Losing Weight, Diet and Exercise

Losing Weight, Diet and Exercise

How to Lose Weight

Losing weight is a very common preoccupation. Few of us, even among supermodels, have the genes to remain skinny in today’s abundant environment. For example, in the Middle Ages fat women were considered more desirable because fatness was associated with high status and wealth. Alternatively, today, you do not need to be rich to be overweight, and thus the thin ideal propagated by the media has seemed to have replaced the more plump ideal, which is still perpetuated in some African countries.

Much advice is give to those desiring to lose weight. Of course, the most simple and normal response to someone who wants to lose weight is to diet and exercise. But, will power aside, it is not always easy, and giving up is one of the most common problems with this strategy. Motivational quotes can help to keep spirits high. Thinspiration, alternatively, has to do with pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia Websites and subculture, which calls anorexia ana and bulimia mia and promotes the unhealthy and a dangerous lifestyle, but that’s the other extreme of obesity. Neither obesity more extreme underweight is healthy.

Two friends. Photo by Elena

Many tips and tricks are given to those who desire to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way, for example sucking on hard candy. Drinking sweet coffee using sugar alternatives with less calories than real sugar. Some suggest counting calories, both intake in food and spent while exercising as a way to lose weight and burn fat or adipose tissues. The main trick to lose weight is to burn more calories than one intakes. However, it is important to remember that crash diets usually do not work and especially are not sustainable over the long run, not to mention that they are unhealthy.

Also, it is crucial to keep a balance, and not to let dieting and exercising become an eating disorder. Disordered eating or obsession with body building can also be a consequence of a healthy and positive desire to keep one’s diet, exercise and weight under control. So, balance is key, as it is in so many endeavours.

Losing weight is difficult for many reasons, one of them that by increasing one’s exercise rate one may also enhance one’s appetite, thus leading to a maintenance of body weight. Thus, if you move more, you may be hungrier too. The effect seems evident in one scientific study. In another study the motivation to exercise did result in weight loss. But how permanent is the weight loss?

Silva et al. (2011) tried to answer the question by studying nearly 300 hundred women in a longitudinal study. Apparently, self-motivation concerning moderate and vigorous exercise was the most instrumental in losing weight and maintaining the weight lost afterwards. One of the problems of exercising and keeping a diet to lose weight certainly is motivation.

Some people believe that those who are overweight are somehow lazy. Perhaps they will keep quiet so as not to offend anyone, or maybe they’ll be upfront about their belief that keeping in shape is a question of willpower alone, which it is not. Some medications may make a person gain weight even with diet and exercise combined!

You’re likely won’t lose weight just because you are too worried about losing weight. Image: Elena

Motivation strategies are plenty, but they do not always work. One of the most common such strategies, which usually does not work, is buying clothing that fits too small in the hopes that one will lose weight. If someone does that, they are more likely to end up will ill-fitting clothing, than with a leaner waistline.

Another important factor, is where you start from, if you only have a few pounds to shed, your journey and expectations are much different than someone who is (or considers themselves) severely overweight. But at the end of the day, unless you to resort to, often dangerous or ineffective, diet pills, there is no magic cure and mo miracles in losing weight. Simply exercise regularly and vigorously, and monitor closely what you eat. A good, healthy diet and exercise regimen are sure to give results over the long run, the hard part is to keep with it.

Counting calories has received acclaim but also criticism. Yes, in order to lose weight, you must consume less calories than you burn, but developing an obsession, and especially if it could potentially lead to an eating disorder, is not a solution either. So, everything in moderation.

Swimming regularly can help lose weight. Image: Elena