Maintaining a healthy weight in today’s hectic and stressful life, at times becomes quite taxing. Further, our eat-and-run and heavy portion sized culture makes losing weight even tougher. If you’ve tried losing weight before and have somehow failed to do so then you might be under the impression that diets don’t work for you. You could be partially right as some diets might not work and for some probably no diet would work. This is because everyone’s body respond differently at different situations. While there’s no shortcut to achieve the desired weight loss, there are lots of steps you can take to develop a healthier relationship with food, restrict emotional triggers to overeating, and achieve lasting weight loss success.
Different Opinions for Healthy Weight Loss
Get hold of any diet book and it will claim to have all the answers to successfully losing all the weight you want. Some claim the key is to consume less and workout more, others opine that eating low fat foods is the best way to go, while the rest prescribe to cut carbs from the diet. So whom should you listen to? The truth is, there is no ‘one fit solution’ to achieve a healthy weight loss. What works for one might not work for the other, since our bodies respond differently to different foods, depending on genetics and other health factors. To know the exact method of weight loss that’s appropriate for you will probably take time and require patience, commitment and some experimentation with different foods.
Loss of Weight through Low Carb
If you view weight loss in a different way than you can identify the problem as not one of consuming excess calories, but rather the way the body accumulates fat after eating carbohydrates.
• The carbohydrates from the food enter your bloodstream as glucose when you eat a meal
• Your body always burns off this glucose before it burns off fat from a meal so that your blood sugar levels remain in check
• If you consume a meal rich in carbohydrates, your body releases insulin to help with the influx of all this glucose into your blood
• Insulin does two things besides regulating blood sugar levels: It prevents your fat cells from releasing fat for the body to burn as fuel and it creates more fat cells for storing everything that your body is not able to burn off
• The result is that you gain weight and your body now needs more fuel to burn, so you tend to consume more
• Since insulin only burns carbohydrates, you crave for carbs and so begin a spiteful cycle of consuming carbs and gaining weight. To lose weight you need to break this cycle
Weight Loss Tips and Healthy Dieting
Whether you particularly aim to cut carbs or not, the fact is most of us eat quite a lot of sugar and refined carbohydrates which is not at all healthy. Removing candy and deserts from the diet is only part of the solution. Various foods such as bread, canned soups and vegetables, margarine, pasta sauce labelled as low fat or no fat contain hidden sugar. All this hidden sugar amounts to nothing but a lot of empty calories.
• It’s always better to opt for low sugar products and use fresh ingredients rather than canned goods whenever possible
• Soft drinks are one of the biggest sources of hidden sugar. A single can of soda contain between 10 to 12 teaspoons of added sugar
• In order to avoid unhealthy spikes in blood sugar, avoid refined carbs such as white rice, white bread or pasta and opt for whole grains
Eating a healthy and balanced diet is always recommended as it paves the way to a healthy weight loss without any side effects.