Secret Weight Loss Tricks You May Not Be Aware Of

Weight loss can be difficult for some people, regardless of how much they try to amend their diet or workouts in the gym. Maintaining a healthy weight and an active lifestyle is important for good health, and we’re reminded all the time how obesity can lead to a number of health problems such as heart disease and diabetes. But there are problems which can lead to weight gain itself, such as thyroid disorders and many more. The choices we make affect directly our weight and health, as we all know. But there could be aspects to your lifestyle that you hadn’t considered could affect your weight, such as your iron levels. Iron deficiency anaemia could be leading to your weight problems – it could be impacting why you can’t lose weight as easily as you’d like to.

Iron is essential for carrying oxygen to the bloodstream, and when you’re exercising it can make you feel weak and tired if your iron levels are low. Your battle with being tired and lacking energy could be affecting the intensity of your workouts, and as a result you could be impacting your weight loss without even realising it. If you feel like you’re always exercising but never getting anywhere, this could be why. The harder you can work out, the better results you’ll see and your body shape will be a testament to that. Iron, it seems, could be the hidden key to weight management success that you may be ignoring to your detriment. But why is it that this secret weight loss trick not promoted more, and how do you know if you’re a member of the iron-deficient club?

 

There are some important things to bear in mind if you think iron could be missing from your diet and affecting your weight management. One of the biggest causes of iron loss is due to bleeding, and this is often because of heavy and frequent menstrual periods in women. For people with coeliac disease, Crohn’s diseases and people who have had gastric bypass surgery could be impacted by iron absorption. Furthermore, your diet could be the problem – people following vegetarian diets could find that their iron intake isn’t what it should be – plant-based iron sources are non-heme which is why the RDA for iron is higher in vegetarians than meat eaters. Vegetarian men and post-menopausal women need 14mg daily or pre-menopausal vegetarian women should aim for 33mg daily. Often, people forget that forty per cent of iron found in meat, fish and poultry is heme, with the other sixty per cent falling into the category of non-heme.

 

All plant-based sources are non-heme. It’s also important to remember that non-heme iron isn’t absorbed as easily as heme iron. Sources such as rhubarb, spinach and beet greens contain an oxalate acid which binds with iron to make it unavailable for the body, which is why getting the right amount from plant-based sources is difficult. If you’re in doubt as to what your iron take is like and if it’s enough, you should speak to your GP. A sign that you could be iron-deficient are finding yourself low on energy, tired or winded, but you should be tested properly before taking supplements or upping your iron intake substantially.It could be the difference between years of weight loss struggle and a healthy management of weight loss, as well as better health overall.

Categories: Advice, based sources, heme iron, iron deficient, iron intake, iron levels, iron sources, plant based, secret weight, Weight Loss, Weight Management

How to Lose Weight without Going on a Diet – Seriously!

Urgh, dieting – is there are more heinous word in the English language? Just the word itself makes you want to run away screaming and dive into a pile of chips, so how on earth do you actually do it? Now that I think about it, do you even need to diet? In fact, it is possible to lose weight or maintain your weight without actually following a diet plan or depriving yourself of anything you truly want to eat – score.

 

Before we get started, at no point am I going to tell you to take pills, cut out foods or actually get on a diet plan. We’re looking at practical advice that can help you to be the weight you want to be and take care of your wellbeing, without “going on a diet” or even exercising, so to speak. The dirty little secret of weight management is you don’t have to starve yourself or exercise hours a day to achieve it. There, I’ve said it. Here are the tried-and-tested tips which, if you actually follow them, do help you to lose or maintain your weight goals.

 

1. Keep your blood sugar level balanced – by snacking: Although your mum always said it would spoil your dinner, snacking is absolutely essential for weight loss and maintenance, as well as your overall wellness. Letting your blood sugar level to rise and dip is the underlying culprit in daytime grogginess, hunger pangs and cravings. To keep your blood sugar level at a low and stable level, you need to eat several small meals a day – say five to seven – instead of two or three large ones. You should aim to consume 300-500 calories in each meal, compared to the average meal of about 1200 calories.

 

2. Eat whatever you want: I bet you didn’t expect to read that! Depriving yourself of the things you want to eat means that you will really feel that lack, and your brain will begin craving that item even more. That food you won’t let yourself have becomes forbidden fruit (well, let’s be honest, forbidden cake) and soon that treat temptation will be too much to bear, and you’ll give in and overindulge. The key here is to limit the amount of the food, rather than eliminate it altogether. If chocolate is your secret love then have a couple of squares – that’s fine! Just don’t eat a family-sized bar in one sitting. A slice of pie? Sure. The whole thing? Perhaps not. As with all things in life and wellness, everything in moderation.

 

3. Eat slowly and chew your food: When you ingest food, it takes about 20 minutes for your body to realise and register that feeling of fullness. That means if you wolf down your dinner, you’ll be reaching for dessert before your stomach has even dealt with the pre-dinner nibbles. Slow down and give your body time to register the food is there by taking small bites and making the meal last at least 20 minutes, as it should.

