Chadrack
Ever heard people ask questions like, can you lose weight and be healthy? Or, what is the healthiest way to go about losing weight?
You have, right?
Well, such questions arise mainly because many people consider healthy weight loss as something that is really not feasible. While this might just be a misconception the truth however is, some of the extreme weight loss methods are counterproductive to our bodies.
For example, there are lots of diet plans for losing weight quickly that have become very popular in the recent past. Unfortunately, though these diet plans have been proven to produce some form of result, those results are usually in the short-term. This is because most people are not able to maintain the strict diets.
Stats indicate that most people can only sustain these diets for a matter of weeks and then they throw in the towel. When this happens, there are usually changes in your metabolic rate which results in your body burning fewer calories than before. And, this is unhealthy and unsustainable.
The above shows that if you want to stay healthy while losing weight you will need to stay consistent with your weight loss regimen. But, how do you stay consistent while losing weight? The answer is in adopting a healthy lifestyle that suits your individual needs.
Here are 4 basic tips to help have a healthy weight loss.
Basic Healthy Weight Loss Tips
1. Don’t Mistake Starvation for Weight Loss
If you are desperate to lose weight fast and decide to take to drastic measures for losing weight, you could expose yourself to non-nutritive states which can result in malnutrition and complications like ulcers and nausea which may arise from skipping meals.
Also if you have a desire to stay healthy while losing weight but forget that your primary goal is to shed the unwanted fat but instead you focus on exercising vigorously, you may find yourself not losing those pounds, just because of the added muscle mass.
Both of these scenario are not healthy because they can lead to you losing interest in maintaining the weight loss practice and resort back to unhealthy lifestyle with a less hassle maintenance.
2. Don’t Overwork Your Body to Lose Weight
There’s one misconception about staying healthy while losing weight. This is believing that it can be done faster with more exercise per day. Though this may be true in some way, our body can only take as much work before we tire out. Intensifying it abruptly, hoping that the added jolt in workload would hasten the shedding process, may trigger a rebound effect on the brain. This is because the brain has a survival mechanism that triggers a slowdown of metabolism if the body is subjected to a high caloric consumption.
Apart from the above, complications like muscle injuries and joint sprains may occur as these are subjected to a load without having them adapt to it gradually.
3. Beware of Muscle Atrophy
Another thing you must be careful about is the fact that restricting yourself to some certain diet in order to lose weight could result in muscle atrophy. This happens because the body, in trying to preserve as much energy reserves as possible, end up burning up the fatty deposits instead. That is, muscle cells are rather used up instead.
This phenomenon is called muscle atrophy and it happens because protein is easier to synthesize into smaller components for energy sourcing than fat. Also, fat has larger energy content per unit than a protein, therefore allowing the body to efficiently store energy at a greater ratio.
With muscle atrophy, a person is subjected to double time in gaining back the lost weight in muscles and at the same time keeping the fat deposit levels low.
4. Be Purposeful With Exercise
If you want to stay healthy while losing weight you should focus on less caloric intake and just the amount of exercise calculated and intended to the desired body weight requirement. When this regimen is carefully followed, there may not really be any significant results in the first two weeks. This is because the body, in this first few weeks, still have to adapt and change its metabolic paradigm with the new stressor.
However, if this is continued, significant weight drops would occur from the start of the third week of consistent losing weight. After which, the rate at which the mass sheds off gradually slows down until the desired weight is achieved.
So, if you want to shed that weight while staying healthy you should couple your weight loss diet with the right amount of exercise.
Conclusion
Healthy weight loss definitely does not come easy because staying healthy while losing weight requires a lot of effort and time. There are neither shortcuts nor easy way outs. To achieve a successful healthy life while losing weight, it is important that you balance the two. Employing extreme weight loss methods will not also achieve the desired objective.
