A lot of people struggle to exercise at least three times a week and eat healthily. Eating healthily to a lot of people is eating horribly tasting greens, little savory meat or poultry and the occasional smoothie here and there.
Why should losing weight and eating healthily be Torturous?
Here, I aim to set out several effective methods for weight loss and maintaining a healthy diet.
Enjoy.
So what usually irks people when they’re trying to lose weight or just keep healthy is the sheer will-power required for a massive turnover on how you live your life; waking up at 5:00AM to go jogging, committing to high-energy, back-breaking workouts - determination becomes more of the issue. Instead, if you create a schedule which is manageable everyday, no matter what the occasion, you’re more likely to succeed.
It’s very true that your mental state and your likelihood of weight loss success are linked. However weight loss maintenance success is not linked to your mental health according to the Health Psychology Journal of the American Psychological Association. In a study of 784 people, 80% being women, of weight loss maintainers - the results may or may not vary if the number of male participants were higher - there was no obvious evidence that suppression of body weight was linked to psychological distress.
Unfortunately, 43% of depressed adults are obese in the US and 55% of these adults on antidepressants claimed the antidepressants were ineffective and reported severe depressive symptoms. The report explained that due to the study and a meta-analysis of studies on the same topic, analysts conclude that the relationship between depression and obesity is “bidirectional.” This group of adults with depression and obesity report the highest levels of stress in studies and use the most resources, such as a personal trainer or self-help group, to ensure weight loss success and keep up morale.
In another report, this group were known as “cluster 2,” each cluster was represented in the graphs I will show below. The other notable cluster was cluster 4, who were least likely to exercise, unlikely to avoid eating out or use resources, despite reporting more health problems which could suggest the obligation to lose weight because of a health condition has lead them to lose weight and maintain health the most efficiently, showing that a good mental attitude (the guarantee in your mind that you will do it) can alleviate the stress of weight loss and ergo, in turn, make you more likely to have success in losing weight.
“Figure 1
Health history before successful weight loss. Questionnaire item: prior to your successful weight loss, had you been told by a physician that you had any of the following conditions?”
“Figure 2
Professional and group resources utilized during successful weight loss. Questionnaire item: in achieving this most recent successful weight loss, you may have used several different approaches. Please indicate which of the following strategies you used to lose weight.”
“Figure 3
Current self-regulation and self-monitoring strategies used to maintain or lose weight. Questionnaire item: please indicate for each item whether or not you have used this strategy to maintain or lose weight during the past year.”
The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), which is a research study here in the US that gathers information on people who have lost weight and maintain a healthy weight, has found, with 10 000 participants in total, that the most common form of exercise is actually walking. This makes sense since if you’re overweight you’re not going to be able to pump 170 kg of iron straight away, if you have this expectation or put pressure on yourself to do something so far from what you usually do everyday then don’t beat yourself up if things don’t go to plan.
30 minutes of fast-paced walking is recommended for sufficient workout, which should complete the recommended target, of 10 000 steps a day, by the British National Health Service (NHS). Be sure to determine when you can do this, you’d be surprised by the various times in your day where you can fit in a workout, times of the day often overlooked or taken for granted. It may require waking up earlier, going to bed later or setting out of your home for your destination earlier, you can walk at a casual pace if you prolong the duration which diminishes the chance of sweating as you get to your destination. It works with fastidious planning and a change of clothes in a backpack just in case you do sweat.
The NCWR also reported that 78% ate breakfast everyday, 75% weighed themselves every day and 90% did at least 1 hour of exercise each day. I would recommend that should be done at moderate to high intensity for best results. This should show that with minimal actions you can keep healthy.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), actually, recommends less than this; for moderate exercise, they say 150 minutes per week is required (30 minutes each day for 5 days per week) and for vigorous exercise, it’s a whopping 75 minutes per week.
