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5 Habits That Foster Weight Loss
ShareLosing weight is about changing habits. Let’s face it, you know what you should be eating to lose weight, the hardest part is shifting those habits from bad to good and making the right choices for your health.
The following are four proven strategies that are found to be helpful towards reaching your goal of permanent weight loss:
1. Leave yourself enough time to prepare healthy meals. Restaurant food as well as take away food tends to be far higher in calories, fat, salt, and sugar than home cooked meals. However, it takes time and effort to choose recipes, go to your local supermarket, and cook. Plan ahead when you can prepare meals and manage your time accordingly. A Sunday night might be a good option to do a cook up. Sometimes, it is a good idea to take advantage of pre-cut vegetables and fruit. It is also important to stock up on wholesome snacks like fruit, nuts, and seeds.
2. Eat slowly. Stretch out your mealtime and chew each bite a little longer. It takes about 20 minutes for messages to be sent by the gut hormones and stretch receptors in your stomach to reach your brain and let you know that you have reached satiety. If you can spend a full 20 minutes between your first bite and your last, you’ll feel satisfied but not stuffed and bloated. If you eat too quickly, you’re more likely to overeat reaching for that full feeling.
3. Eat evenly sized meals, beginning with breakfast. It is a good idea to spread out your calories more evenly throughout the day. Eat a bigger meal at breakfast time, average size at lunch and then a smaller one at dinner time. Remember those healthy snacks in between.
4. Don’t skimp on sleep. There have been studies linking shorter sleep duration with a higher risk of being overweight or obese. A recent review article suggests why: people who sleep fewer than six hours a night tend to have irregular eating habits — including more frequent, smaller, energy-dense, and highly palatable snacks (read: fatty, sugary foods like chips, cookies, and ice cream).
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