5 Tips For Successful Weight Loss for Women
Why do some people successfully lose weight and keep it off, and others cannot seem to shed a pound? Did you know that dropping weight fast increases your chances of putting the pounds back on and then some? Before you can reach a healthy weight, you must understand how important it is to adopt a complete lifestyle transformation. So, how can you make this transition and stick to a healthy weight loss system?
Start a Cardio Workout
One really effective way to lose weight is to start a cardio workout discipline. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) or sprint interval training is a cardiovascular exercise strategy alternating short periods of intense anaerobic exercise with less-intense recovery periods until too exhausted to continue.
HIIT training is an excellent exercise program to start with because you drastically reduce the amount of time you spend in the gym. A high-energy workout and less time doing it is a great combo to help you stick with the program. If cardio exercise isn’t your thing, try yoga, weight training, karate, or just get up and move “on purpose” for at least half-an-hour three days a week.
Drinking Tea Helps with Weight Loss
Making lifestyle changes can be as easy as drinking green tea and helping you lose weight and help keep it off. Switching from drinking coffee to green tea. The caffeine in coffee can cause you to retain water and become dehydrated. The antioxidants in green tea not only help you feel better, but they can also help maintain a healthy weight.
Research suggests that the nutrients and antioxidants in green tea can speed up metabolism. Green tea may even help your body’s metabolism stay balanced, making it easier to keep extra weight off. Green tea also contains catechin that help break down excess fat, and the natural caffeine in green tea can increase the body’s energy.
If you’re all about green tea and on a mission to lose weight, you might want to choose Matcha green tea. Matcha green tea has the highest source of catechin antioxidants and nutrients of other green teas.
Watch Your Snacks
There are a lot of inexpensive high-speed blenders and juicers on the market today. Having one handy is a terrific way to blend some treats that will help you lose weight and stop you from reaching for the chips. Blended smoothie drinks are a great way to incorporate fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet. These tasty, high-fiber drinks are a great way to keep you full and satisfied until your next meal.
Just combine any mixture of your favorite in-season fruits into a fresh smoothie and start losing. Any fresh berries, oranges, bananas, and peaches are all excellent fruit choices. Add carrots, kale, beets, spinach, really any fresh fruit or vegetable to make your blended smoothie complete. Add a little juice if needed, dry protein powder, and/or yogurt for a protein meal boost. This tasty treat is a wonderfully refreshing quick meal replacement that gives energy to your day and gets your motor running.
Avoid Saturated Fats
We all know salads are good for us, but not so much the fat-laden dressings we choose. Sauces and dressings often contain saturated fat, calories, sodium, and added sugar. Drowning our healthy bowl of greens in bottled dressing adds unwanted fat and calories. Try making your own with healthy oils, vinegar, soy, and start experimenting with spices to flavor your food.
Fat is essential to your health because it supports a number of your body’s functions. The American Heart Association recommends aiming for 5% to 6% of calories from saturated fat. For example, if you need about 2,000 calories a day, no more than 120 calories should come from saturated fat. Choose fats that are actually good for your body. Good fats such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated can do the trick. Good fats are in canola oil, olive oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, and omega-3.
Try Intermittent Fasting or IF
Intermittent fasting or IF for short is a way of eating in cycles. You switch from eating and not eating over a day. These cycles of intermittent fasting can be hourly or daily. For example, the popular 16:8 intermittent fasting involves eating all your calories for 24 hours within an 8-hour window and then fasting for the remaining 16 hours.
Enzymes break down the food we put into our gut. Food turns into the waste our body gets rid of, the nutrients that keep us healthy, and the glucose (sugar) that keeps us active. If our cells don’t use everything we eat up and we can’t discard the extra is stored in our cells as, you guessed it, fat. The leftover sugars can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down and let our bodies burn up the excess sugar in our fat cells. IF’s design is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat. In turn, we can eat and not “diet” but still turn our bodies into a fat-burning machine.
Conclusion: Take it Slowly
In the end, long-term weight loss is possible by making modest dietary and lifestyle changes over time. Start with a clear, manageable plan. Probably the most convenient way to follow the new lifestyle is to be guided by an app, such as DoFasting. Established steps that are easy to follow ”building habits for a healthy life weight loss plan. For lasting weight loss, dietitians, exercise scientists, and nutritionists alike all recommend aiming to lose only one to three pounds a week. Try not to think of it as a “diet,” but more as an ongoing lifestyle shift. However, people who keep a positive attitude and gradually build upon success, losing a couple of pounds a week, are more likely to keep the unwanted weight off.
Disclaimer: While intermittent fasting has many proven benefits, it’s still controversial. A potential danger regards medications, especially for diabetes, where doses often need to be adapted. Discuss any changes in medication and relevant lifestyle changes with your doctor. This guide is written for adults with health issues, including obesity, that could benefit from intermittent fasting. People who should NOT fast include those who are underweight or have eating disorders like anorexia, women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, and people under the age of 18.
Sources: Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School, CDC
About the Author
Lori Bogedin is a health and wellness writer and editor of TwigsCafe.com. She is in the restaurant business since 1999. In 2016 she was named one of the "Top Women in Business" by Northeastern Pennsylvania Business Journal.
