Best Way To Lose Weight

The best way to lose weight is to make modest, sustainable changes in your diet and balance those changes with increased exercise and activity. This approach results in gradual, steady weight loss that levels off when your body reaches its ideal weight and size.

Unsurprisingly, this approach is the least popular. Why? Because it takes a long time and it involves breaking habits that are deeply ingrained in modern life.

The following steps will allow almost anyone to lose weight in a sane and healthy way. The best way to lose weight always comes down to healthier foods, more activity, and moderation in all things.

Here are some general guidelines:

• Eat at least five servings and two fruits of vegetables per day. Most people don’t get anywhere near this requirement. The fruits and vegetables should be fresh, not canned, and eaten without butter and heavy sauces. If you fill up on the good stuff, there’s less room for the bad stuff, and you get more nutrition too.
• Drink plenty of water, but cut out soda. Many people drink 800-1000 calories each day without even realizing it. Not only is soda full of fattening sugar, it’s filled with preservatives too. If you can’t drink plain water because you hate the taste, drink green tea, or water with a squeeze of lemon or lime.
• Cut out bad fats and add good fats. Bad fats are the kind found in gravy, butter, cheese, sour cream, cookies (transfats), and fried foods. Good fats include the ones found in nuts, avocados, ocean fish, olive oil, canola oil, and flaxseed oil.
• Switch to whole grains. The trouble with refined starch is that it is quickly converted into sugar by the human body, and sugar causes a blood sugar crash an hour or two after eating, which makes you crave more sugar. Whole grains are digested more slowly and the fiber in them is good for digestion. Change from white bread to wheat, farina to oatmeal, white rice to brown rice, and so forth, and you’ll feel better and lose weight too.
• Eat more fish. Broil or bake salmon, halibut, cod, or tuna. Make albacore tuna sandwiches (water packed). Fish contains Omega-3 fatty acids, which help prevent heart disease and are low in calories. People who live in parts of the world with the best longevity eat lots of deep-sea cold-water fish.
• Exercise at least 30 minutes each day. This is the minimum level recommended by most doctors. A brisk daily walk or jog, some light gardening or yard work; anything that makes you slightly breathless and works up a light sweat will do.
• Add some resistance training. As people get older they lose muscle. This starts as early as the mid thirties and continues into old age unless an effort is made to counter it. Lifting weights or some other form of resistance training will keep muscles strong and preserve the muscle to fat ratio necessary to burn calories.
• Keep stress under control. Stress leads to emotional eating, and it also causes the body to release ‘cortisol’; a chemical that causes accumulation of fat around the midsection. Get at least seven or eight hours of sleep each night, and practice meditation or any other good stress-management technique. If your life is too stressful, change your life. Your health matters.

These common sense changes are not that difficult to read or understand, but they can be surprisingly challenging to institute in one’s life on a regular basis. Everything about modern life pushes us toward less exercise, faster food, and more stress.

The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to learn, over time, to resist these pressures and treat your body with the care and kindness it deserves.