I, personally, like to cycle, it doesn’t feel like a workout, it’s enjoyable from the get-go, whether you’ve exercised regularly hitherto or not and it’s an easier activity to get friends and family involved in - this would be a healthy alternative to a long walk, especially with a mountain bike with which you can shift the gears from an easy to a harder pedal (depending on your level of fitness), increasing the intensity of your workout with the gears and not with a longer distance or longer duration like you would with a normal bike. A strong recommendation for people who want to slim down and aren’t too concerned with muscle building, especially for women. Cycling works a total of 5 muscle groups:
Even if you’re not making enormous strides in your weight losing, that’s still better than nothing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that even “modest weight loss” e.g. weighing 200 pounds and losing 5% of it, still leaving you overweight, decreases your chances of obesity-related diseases and illnesses. So no effort for weight loss is useless.
It doesn’t matter too much how you choose to lose weight; if it’s supplements or pills; they’re fine as long as they’re approved by the FDA and you’re having around 2500 kcal per day in your diet if you’re a guy or 2000 kcal if you’re a girl, cited from the British Food Standards Agency which has a fantastic tool for helping people of all shapes, sizes and health statuses to get the right nutrients in their meal each time. It’s called the Eatwell Guide.
As you can see it looks like this:
And it’s a great illustrated reminder to keep on your fridge like I do, you can even get posters of this and it’s superb aiding with the proportions needed in your food, what your meal should look like and what your snacks throughout the day should be. A miracle worker for keeping down calories and getting your 5-a-day of fruit and veg in your diet without you even paying attention.
If you want to go down a non-traditional route such as surgery, I don’t recommend it, you miss out on growth as a person (self-discipline, acknowledgement that you can achieve great feats etc.) and there’s cheaper alternatives. It might be valuable to be aware that individuals who go through the procedure report higher usage of dietary strategies, as shown in the International Journal of Obesity, indicating anxiety about keeping weight off and no learned methods of ease yet to maintain health. However, neither party; traditional or surgery route, was more likely than the other to fail at weight maintenance. In short, weight loss methods may vary, may affect your initial weight loss success but the subsequent likelihood of failure (for weight maintenance) for either party does not vary.
I’d recommend choosing your weight loss and health maintenance method based on what your weaknesses are. For example, if you have a sweet-tooth perhaps your diet strategy should be primarily low-fat instead of low-carbohydrates or if you love your food too much maybe you lose weight primarily through exercise (Note that more strenuous activity≠more weight loss. The rate of weight loss plateaus after some time so you can’t have no limits on what you eat and expect to rely on exercise alone, don’t be mistaken). If you can stand to keep carbohydrates down, then that’s definitely the strategy to use, as a meta-analysis of US studies reveals that low energy diets are more successful and and allow one to keep off more weight than if you went for the low-fat diet.
AEE₁ = Activity energy expenditure
AEE₂ = Activity energy expenditure of people with slow metabolic rate
RMR = Resting metabolic rate
TEF = Thermic effect of food
However, you don’t need to choose based on the assumption that you’ll have to sacrifice, not eating dishes you love; try veggie pizza with low-fat cheese and if fresh vegetables are too expensive, try frozen vegetables, which do maintain a lot of their initial freshness. Changing your diet means exploring tastes so you can be healthy while still enjoying the food you eat. And meats aren’t off the table as long as it’s lean. Food can be garnished with herbs and spices instead of gravies and sauces, which tend to be high in fat and sugar. Also, choose unsaturated fats like olive and canola oil over saturated fats found in butter and non-lean meats.
There are various resources like the Eatwell Guide that I found while doing research via the USDA. On their “Food and Nutrition Information Center” website there are links to resources that aid you in building and tracking your eating plan according to the 2015-2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, calculating your BMI, give you advice on food options and inspiration, provide virtual weight loss workshops and much, much more. My favorite one is the “It’s All About You! Making Healthy Choices Toolkit” which has brilliant information on inspiration for your diet and physical activity e.g. “Fun stuff counts as exercise!”, “Get active with your family or friends, whether it’s soccer in the backyard, dancing to music, marching in place while watching your favorite TV show, doing sit-ups or push-ups during commercials or taking a brisk walk in your neighborhood,” it has creative suggestions for people who don’t take well to exercise and a disciplined diet as well as other people.
At the end of the day, do what works best for you. As individuals, what might suit the majority might not suit you.
