If you have been trying to lose weight for your health or just to slim down enough to get into those old jeans, strategize to ensure optimal results. Here are some simple ones that can melt that visceral fat and make you feel good at the same time:
1. Set Up a System
Your health and fitness is dependent on a system of weight loss and gain that cannot work if it isn’t regulated. In other words, if you don’t mix up your workout regime or diet, you will have to wait months to get the results you are working for.
What most people don’t realize is that metabolism speed is dependent on muscle mass – the more muscle you have, the faster it works. Even though fast paced aerobics can get your blood pumping and burn calories, you also need to readjust your metabolism so that you can handle strength training as well.
That is the best gym motivation you can get and your body will thank you for it. By spreading out your workout with multiple exercises, you can give yourself a whole body workout each day. If you prefer to work out at home, keep a few kettle bells, weights and other supplies there and work on your glutes, biceps, triceps etc. The more developed they are, the more fat you will lose.
2. Fool Your Metabolism with Fat Blasting Food
Contrary to popular belief, not every fad diet can help you shed pounds. That’s because those are not about counting calories as much as they are about the food you focus on and each person has his/her own preferences.
No, you don’t need to carry raw veggies around with you to curb those hunger pangs. All you need to do is introduce food in your diet that fights fat and stay away from those that store it. For the former go for avocado, bananas, berries, yogurt, green tea, whole grains etc and for the latter avoid carbohydrates such as white bread, rice, sugary treats etc that take longer to digest.
3. Customize Your Social Media Feed
Believe it or not the hours you put into scanning your Facebook feed are going right to your waistline. If you have liked recipe pages or even the pages of your favourite restaurants you are inundated with delicious (read unhealthy) treats daily. No wonder you’ve worn a track to the fridge!
A good way to determine if those posts are influencing is by focusing on how you feel when you scan them. If you feel hungry even though you are full, start unliking or snoozing those pages fast. Replace them with alternatives that will give you gym motivation rather than a food coma.
4. Eliminate One Junk Food A Month at A Time
There is a reason why most diets fail. Most people just take on the first one that is trending online even if it doesn’t suit their lifestyle, body type and metabolism. That’s why they relapse, start bingeing on junk and return to square one.
Rather than starting a diet you are going to give up anyway, take small steps and start eliminating junk from your life a month at a time. For example, quit sugary sodas for 30 days then graduate to fried items and so on. If done successfully, you can lose your taste for unhealthy items in a couple of months and replace them with alternatives that will keep you healthy.
5. Practice Mindful Eating
Have you ever really focused on the food as you chew? If you are struggling with your health and fitness, chances are you eat in front of a screen and never really thought about this. This is called mindful eating and it can change the way you eat and the food you consume.
Here are some simple tips you can follow that can help you eat mindfully:
- Eliminate distractions. Turn off the television, tablet and laptop screen and eat at a table alone.
- Take your time eating. Chew the food slowly and feel the texture and really savour your meal. This technique will ensure you don’t eat more than you have to. Since your brain will not be engaged by your favourite shows, it will recognize when you are full as soon as it happens thus making you feel full.
- Choose food that is packed with nutrition and fibre i.e. choices that can ensure you remain full till your next meal.
6. Consider a Low Carb and High Fat Nutrition Plan
As mentioned before, most diets fail because they are one dimensional and uncomfortable to maintain. The ketogenic diet on the other hand is different because it doesn’t make you starve to lose weight. The non restrictive diet can keep you well fed and satiated without packing on pounds you need to shed later.
The diet works by making your metabolism focus on burning fat rather than sugar. Most people burn sugar faster than fat which is why they feel cranky when they feel hungry and also end up indulging in their next meal. However, that sugar burns out fast and has to be replenished as often as needed.
This is not the case with fat. The ketogenic diet makes you burn fat instead which is slow to burn and thus keeps generating a steady supply of energy for a whole day. So if sugar is paper, fat is kindling that reduces inflammation, improves brain functions and keeps you energetic in between meals.
7. Reduce Sugar in Your Diet
You are doing your health and fitness a disservice by bingeing on sugary snacks and beverages. Even if your diet does not have enough carbs to make you fat, the candies and drinks you are consuming daily are adding to the visceral fat in your belly.
