Tips for weight Loss

What is weight loss?
Weight loss is caused by the body using more energy than you consume. To change the amount of energy your body expends you would exercise. There are many types of exercise such as running, biking, walking, lifting weights and playing sports. These are all goods way to exercise and boost your energy expenditure, vigorous exercise can expend 500-700 calories per hour exercise alone nd can help get you into shape even without dieting it may just take a little longer. Energy consumption is provided by the food you eat, the average caloric consumption for a person is about 1500-2500 calories per day, to gain one kilogram of weight you would need to consume about 7000 calories above what your body requires and to lose one kilogram you would need to expend about 7000 calories more than what you gain from food. So you need to exercise more to increase your expenditure and then eat less. Here are some tips to help you start losing weight.

Eat throughout the day
Some people will not eat breakfast and then not eat until later in the day and have a big meal. This is how you can easily store fat. Not eating at the start of the day will slow your metabolism and you will not have as much energy. Then when you finally eat later on in the day your body starts to store fat as it cannot use all the energy from the food provided. It is recommended that your meals be spread out during the day into 5 or 6 smaller meals, start with a good breakfast and eat during the day and start to taper off the sizes of your meals towards the end of the day. If you eat a lot at night before sleep the only thing the body can do with the energy is to store it. Eating most of your food earlier on in the day gives you energy to burn and reduces the chance of it being stored as fat.

Less processed food is always better
Today you can buy lots of fast food and convenience meals which is highly processed but you want to bring in more food that is not processed such as vegetables and fruit and more grains. Lower GI foods convert to sugar in the body slower. This means that you feel full for longer and you body doesn’t try to store the energy as fat as much. Normally food that is higher in fibre is lower GI.

Exercise
Exercising is good for your health, it improves the health of your heart and helps reduce the chances of diseases such as cancer and diabetes. It is recommended by health experts to exercise for at least thirty minutes three times a week. This can range from going for a bike or a run to playing a game of soccer or tennis, going for a swim or going to the gym and working out. The benfit is that is speeds your metabolism helping your body burn more energy to maintain itself. Exercise is a lot better than dieting alone as it promotes faster weight loss and improves your health.

Eat Sufficient Protein
Muscles two main components are water and protein, exercise stimulates your muscles to grow however they need sufficient amounts of protein. If insufficient levels are consumed the muscles can start to breakdown and even shrink! This could result in your metabolism slowing and this decreases the ability of your body to burn fat. The more muscle you have the easier it is to burn fat. Even if you are exercising and stay at the same weight if you are burning fat and gaining muscle because muscle is denser than fat you can still end up becoming a smaller size. The recommended amount of protein to take is about 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. If you weight 80kg 120 grams of protein would be sufficient. If you spread this out over your five to six meals a day this is 20 -25 grams per meal.

Can supplements help?
Supplements can never replace a good diet and exercise they can only help once they are in place. However they can be a help when they are used properly. The first one is the use of protein powders, when people are trying to make sure their protein consumption is sufficient it can sometimes be difficult to find a good protein source for each meal and sometimes you are short on time. Whey protein can be used as a meal replacement and are especially good after workouts and at night-time to replace a meal where you do not want to be consuming many calories before sleep but want to give your body the protein it needs to help repair itself during the night. Fat burners can also be a help such as Hydroxycut, the main things that they do is help reduce your appetite when you are dieting and also to help boost your energies when you have reduced your dietary intake. They help with the last bit of dieting as sometimes your body will burn less energy because you are eating less.