How to Lose Weight

Losing weight becomes much easier if you work with your body rather than against it. Follow the dieting tips below and with a little self-discipline and a moderate amount of exercise, you'll find the weight not not only comes off, it stays off

1. Diets & Dieting: an introduction to slimming

2. Daily Calories: eat fewer calories than you consume

3. Eat a Healthy Balanced Diet: eat about 40% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fat

4. Eat 'Good Carbs': swap white rice and bread for wholegrain and wholemeal

5. Eat 'Healthy Fats': use only 'healthy fats' in your diet

6. Eat Six Smaller Meals Per Day: eating regularly helps you lose weight

7. Drink Plenty of Water: drinking lots of water can increase weight loss

8. Exercise: exercising burns calories and keeps you healthy

9. Discussion Forum: share dieting tips or seek advice on losing weight

Diets & Dieting

The secret to slimming and weight loss is really very straight forward; eat fewer calories than your body burns off during the day. It sounds so simple, and for many of us who battle the bulge daily, it probably sounds rather trite. However corny it sounds, the truth is it's the only way to lose weight, barring surgery!

What's harder about losing weight isn't the basic principle, but finding an effective diet that suits your lifestyle and one that you can stick to. There are so many diets to choose from, there's the GI Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, low-fat diets, high-fibre diets, to name just a few!

I have personally tried various diets and slimming tablets over the years, with varying degrees of success. The one thing all the diets have had in common, it was very easy to slip back into bad habits and the weight soon came back on again. A friend who I hadn't seen for several years introduced me to this diet. He had lost one third of his body weight since I last saw him, and was barely recognisable! What appealed to me about the diet was it all seemed so sensible. There was no 'silver bullet', it wasn't a fad nor did it involve extremes like the Atkins diet.

The diet is basically a commonsense approach to dieting, involving a healthy balanced diet combined with a moderate amount of exercise. It's actually more of a healthy lifestyle change than a diet, and once you see and feel the benefits, it's actual quite addictive, which means the weight not only comes off, it stays off! The diet does require some calorie counting and you do need to spend a few minutes a day planning meals, but if you buy our dieting software, Diet Planner Pro, it makes this part of the diet very easy, and even fun!

Step 1: Daily Calories

Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the number of calories consumed per day while the body is at rest. A person's RMR depends on their age, sex, height and weight. Once you know how many calories you need per day to do nothing, you can then calculate your energy input (food) and your energy consumption (exercise). The weight you lose or gain is simply the difference between the calories burnt off (RMR + exercise) and the calories eaten during the day.

Step 2: The Diet

The aim of the diet is to eat less calories than you burn. The beauty of this diet is that there are very few rules about how you achieve this. Being flexible, it's easy to adapt the diet to most lifestyles, even to the extent of controlling how quickly you want to lose the weight. You can also juggle the amount you exercise with the amount of food you eat to achieve your weight lose goals. More exercise means you will either lose weight faster or gain more flexibility in what you can eat.

If you purchase Diet Planner Pro, you can actually play around with different meal plans and exercise regimes. Being able to see how much weight you'll gain by having an extra portion of your favourite dessert or how much more exercise you need to do to burn off that last glass of wine, really brings it home to you how your choices effect your weight loss goals. However, as you are in control of the diet, being able to see the consequences of your choices empowers you to make sensible decisions.

Step 3: The Rules of the Diet

The rules are very simple. Eat a healthy balanced diet and avoid eating too much fat. You should eat a variety of foods to get all the nutrients you need; eat plenty of fibre; avoid too much sodium (salt) and sugar; and drink plenty of water, but alcohol in moderation, if at all. Also, eat regularly, ideally 3 main meals and 3 snacks per day; eat smaller portions and don't skip meals, especially not breakfast.

Food Nutrients

The basic food nutrients in your diet should be divided as follows:

• 40% Proteins (meat, poultry, fish, eggs whites, soy, whey, etc.)

• 40% Carbohydrates (grains, rice, pasta, fruit, vegetables, bread, etc.)

• 20% Fat (oils, lard, butter, animal fat, etc)

You should aim to have some protein in each meal and the carbohydrates you eat should be 'good' carbohydrates, i.e. whole grain rice, wholemeal bread, wholemeal flour and even wholemeal pasta.

Protein

40 percent of your diet should be made up of protein. Proteins are important for building body tissue and muscle. Sources of protein include foods like milk, egg whites, meat, fish, beans, and nuts. You should try and eat protein with every meal; the body takes longer to digest protein, so it stays in the body longer, helping you avoid feeling hungry between meals.

