The Six Basics of Weight Loss

Getting Skinny 101: The Basics of Weight Loss

1. Don’t lose if you can’t keep it off

First of all, don't lose any weight if you don’t plan to keep it off. It is pointless. Do not diet to lose a few kilos: change your lifestyle instead and stay lean. Most people who disparage weight loss programs tried and failed to keep the weight off. They thought its a temporary thing. Its permanent or nothing.

2. Gradual Approach

Do not try to make an overnight change. Remember that nothing worth doing can be done overnight. Change your eating habits slowly. If you feel too hungry its because you have made a drastic change. You make a drastic change because you want a short cut. There is no shortcut in this. Have a strategy and follow it. You will be more successful at staying with the changes you make if you pick just one eating habit at a time to work on. Establish realistic goals and work on them.


3. Why Are You eating?
Don’t live to eat, eat to live. Change your relationship with food. Eat when you are hungry and eat for a purpose. For example, eat carbohydrates if and when you will be engaged in some physical activity that requires energy. If you eat carbohydrates that you don’t lose, they will be stored as fat. This applies for fats and proteins.
Do not eat when you are bored, stressed, or sad. Do not use food as a reward. Find other ways of rewarding yourself.

4. Physical Exercise
Make physical activity part of your daily life. Move more. Incorporate some physical activity in your daily routine. Walk, run, take the stairs etc. Find something that will bring your metabolic rate up. For Christs sake, FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE DOING. I love running but you could swim, box, jump, dance, whatever. Anything that brings your heart rate up and makes you sweat. Just find it and do it.

5. Cut out the Bad food
Cut out deep fried food. No negotiation. That means french fries (chips), bhajia, fried chicken etc are out. Cut out ice cream. No debate. Cut out sodas and beer. No negotiation. Simply decide never to take such food under any circumstances. They have huge amounts of calories and burning them off is very difficult.

6. Negative Caloric Deficit is a Must for weight Loss - Eat Less!
To lose weight, the number of calories you use up must be more than the number of calories you take in. Let me repeat that. To lose weight, the number of calories you use up must be more than the number of calories you take in. Calories are the amount of energy in the food you eat. Some foods have more calories than others. For example, foods high in fat and sugar are also typically high in calories. If you eat more calories than your body uses, the extra calories will be stored as body fat. Easy as pie. More on this later.
You are overweight because you eat more than you use so at the bare minimum, you must start eating less.
The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to eat fewer calories and burn off calories. If you cut 250 calories from your diet each day and exercise enough to burn off 250 calories, that adds up to 500 fewer calories in one day. If you do this for 7 days, you can lose 1 pound of fat in a week.

More on food and Exercise Later