counseling, two different studies suggest. Even if that coach helps out by phone, with no face-to-face contact, it can translate to more weight loss, the experts found.
Coaching exercises: write down a list of the ten things you most love about yourself ?whether it抯 the way you laugh, your 璯enerous nature or the way you always say 慣hank you?when you get off a bus.

?2012 Guylaine Lacerte

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