Carbohydrates

40 percent of your diet should come from carbohydrates (carbs). Carbohydrates provide the principle sauce of energy for the body. The two types of carbs are starches and simple sugars. Starches are made of long chains of sugar molecules and are mainly found in potatoes, rice and cereals. Simple sugars are made of short chains of sugar molecules and are found in fruit, snack foods, confectionary, soft drinks and many other manufactured and processed foods.

Good & Bad Carbs

Carbohydrates are also referred to as being complex or simple based on their structure. Complex carbohydrates have come to be known as 'good' carbs because they take longer to digest and have more fibre, vitamins and minerals. Simple carbohydrates are called 'bad' carbs or empty calories because they contain the same calorific value as good carbs but none of the nutrients.

Examples of good carbs include wholemeal of whole grain products like brown rice and brown bread. As the grain is unrefined, the bran and germ hasn't been removed by milling and so it contains loads of fibre and other important nutrients such as selenium, potassium and magnesium.

Bad carbs include refined products like white bread and the many derivatives of simple sugar that the food industry adds to manufactured and processed foods, largely in a bid to reduce their fat content. Bad cabs in many processed foods have been blamed for the increase in obesity and diabetes in many countries throughout the world.

The reason why bad carbs can cause weight problems and diabetes is because of the effect they have on the bodies blood sugar level. The body converts all carbohydrates into sugar, but because part of the process has been done in the factory, the body converts bad carbs into sugar much more quickly than good carbs. This sudden spike in blood sugar levels causes the body to release insulin, triggering it to store the sugar as fat. Good carbs on the other hand, take longer to digest; the blood sugar level remains more stable and the body burns off the energy naturally over time.

The way the body reacts to different carbohydrates is measured by their glycemic index (GI). Good carbohydrates have a low GI and produce only small fluctuations in our blood sugar and insulin levels, while the opposite is true bad carbohydrates.

Fat

The remaining 20 percent of your diet should come from fats. Because fats produce more than twice as much energy as proteins and carbohydrates for the same weight, the body stores fat for later use when carbohydrates are in short supply. Besides being a compact and efficient energy source, the body needs small amounts of fat to function properly.

Fat is a nutrient used in the production of cell membranes and compounds that help regulate blood pressure, heart rate, blood vessel constriction, blood clotting and the nervous system. Fat is also important for the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as β-carotene. Fat also helps maintain healthy hair and skin, protects vital organs, keeps your body insulated (overly so in many cases), and provides a sense of fullness after meals (satiety).

Much of the flavour in foods is contained in its fat content. In an attempt to find healthier alternatives, the food industry turned to sugar derivatives as a substitute for fat. This has caused as many problems as it has solved, with obesity and diabetes becoming endemic in many countries. While there are some interesting products in the pipeline, finding a healthy cost effective and tasty substitute for fat and sugar continues to be a challenge for scientists in the 21st century.

Healthy & Harmful Fats

As with carbohydrates, there are good and bad or healthy and harmful fats. Healthy fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These fats can lower your risk of heart disease by reducing the cholesterol levels in your blood. High levels of cholesterol can cause the build-up of fatty deposits in your arteries, reducing blood flow through your vessels, and increasing your risk of heart disease or a stroke.

Foods high in monounsaturated fat include olive, peanut and canola oils, avocados and most nuts. Foods high in polyunsaturated fats include vegetable oils, such as safflower, corn, sunflower, soy and cottonseed oils. One type of polyunsaturated fat, called Omega-3 fatty acids, is particularly good for your heart and brain. Good sources of omega-3 include fatty, cold-water fish, such as salmon, tuna, mackerel and herring. Also flaxseeds, flax oil and walnuts contain omega-3 fatty acids.

Harmful fats are saturated fat and trans fats. These can increase your risk of heart disease by increasing your levels of cholesterol. Saturated fat is found in animal products such as red meat, poultry, butter, whole milk and coconut, palm and other tropical oils. Trans fats are vegetable oils that have had hydrogen added as part of the manufacturing process of many commercial foods. Trans fat is also found in fried foods like doughnuts and potato chips.

Step 4: Eat at Regular Intervals

It's important to eat at least three meals a day at regular intervals. It's also advisable to eat snacks between meals so you are eating smaller meals every 2 to 3 hours. Ideally you should be eating breakfast, a mid morning snack, lunch, a mid afternoon snack, dinner and an evening snack. The key to losing weight is to consume less calories than you burn by invoking a mild calorie deficit in your diet without letting you body go hungry.

If you go to extremes by skipping meals or depriving the body of too many calories, the effect will actual be detrimental to your weight loss goals by slowing or even reversing weight loss. You shouldn't lose more than 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) per week. Losing weight too rapidly can lead to muscle loss; and as muscle burns calories, this will actual make it harder to lose weight!