My last advice, based on info. from the NWCR, is to be consistent if you don’t just want to lose weight but you want to control your weight long-term too. You are 1.5 times more likely to keep weight off if you keep to your diet not just on weekdays or working months of the year but on weekends and vacations/holidays too. And when you’re at a restaurant, order your meal first to avoid other’s influence on what you eat, skip/share dessert and get a healthy, light dessert like sorbet or ask for a smaller or “lunch-sized” version of your dish. It will be worth it because after 2-5 years of determination long-term success greatly increases and hopefully, you’ll find that you’re closer and closer to keeping off unhealthy weight with the ease that everybody else does. Good luck.
Why should losing weight and eating healthily be Torturous?
Here, I aim to set out several effective methods for weight loss and maintaining a healthy diet.
Enjoy.
So what usually irks people when they’re trying to lose weight or just keep healthy is the sheer will-power required for a massive turnover on how you live your life; waking up at 5:00AM to go jogging, committing to high-energy, back-breaking workouts - determination becomes more of the issue. Instead, if you create a schedule which is manageable everyday, no matter what the occasion, you’re more likely to succeed.
It’s very true that your mental state and your likelihood of weight loss success are linked. However weight loss maintenance success is not linked to your mental health according to the Health Psychology Journal of the American Psychological Association. In a study of 784 people, 80% being women, of weight loss maintainers - the results may or may not vary if the number of male participants were higher - there was no obvious evidence that suppression of body weight was linked to psychological distress.
Unfortunately, 43% of depressed adults are obese in the US and 55% of these adults on antidepressants claimed the antidepressants were ineffective and reported severe depressive symptoms. The report explained that due to the study and a meta-analysis of studies on the same topic, analysts conclude that the relationship between depression and obesity is “bidirectional.” This group of adults with depression and obesity report the highest levels of stress in studies and use the most resources, such as a personal trainer or self-help group, to ensure weight loss success and keep up morale.
In another report, this group were known as “cluster 2,” each cluster was represented in the graphs I will show below. The other notable cluster was cluster 4, who were least likely to exercise, unlikely to avoid eating out or use resources, despite reporting more health problems which could suggest the obligation to lose weight because of a health condition has lead them to lose weight and maintain health the most efficiently, showing that a good mental attitude (the guarantee in your mind that you will do it) can alleviate the stress of weight loss and ergo, in turn, make you more likely to have success in losing weight.
Health history before successful weight loss. Questionnaire item: prior to your successful weight loss, had you been told by a physician that you had any of the following conditions?”
Professional and group resources utilized during successful weight loss. Questionnaire item: in achieving this most recent successful weight loss, you may have used several different approaches. Please indicate which of the following strategies you used to lose weight.”
“Figure 3
Current self-regulation and self-monitoring strategies used to maintain or lose weight. Questionnaire item: please indicate for each item whether or not you have used this strategy to maintain or lose weight during the past year.”
The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), which is a research study here in the US that gathers information on people who have lost weight and maintain a healthy weight, has found, with 10 000 participants in total, that the most common form of exercise is actually walking. This makes sense since if you’re overweight you’re not going to be able to pump 170 kg of iron straight away, if you have this expectation or put pressure on yourself to do something so far from what you usually do everyday then don’t beat yourself up if things don’t go to plan.
30 minutes of fast-paced walking is recommended for sufficient workout, which should complete the recommended target, of 10 000 steps a day, by the British National Health Service (NHS). Be sure to determine when you can do this, you’d be surprised by the various times in your day where you can fit in a workout, times of the day often overlooked or taken for granted. It may require waking up earlier, going to bed later or setting out of your home for your destination earlier, you can walk at a casual pace if you prolong the duration which diminishes the chance of sweating as you get to your destination. It works with fastidious planning and a change of clothes in a backpack just in case you do sweat.
The NCWR also reported that 78% ate breakfast everyday, 75% weighed themselves every day and 90% did at least 1 hour of exercise each day. I would recommend that should be done at moderate to high intensity for best results. This should show that with minimal actions you can keep healthy.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), actually, recommends less than this; for moderate exercise, they say 150 minutes per week is required (30 minutes each day for 5 days per week) and for vigorous exercise, it’s a whopping 75 minutes per week.
