Hello again! It has been too long since I have added to my blog, sorry to be out for so long, it’s amazing how busy we all can get during the holidays! What I want to talk about today is an addition to the post that I put up previously titled 5 Keys to Weight Loss. These are all still important, but I wanted to add a few things that are also good to think about when starting your quest toward your optimum weight. I hope you enjoy, and good luck with your fitness aspirations!
1. Drink Water
Your intake of water can have a huge affect not only on your quality of life, but also plays a huge role in weight loss. For starters, you are much less likely to over indulge in food when you have a consistent volume of water in your stomach. Often times, when we do not drink enough, we mistakenly think that our body wants food and go straight for one of our favorite snacks. Next time you are feeling hungry between meals, try drinking a tall glass of water first, and then after 10 minutes, if you are still hungry, go ahead and have a snack (hopefully a healthy one!). It is not wrong to be hungry outside of meals, but we just want to make sure that our body is asking for calories before we start eating. Another benefit of water is its ability to help our bodies function at their greatest potential. When we are deprived of water, our bodies and mind cannot function as well, and this leads to stress on the body which can result in weight retention or gain. Weight loss is hard enough; let’s not make it any harder by neglecting water. The minimum water intake each day should be half of your body weight in ounces. So if you weight 120 lbs, then 60 oz of water is MINIMUM. I recommend that everyone carry around a water bottle each day and try to have two refills a day. That way, you have to finish at least two bottles (64 oz) and hopefully have been working on the third (up to 96 oz). Now if you are heavier, then of course three or even four bottles a day would be appropriate.
2. Avoid Starch & Added Sugar
Starch is a good thing to avoid while trying to lose weight because of the high glycemic load that it puts on the body. When you consistently eat foods with high glycemic loads, your insulin is constantly at work, trying to store all of the sugar that is being dumped into your system. When you have added sugar, you are dealing with the same issue. When your insulin levels are consistently high, your body can never enter into a catabolic state where it actually uses its sources of stored energy (fat). Now, if you are going to have these things, breakfast and post workout are the times to have them, but if you are really committed to weight loss, the less the better. Once you have reached your goal weight, then we can add them back into the diet (in moderation), but for now, let’s cut them out! So what counts as starch or added sugar? Well let’s start with sugar. Added sugar is any sugar that does not come naturally in food. High fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, evaporated cane juice; these are all types of added sugar. But don’t run off to artificial sweeteners either, these have their own problems and actually are more likely to cause weight gain than regular sugar! So we avoid sweet things, and then we also avoid starchy things. Starch is essentially how plants store sugar. Foods that are high in starch are potatoes, grains (corn, wheat), and some fruit (bananas). Now I am not saying that these are bad foods, but when trying to lose weight, we need to help our bodies as much as we can. So limit yourself here and you will be giving yourself a push in the right direction!
3. Sleep
Sleep has endless benefit to our overall health, and if we do not get enough of it, we cannot expect our bodies to help shed any of our extra weight. Much like water, sleep has its weight loss benefits because it helps our bodies to function properly, while also reducing stress. Sleep restriction as significant implications on our stress levels and without it, you just cannot hope to achieve any type of fitness goal. As we all know, 8 hours is the recommended amount, but everyone is different, so it is important for you to find the amount that works best for you. A couple of suggestions on how to help increase your amount and quality of sleep are: 1) Waking up at the same time every day. This will help your body to settle into a biorhythm that will help you to feel better and better! 2) Avoiding screens at night. For the 30-60 minutes before bed, you should avoid any TV or computer usage. When you are in front of a bright screen, your mind has difficulty understanding that it is night and that you are trying to shut down for the night. So instead of staying up late watching TV, get in bed and read for the last hour before bed, reading is good anyway and it will help you to get a more restful sleep! These two suggestions alone could drastically improve sleep and if you add in a nice cup of non-caffeinated tea or meditation before bed, you will be on your way to success!
4. Commitment
This is by far the most important component to weight loss. You need to know the pieces of the puzzle first, but none of it matters if you fail to commit. Commitment is about taking that knowledge and making it a priority. If weight loss is not your priority, it will never happen. This is true for any goal including other fitness goals. So if you are struggling to achieve your goals, try this. I want you to write out why you want to achieve your goals. So if it is weight loss, why do you want to lose weight? There may be one reason; there may be one hundred. Write them all down. Now, look over those reasons, and write down why those are important. Keep doing this until you discover the most true and representative description of why weight loss is important. It may be so that you can live to see your grandchildren graduate college, or so that you can find a partner in life. Whatever it is, it should be emotional. Anyone can say they want to lose weight. But that’s hardly something to find an emotional connection with. We need something that you can get up every day and commit to. Something that truly is more important than having that extra piece of cake. Something that will get you out of bed and make you WANT to go to the gym every day. If we can find this, then you will set yourself up for success and you won’t be able to make excuses to yourself, because you know what is at stake. So go find what is motivating you, write it down, post it up on your wall, look at it every day and achieve your goals!
