Keeping Weight Off
When you change the way you live, the extra weight will disappear. Being overweight is the result of your lifestyle. It's not just what you eat. It's about how you live your life. What you eat and how active you are. How many hours a day do you spend sitting or lying down?
A healthy lifestyle means:
Eating healthy foods. This includes fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. If you eat meat and dairy foods, choose lean meats and low-fat dairy foods. Healthy eating also means not eating too much sugar, fat, or fast foods. You can still have dessert and treats now and then. The goal is moderation. I follow the food pyramid recommended with the Mediterranean Diet. This isn't a diet plan, it's the way Mediterranean people have eaten or centuries. It's easy to find information online.
Also make some kind of physical activity part of your daily routine. "Physical activity" doesn't have to mean regular visits to the gym or running marathons. There are lots of other ways to fit activity into your life. Look up Healthy Activity online.
Weighting gain is a big concern for many people who want to quit smoking. But many people don't gain weight. And it's more of a health risk to keep smoking than it is to gain a few extra pounds when you quit. For information, see the topic Quitting Smoking online.
Drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol. That's up to 2 drinks a day for men, 1 drink a day for women.
Manage your stress. Many people find that eating is their way of managing stress. If you have a lot of stress in your life, it can be hard to focus on making healthy changes to your lifestyle. For more information about how to deal with stress, see the topic Stress Management.
Becoming more active and improving your eating habits are the two main ways to reach a healthy weight.
One Woman's Story:
"I see it as a whole life change. I actually get mad at people when they say, 'You've been on a diet.' I'm not on a diet. I've never been on a diet. I just changed the way I eat. I changed the way I live."—Jaci
Read more about how Jaci lost 65 pounds.
First, change your thinking
If you need to make some lifestyle changes to get to a healthy weight, you'll have more success if you first change the way you think about certain things:
Don't compare yourself to others. Healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Our culture focuses much too much on thinness, and thinness is just not realistic or natural for most of us. Yet we feel bad when we can't achieve such an unrealistic body size. Body size isn't as important as being healthy.
Pay attention to how hungry or how full you feel. When you eat, pay attention to why you're eating and how much you're eating.
Forget about dieting. Dieting almost never works over the long term.
Decide that you're going to improve your health instead of deciding to go on a diet. For example, you may want to:
Become more fit.
Lower your blood pressure.
Lower your blood sugar (if you have diabetes or prediabetes).
Lower your cholesterol.
Raise your HDL (good cholesterol).
Becoming healthier can get you off medications and give you more energy. It's not the fact that your body is getting older that make you feel old. It's the extra weight you gain that makes you feel old. I'm retired and on Social Security but I still feel like I'm 40. You have to work at staying healthy, it's not something you inherit or something that comes automatically because your thin. A lot of thin people have medical problems too. But when you live a healthy lifestyle your going to feel better, your stressful life will start to become manageable and you'll regain the extra energy you need to live a happier, healthier life.
A healthy lifestyle means:
Eating healthy foods. This includes fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. If you eat meat and dairy foods, choose lean meats and low-fat dairy foods. Healthy eating also means not eating too much sugar, fat, or fast foods. You can still have dessert and treats now and then. The goal is moderation. I follow the food pyramid recommended with the Mediterranean Diet. This isn't a diet plan, it's the way Mediterranean people have eaten or centuries. It's easy to find information online.
Also make some kind of physical activity part of your daily routine. "Physical activity" doesn't have to mean regular visits to the gym or running marathons. There are lots of other ways to fit activity into your life. Look up Healthy Activity online.
Weighting gain is a big concern for many people who want to quit smoking. But many people don't gain weight. And it's more of a health risk to keep smoking than it is to gain a few extra pounds when you quit. For information, see the topic Quitting Smoking online.
Drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol. That's up to 2 drinks a day for men, 1 drink a day for women.
Manage your stress. Many people find that eating is their way of managing stress. If you have a lot of stress in your life, it can be hard to focus on making healthy changes to your lifestyle. For more information about how to deal with stress, see the topic Stress Management.
Becoming more active and improving your eating habits are the two main ways to reach a healthy weight.
One Woman's Story:
"I see it as a whole life change. I actually get mad at people when they say, 'You've been on a diet.' I'm not on a diet. I've never been on a diet. I just changed the way I eat. I changed the way I live."—Jaci
Read more about how Jaci lost 65 pounds.
First, change your thinking
If you need to make some lifestyle changes to get to a healthy weight, you'll have more success if you first change the way you think about certain things:
Don't compare yourself to others. Healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Our culture focuses much too much on thinness, and thinness is just not realistic or natural for most of us. Yet we feel bad when we can't achieve such an unrealistic body size. Body size isn't as important as being healthy.
Pay attention to how hungry or how full you feel. When you eat, pay attention to why you're eating and how much you're eating.
Forget about dieting. Dieting almost never works over the long term.
Decide that you're going to improve your health instead of deciding to go on a diet. For example, you may want to:
Become more fit.
Lower your blood pressure.
Lower your blood sugar (if you have diabetes or prediabetes).
Lower your cholesterol.
Raise your HDL (good cholesterol).
Becoming healthier can get you off medications and give you more energy. It's not the fact that your body is getting older that make you feel old. It's the extra weight you gain that makes you feel old. I'm retired and on Social Security but I still feel like I'm 40. You have to work at staying healthy, it's not something you inherit or something that comes automatically because your thin. A lot of thin people have medical problems too. But when you live a healthy lifestyle your going to feel better, your stressful life will start to become manageable and you'll regain the extra energy you need to live a happier, healthier life.
If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books.
There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.
My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.
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