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According to the World Health Organization, 2.5 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight in 2022, including over 890 million who were living with obesity. Behind these statistics are actual people, some of whom may be trying to lose weight, and could easily resort to unsafe methods to do so. In this blog post, we examine 5 simple and effective ways to steadily lose weight, and avoid the unhealthy long-term repercussions of rapid weight loss.
Why do you want to lose weight?
There are several reasons why people would want to non-surgically lose weight. These reasons may range from fitting into clothes, looking healthier (and more attractive to a segment of the population), reducing the flare-up tendency of underlying health conditions and morphing into an acting role.
5 long-term effects of being overweight
- It raises blood pressure and cholesterol, increasing susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases
- It causes type 2 diabetes
- It causes fertility problems
- It reduces lung functions
- It increases the risk of cancer
The latter reportedly made Christian Bale embrace an apple and can of tuna daily diet, combined with exercising, to shed 63 pounds for his insomnia-ridden title character in ‘The Machinist’. He later remarked: ‘I was intrigued by a perverse nature of mine just to see if I can go beyond what I’ve been told is safe and okay, and see if I could push the limits.
It’s worth noting that ‘pushing limits’ like this, although seemingly effective, may blow back to cause nutritional deficiencies, dehydration and even gallstones. Losing weight, as in most affairs of life, requires a slow and steady approach to win the race. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics explains that shedding pounds too fast may inadvertently cause a loss of muscle mass, bone mass, and water, leading to more problems in the long run and difficulty in regaining the lost weight.
Lose weight steadily in these 4 ways
- Dieting and exercising
- Eating healthier
- Sleeping more
- Making relevant changes
- Dieting and exercise
Reducing your food intake and increasing your physical activity is the longstanding, established approach to weight loss. When we eat, a considerable amount of the food is converted to calories – energy for doing work. If we perform a proportionate amount of work, the calories are burnt off as sweat, but if our work output is much less than the produced calories, the excess calories are stored in the body as fat, leading to weight gain.
Dieting, at its core, is the formulation of a feeding routine that takes into account an individual’s nature of work and lifestyle, to ensure that just enough calories are consumed to meet the body’s energy requirements and reduce the likelihood of excess fat storage. Ideally, this formulation process is carried out in collaboration with a doctor or a certified dietician, who depending on their analysis, may proffer dietary routines ranging from one or two meals per day to intermittent fasting.
Dieticians will often recommend exercising as a standalone measure or combined with dieting to exert the muscles in various ways and bring out desired body shapes.
- Eat healthier
Home cooking is the secret ingredient to a happy and healthy life – an unknown quote
Eschewing processed food and embracing a home-cooked (high-fiber, high-protein) diet is a simple and effective means to cut down on fat and get thinner in the long run. But why proteins and fibers?
Proteins, because they play a key role in satiety by regulating appetite hormones (ghrelin and leptin) to foster a sensation of fullness. What this means in essence is that eating eggs, almonds, chicken breast, milk, cottage cheese etc. will get you feeling full quicker than, say, snacking up on Janie’s high-sugar doughnut just up the road. And the quicker you feel full, the less likely you are to overeat and feed into precursors of weight gain.
Like proteins, fibers create a sensation of fullness, for the stupefying reason that they do not digest in the small intestine but pass relatively intact through the stomach, small intestine and colon.
High-fiber foods (along with fermented foods like yogurt and kefir) also balance out the intestinal gut bacteria – stimulating the growth and activity of ‘good’ bacteria that promote weight loss.
Examples of high-fiber foods are:
- Bread
- Whole grains
- Fruits
- vegetables
- Sleep more, stress less
Getting a good shut-eye (between 7-9 hours) is a crucial part of any fat reduction plans. Not only does longer sleep facilitate metabolism to completion, but it also reduces stress. Lower stress levels help to regulate appetite-controlling hormones, which contribute to reducing an individual’s cravings for carbohydrates.
According to renowned psychologist, Dr Leslie Heinberg, stress triggers the release of cortisol, a fight or flight hormone that slows down physiological processes that aren’t crucial to surviving an immediate threat i.e. metabolism. Cortisol raises blood pressure and insulin production, causing a drop in blood sugar, and an increase in an individual’s appetite, often in the direction of sugary foods.
- Make some changes
Oftentimes, a little alteration – followed through consistently, adds up to tremendous results in the long term. For example, the mere ‘concept’ of eating mindfully – having a loving relationship with your food and chewing bits before swallowing, as philosophical or time-wasting as it may sound, is a feeding approach deeply trenched in weight loss science.
According to Erma Levy, a research dietician at MD Anderson, it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to send a signal to your stomach that you’re full, and biding your time to chew, ensures that you don’t spend the overlapping minutes of signal-delivery eating and becoming glutted.
Other simple changes that may be helpful are:
- Having a weight loss plan (it should have gotten the input of a certified dietician)
- Using smaller sizes of plates
- Dishing your food in portion sizes
- Avoid eating late at night
- Interspersing your feeding with water