Besides being notoriously difficult to melt off, the sugar that produced it is also making your pancreas work overtime. The insulin it produces breaks down sugar molecules which are then used up as energy. However, while this is a natural process excess amounts can overwhelm the body which means you will have more unprocessed sugar in your system than energy.
Those are stored in the liver and muscles in the form of unhealthy fat which contribute to weight gain. Therefore, the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is by reducing sugar from your diet gradually till you eliminate it altogether. That way your body will have time to adjust and you won’t suffer from a low blood sugar.
8. Keep the Table Cluttered
According to a study, it pays to be messy when it comes to weight loss. According to the research, leaving fruit peels, nut shells and wrappers on the table can deter us from indulging. These act as visual cues that remind us how much we have eaten and also encourage us to stop eating when we are full.
So the next time you are snacking on pistachios, place the empty shells beside the bowl so can make a neat little pile. Look at it when you think you can go for another bowl of nuts and you will feel your motivation drain away.
9. Try Intermittent Fasting
Fasting refers to any period of time that you are not eating and it is part of a cycle. In other words, there is a time where you should be eating and a time when you should refrain from doing so. When we eat we store calories as body fat and when we don’t eat, that is used up to ensure we don’t waste away when we are not consuming anything.
Before the obesity epidemic, most people used to eat three times a day only. So if you ate breakfast at 9 am and dinner at 7 pm, you ate for 10 hours of the day and fasted for 14 hours. Even without maintaining a healthy diet, no one was really obese.
Today, we are encouraged to start eating the minute we wake up and preferably anything that is trending or has enough ads to make them seem critical. But the solution is simple. Just increase the number of hours you fast from 14 to 16 hours per day and watch those pounds vanish.
10. Maintain a ‘Go To’ Restaurant
If you work a 9 to 5 job, chances are you have little to no time to cook for yourself as much as you like to anyway. So chances are you have several take out restaurants in case you run out of time. However, rather than making an impromptu choice, pick one that is near your home and offers nutritious choices.
A good rule of thumb to ensure you pick a healthy option, choose a restaurant that does not have the term ‘loaded’ anywhere on the menu. Those will probably not have healthy options unless you call a salad that is saturated with fatty dressing ‘healthy.’
11. Indulge in Moderation
There is so long you can go without your favorite snacks without losing your mind. The worst thing you can do for your health and fitness is by going cold turkey on calories. That will do nothing but make your cravings stronger to the point that they will overwhelm you come the weekend or ‘cheat days.’
Contrary to popular belief, weight loss does not involve eliminating or avoiding certain food completely. Even if you indulge in your favorite food in moderation such as once or twice a week while maintaining and exercise regime and diet plan, the fat will burn away anyway.
If you do end up eating say two hot fudge sundaes after a healthy meal, compensate for that by sticking to a low fat and low sugar option in your next meal. Plus, use that as gym motivation and do more reps and weight training than you normally do.
Choose Qutek Wellbeing’s STEPS Body Composition Scale
The key to weight loss lies in slow and gradual changes to your diet and exercise regime but tracking progress can get tricky. However, that won’t be a problem when you opt for the STEPS Body Composition Scale from Qutek Wellbeing.
The smart scale is based on state of the art health technology that can examine and analyse body composition and thus help you take the first step to a healthier you. Using advanced BIA frequency technology, the smart body composition scale examines main health components that contribute to our health and wellness.
This includes the standard BMI as well as BMR, water, body fat and visceral fat among others. The scale accumulates that data and synchronizes it with the companion app thus ensuring you can keep track of your fitness level on the go. By helping you determine whether you are losing or gaining weight, the scale gives you complete control over your wellbeing, a fact that Qutek London takes pride in.
In other words, STEPS is your ultimate health partner that is designed to offer support to each family member when it comes to reaching health goals. It comes with 13 health index stats, is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, and can maintain records of unlimited number of users. Plus, the sleek and stylish design makes it the ideal addition to a pristine bathroom and gives you zero excuses to ignore your weight loss journey.
The smart scale is ROHS, FCC and CE certified and can be set in multiple languages ranging from English and French to German and many more. So take charge of your health and fitness today with this smart scale and get the body you always dreamed of having.