Eating small portions more regularly has the following advantages:

• You don't feel hungry, which reduces the changes of binge eating or overeating at the next meal;

• It physiologically helps you control your portion size because you know you will be eating again soon;

• It keeps your blood sugar levels stable and helps your body burn rather than store fat;

• It can help the body establish a rhythm for energy consumption;

• Eating breakfast jump-starts the metabolism getting it into the burn mode early in the day;

• Eating late at night can lead to weight gain as the body stores fat more efficiently during the night;

• It stops the body going into starvation mode. This is a vicious cycle caused when the body slows the metabolism to preserve energy. In doing so, it produces a powerful catabolic stress hormone called cortisol, which breaks down muscle tissue to provide energy. The loss of muscle slows the metabolism even further, causing the release of more cortisol, creating the downward spiral. What's more, the body increases the production of fat-storing enzymes, so when you do eat the food gets stored as fat.

Many people simply think dieting means cutting out a meal or two per day. This couldn't be further from the truth and is actually counterproductive; eating smaller portions more often is the key to slimming. The objective is not to feel full after a meal, just satisfied. Equally you shouldn't feel hungry between meals.

Step 5: Drink Plenty of Water

You should drink about two litres (approx. 4 pints) of water per day. 65 percent of the human body is made up of water, while over 70 percent of our bodily functions take place in water. So it's hardly surprising that its important to drink plenty of it.

Water has the following effects on the body:

• Drinking insufficient water causes your bodily functions to slow down, causing unnecessary stress;

• Water speeds up the metabolism and helps the body burn more calories;

• Water flushes out the system and helps eliminate toxins;

• To use water effectively, the body needs to heat it up. Drinking lots of cold water can burn an extra 50 to 100 calories a day, that's the equivalent to around 2 to 4 kilos (4 to 9 pounds) of fat per year!

• In the same way the body stores food when it's in short supply, it does the same with water. Insufficient water causes the body to retain what it has, making you feel bloated. Increasing your water intake actually reduces water retention, so you feel less bloated and lose weight in the process (albeit weight caused by water retention).

As with most things, you shouldn't overdo it - you can actually drink too much water, a condition called water intoxication and hyponatremia. However, water intoxication is very rare and has more to do with how quickly you drink water, more than how much water you drink.

Step 6: Exercise

Exercise not only burns calories but also helps keep your body healthy and improves your general well-being and should form part of any weight loss or slimming programme. The benefits of introducing just a moderate amount of exercise into your daily regime range from preventing chronic health conditions to boosting your confidence and self-esteem, reducing stress, sleeping better and even living longer.

There are two basic types of exercise, aerobic and anaerobic.  A combination of both types of exercise will be most beneficial for all-round fitness, general health and weight loss.

Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise is also called cardiovascular exercise because it mainly involves getting the heart pumping, the blood flowing and increasing the body's oxygen intake. Exercises like swimming, walking, running, bicycling, and cross country skiing, are all examples of aerobic exercise. You should aim to do some form of aerobic exercise for 30 to 60 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week.

Anaerobic Exercise

Anaerobic exercise involves short bursts of energy during strength-based activities like weight lifting, sprinting or jumping. Anaerobic exercise builds muscle tissue that performs well in short duration, high intensity activities. Weight training is particularly effective for losing weight as increasing muscle tissue is one of the best ways to increase your metabolic rate and burn calories. Ideally, you should do anaerobic exercise three times per week for sessions of 30 to 45 minutes.

During weight lifting workouts you should exercise all the main muscle groups, i.e. chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, quadriceps, hamstrings, and abs, repeating each set of exercises 3 times. Each exercise should have between 8 to 12 repetitions (reps). Lift and lower the weights slowly and breath out during the lift. You should use enough weight so it's a struggle to finish the last rep but without losing control. Rest for 1 minute between each set of exercises and a day between each workout.

An example of a weight training session:

Exercise Set 1 - repeat 3 times, resting 1 minute between each set

• Abs - sit ups x 10

• Chest - push ups x 10

• Back - back extensions x 10

Exercise Set 2 - repeat 3 times, resting 1 minute between each set

• Biceps - bicep curls x 10

• Triceps - triceps extensions x 10

• Quadriceps - squats x 10

Continue the exercise sets until you have exercised all the main muscle groups.

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For more information about diets, nutrition, slimming, exercise workouts and weight training visit our Dieting Links or Dieting Books pages, where you'll find loads more useful information on losing weight through dieting and exercising your way to a healthier lifestyle.  Alternatively a personal trainer can give you invaluable advice on achieving your weight loss goals, tailoring a diet and exercise programme to your specific needs,  and provide the moral support you need to stick with it.