 

4. Mix up your tastes and textures: Weight management is a psychological game; you trick your body into doing what you want it to do by making the brain think you’ve given it what you’ve conditioned yourself to believe you need. Human beings are creatures of habit, making patterns and associations until food becomes a routine you don’t even think about. Doing something outside that routine, however, registers in your brain in a different way, making it stand out. Therefore, by eating a variety of foods – especially tastes and textures you’ve never tried before – your brain will register you have eaten more foods and will reduce hunger and cravings.

Categories: Blood Sugar, diet, Eat Slowly, Food, level, Lose weight, nbsp, sugar level, Variety, weight, Weight Management

Diwali Fitness - Top Tips For Keeping Fit During Diwali

Diwali is just around the corner, which means so too are the sweets, late mornings and days off from work. However, despite all the planning, the only thing which seems to be avoided in the schedules is how to keep fit and healthy. This is particularly the case in people who have spent a long time trying to lose weight and then simply give in to temptation. It may seem like spending a few days indulging won’t do you any harm, but if you’re new to exercise and have spent less than six months working on a routine, you could be at a high risk of dropping off the fitness radar for a long time afterwards – all for the sake of one event. There are ways to stay fit during the celebrations, without it cutting into every moment of fun and relaxation with your loved ones. For example, you could indulge in the foods that you particularly enjoy during Diwali rather than consuming everything on offer. There are so many foods on offer, such as street food, cakes and sweets, that it can be difficult to avoid them. But try to stick to the essentials and carry on with your healthy eating plan other than that, with just your basic three nutritious meals a day.

Even some festival foods have healthy options, so scan the table and stock up on those options which provide a lower fat content and plenty of nutrients. For example, avoiding fried foods is a good start and the same can be said of anything laden with sugar. Rice-based dishes which have plenty of vegetables in them would be your best bet, as these will be lower in fat but have enough vitamins and minerals to make them good for your healthy eating plan. Try to make the selection of foods available as healthy as you can, including whole grains, lean proteins such as eggs, chicken and fish, and dried fruits. Dairy is great for protein, as long as it’s low in fat and sugar, and plenty of water. And, as with any healthy eating plan, stock up on fruits and vegetables.

So what about exercise? Well, celebrations are notoriously about relaxing and indulging, so chances are you haven’t spent much time thinking about your gym sessions. But making the effort to stay healthy and fit during this time will help ensure that once Diwali is done for the year, you aren’t way behind on your plan. Try to keep fit where possible and sneak in a few gym classes or a run around the block of an afternoon will keep you in check for the coming months. The best thing to do is to plan your Diwali week in advance and ensure that there are at least three mornings out of six that you don’t need to be late, because the previous nights will end early. Set out these mornings as home workout sessions, and plan them with your trainer if possible. If you don’t have a trainer, try to be as regimented and disciplined as possible. Be sure to warm up and cool down before and after, so that you can avoid injury where possible, as this will slow up your regime for many months after. It’s all in the planning with big festivities, so as long as you’ve pre-planned it all you should be able to maintain your healthy lifestyle and still have a great time.

Categories: Diwali, fitness, foods, Healthy, Healthy Eating, long, long time, time, Weight Management

Listen to Your Body: How Internal Awareness affects Weight

Have you ever tried to count your heartbeats without taking your pulse? It’s not like licking your elbow – you actually can do it! You have what’s called an interoceptive sense, or an awareness of the visceral signals that originate from inside your body. Your internal organs send nerves to the insula cortex of your brain, and this creates a kind of inner dashboard for your physiology – but what’s that got to do with your weight, or even your wellness?

 

A new study, published in Appetite, has found a link between interoceptive awareness (IA) and body mass index; the poorer your IA, the higher your BMI. Led by Doctor Beate Herbert, the researchers found that good IA allows you to eat intuitively, which means that you eat in response to your body’s physical cues, or when you’re hungry, rather than eating based on emotional cues. As you only eat when you actually need to, this helps you to keep the weight down.

 

However, it’s not so simple as just listening to your body; Dr Herbert also found that even though you may be able to perceive your visceral signals perfectly well, you may still choose to ignore them because you find them unnerving. According to Dr Herbert, ‘It’s not enough to perceive interoceptive signals adequately. Appraising these signals as positive or negative is a separate cognitive process, which also determines eating behaviour. One needs to allow oneself to act according to these perceived signals.’

 

Professor Manos Tsakiris at Royal Holloway, University of London, noted, ‘Studies have shown that interoception plays an important role in eating disorders. It’s linked to a deeper awareness of emotions in general, and anorexics – for emotional reasons – choose not to eat. But to date, we don’t know whether a deficit in interoceptive awareness is a cause or an effect of anorexia.’ Dr Rebecca Park, a clinical senior lecturer specialising in eating disorders, pointed out that Dr Herbert’s data was collected from a healthy population. This means that the results may not apply to patients with clinically diagnosed eating disorders, but she still believes in the potential of the results. ‘This mechanism could, if validated, be important in informing future interventions for eating disorders – and obesity, too,’ she commented. ‘The concept of “mindful eating,” to help those with binge eating, builds on this premise.’

Categories: Anorexia, Awareness, body, dr herbert, eating, eating disorders, herbert, Internal Awareness, interoceptive awareness, signals, visceral signals, Weight Management