I, personally, like to cycle, it doesn’t feel like a workout, it’s enjoyable from the get-go, whether you’ve exercised regularly hitherto or not and it’s an easier activity to get friends and family involved in - this would be a healthy alternative to a long walk, especially with a mountain bike with which you can shift the gears from an easy to a harder pedal (depending on your level of fitness), increasing the intensity of your workout with the gears and not with a longer distance or longer duration like you would with a normal bike. A strong recommendation for people who want to slim down and aren’t too concerned with muscle building, especially for women. Cycling works a total of 5 muscle groups:
It doesn’t matter too much how you choose to lose weight; if it’s supplements or pills; they’re fine as long as they’re approved by the FDA and you’re having around 2500 kcal per day in your diet if you’re a guy or 2000 kcal if you’re a girl, cited from the British Food Standards Agency which has a fantastic tool for helping people of all shapes, sizes and health statuses to get the right nutrients in their meal each time. It’s called the Eatwell Guide.
As you can see it looks like this:
And it’s a great illustrated reminder to keep on your fridge like I do, you can even get posters of this and it’s superb aiding with the proportions needed in your food, what your meal should look like and what your snacks throughout the day should be. A miracle worker for keeping down calories and getting your 5-a-day of fruit and veg in your diet without you even paying attention.
If you want to go down a non-traditional route such as surgery, I don’t recommend it, you miss out on growth as a person (self-discipline, acknowledgement that you can achieve great feats etc.) and there’s cheaper alternatives. It might be valuable to be aware that individuals who go through the procedure report higher usage of dietary strategies, as shown in the International Journal of Obesity, indicating anxiety about keeping weight off and no learned methods of ease yet to maintain health. However, neither party; traditional or surgery route, was more likely than the other to fail at weight maintenance. In short, weight loss methods may vary, may affect your initial weight loss success but the subsequent likelihood of failure (for weight maintenance) for either party does not vary.
I’d recommend choosing your weight loss and health maintenance method based on what your weaknesses are. For example, if you have a sweet-tooth perhaps your diet strategy should be primarily low-fat instead of low-carbohydrates or if you love your food too much maybe you lose weight primarily through exercise (Note that more strenuous activity≠more weight loss. The rate of weight loss plateaus after some time so you can’t have no limits on what you eat and expect to rely on exercise alone, don’t be mistaken). If you can stand to keep carbohydrates down, then that’s definitely the strategy to use, as a meta-analysis of US studies reveals that low energy diets are more successful and and allow one to keep off more weight than if you went for the low-fat diet.
 | |||||||||
AEE₂ = Activity energy expenditure of people with slow metabolic rate
RMR = Resting metabolic rate
TEF = Thermic effect of food
There are various resources like the Eatwell Guide that I found while doing research via the USDA. On their “Food and Nutrition Information Center” website there are links to resources that aid you in building and tracking your eating plan according to the 2015-2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, calculating your BMI, give you advice on food options and inspiration, provide virtual weight loss workshops and much, much more. My favorite one is the “It’s All About You! Making Healthy Choices Toolkit” which has brilliant information on inspiration for your diet and physical activity e.g. “Fun stuff counts as exercise!”, “Get active with your family or friends, whether it’s soccer in the backyard, dancing to music, marching in place while watching your favorite TV show, doing sit-ups or push-ups during commercials or taking a brisk walk in your neighborhood,” it has creative suggestions for people who don’t take well to exercise and a disciplined diet as well as other people.
At the end of the day, do what works best for you. As individuals, what might suit the majority might not suit you.
My last advice, based on info. from the NWCR, is to be consistent if you don’t just want to lose weight but you want to control your weight long-term too. You are 1.5 times more likely to keep weight off if you keep to your diet not just on weekdays or working months of the year but on weekends and vacations/holidays too. And when you’re at a restaurant, order your meal first to avoid other’s influence on what you eat, skip/share dessert and get a healthy, light dessert like sorbet or ask for a smaller or “lunch-sized” version of your dish. It will be worth it because after 2-5 years of determination long-term success greatly increases and hopefully, you’ll find that you’re closer and closer to keeping off unhealthy weight with the ease that everybody else does. Good luck.
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