10 tips for permanent weight loss
1. Exercise 30 to 60 minutes each day. If time is limited, exercise for several brief periods throughout the day — for example, three 10-minute sessions rather than one 30-minute session.
2. Eat three healthy meals during the day, including a good breakfast. Skipping meals causes increased hunger and may lead to excessive snacking
3. Weigh yourself regularly. Monitoring your weight can tell you whether your efforts are working
4.Don't keep comfort foods in the house. If you tend to eat high-fat, high-calorie foods when you're upset or depressed or bored, don't keep them around. Availability of food is one of the strongest factors in determining how much a person eats.
5. Create opportunities to be active. Wash your car at home instead of going to the car wash. Bike or walk to the store. Participate in your kid's activities at the playground or park.
6. Sit down together for family meals. Avoid eating in front of the television. TV viewing strongly affects how much and what people eat.
7. See what you eat. Eating directly from a container gives you no sense of how much you're eating. Seeing food on a plate or in a bowl keeps you aware of how much you're eating.
8. Eat at home. People eat more food in restaurants than at home. Limit how often you eat at restaurants.
9. Walk for 10 minutes over your lunch hour or get up a few minutes earlier in the morning and go for a short walk.
10. Reward yourself. Celebrate your success with nonfood rewards, such as new clothes or an outing with friends.
2 comments:
Vijay--
Great article but I disagree with you!
I was a model and a figure skater before I had nine kids. My key to staying slender? I looked at the mirror instead of the scale. Seeing ribs was not sexy-- I needed ice cream after dinner. Seeing curves where they didn't belong (above my jeans, for example) meant that I needed an extra bit of time doing sit ups or crunches.
Scales don't tell you anything about your muscle tone. I refuse to own one or have one in my house-- I have teenaged daughters who are athletic and they have thanked me for not owning one because their friends obsess over numbers.
For many busy people (I know you are one!) exercise is hard to come by, but scheduling in at least one class a week (ball room dance, working out, yoga) will often increase. You need to get your spouse to back you.
One of my professors sees people with weight issues and says that they are often hung up on what they are not eating and believes that they are psychologically holding on to something and they don't lose weight as fast. He gets with their doctors to tell them to have dessert at least three times a week and then they are not craving it and often start eating fresh fruit for dessert on their own.
I totally agree about eating three healthy meals a day. I would add on to that to make breakfast and lunch big if possible because you will work them off. Dinner should be "lite."
Don't keep comfort foods in the house-- you can't succumb to temptation if it's not there, but have some food that you like that gives you comfort but is low in calories. (I keep frozen fruit popsicles for me.)
I don't know about rewarding yourself for taking care of yourself. Being healthy is it's own reward. I am 38 and in college. I went with some "20 year old kids" into the gym at college and there was a pull up bar. They took turns doing pull-ups and grunted and sweated the whole time. They teased me and joked that "Miss Mom" would be lucky to get two pull-ups done. I went up and did one. . . then like a gymnast, pulled the rest of my body above the bar and did a hand stand. I got scolded by the trainer in charge of the room but after the applause he added that my form was great!
I think that you need to add that having goals is important. Staying in shape to get a hot guy with an MD or in my case, a specific engineer is a worthy short term goal that I achieved, but my other goal was that I wanted to be a fox at 40 and be running marathons at 60. I am glad that I made those choices back when I was otherwise young and stupid.
This is the first time I'm on your blog. Welcome to the medical blogosphere and have a great time here. You write you're a novice blogger, but you create quality content. Keep up this good work.
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