Beginners Guide to Weight Loss, Benefits, and Tips

Excess weight and obesity can be a cause of concern for anyone at any age. Being overweight and being obese is an underlying cause for many health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart diseases, etc. On top of that, obesity causes major damage to your self-esteem and confidence. Think of all those moments and occasions when you could not wear that dress you liked because it wouldn’t fit you. Obesity and excessive weight, in fact, takes away a lot of happy moments, and good health away from your life.

If you have spent many years of your life feeling fat and obese, you might as well know by now how terrible it feels. You might have already come across hundreds of health issues by now and that might have made you think, it is time to do something. If you are thinking of bringing about that indispensable change in your life, now is the time to begin. 

In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through everything that will help you start your weight loss journey and what you can do for weight loss, what you can eat, what you can’t eat, exercises, etc.

But before we begin let us understand the root cause or the reason why we put on weight or become obese.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

What makes you Obese or Gain Weight? 

There are many big and small reasons that make you gain weight. But as per an article by the Harvard Medical School, these are the top reasons that make you overweight:

1. Eating More Calories than Expended – Your daily calorie intake for maintaining a healthy body is 2000 calories for women and 2500 calories for men. Anything more than this, if you are leading a lifestyle without any exercise would mean your body does not need it and stores it as fats. Thereby resulting in weight gain.

2. Eating Sugary and High-Calorie Foods – If you are fond of eating junk food, fried food, sugary food, you are in fact eating foods rich in calories. All these food items are extremely high on calories which means consuming them on a daily basis disturbs the calorie equation of the body. You eat more calories than required and accumulate the rest as fat thereby putting on weight.

3. Sedentary Lifestyles – Less or No Exercise – In the last few decades, our lives have become extremely sedentary. We can spend days staying indoors, working from where we are or watching TV, or playing games. This means we are not doing any physical exercise that can aid in calorie burn which means we are putting on more weight.

4. Stress, Depression, and Anxiety – As per research, you can gain more weight if you are stressed out depressed, or have anxiety disorders. Such conditions can trigger your hunger and increase your appetite thereby increasing your calorie intake and in turn, increases your weight. 

There are many other little reasons for weight gain that makes you gain weight. Now that you have seen the various reasons for weight loss, let us walk you through things that can help you in a long term weight loss.

Things You Can Do for Weight Loss

Achieving your weight loss goals is not an easy thing to do. Weight loss is achieved by adopting a perfect blend of diet and exercise. Along with that, you might also go for weight loss supplements that can increase the rate at which you lose weight or help you with the nutrients you lack naturally. 

In the next sections, we will discuss the various things you can do to lose weight. 

Eating for Weight Loss

Having a healthy eating habit and following a healthy diet is extremely essential for weight loss. Here are the things you can include in your eating patterns so that you can increase your chances of weight loss:

1. Eat Small Meals and Snacks throughout the Day – If you do not eat at regular intervals, you may end up overeating and eat a lot of unhealthy snacks. If however, you eat small portions of food in about 5 parts or times a day ensures that you get the required energy to accomplish all your tasks. Eating smaller portions also ensures that the consumed calories burn well until the next mealtime, thereby ensuring you do not accumulate the extra calories you eat as fats. 

You can choose from some of the best snacks for weight loss along with healthy diet plans for weight loss. 

2. Stay Hydrated – Drink loads of Water – Make sure you drink plenty of fluids and water to stay hydrated. It is recommended to drink a glass of water before every meal or snack. Drinking enough water before every meal ensures that you feel full and as such you eat less. Apart from water, you can also opt for fluids and drinks such as Lemon Water Detox that aid in weight loss along with some low-carb weight loss smoothies. 

3. Try to Eat More Veggies – Try to include more veggies in your diet. Eating more veggies before anything else in the meal ensures that you satisfy your appetite with the goodness of essential nutrients and dietary fiber along with the right amount of carbs. This in turn ensures that you do not overindulge in eating fatty foods in the diet. Include veggies in your salads, soups, or just munch on veggies or simply follow a full vegetarian meal plan for weight loss. 

4. Count Your Calories – Are you in the habit of snacking too much almost all the time? Just before bed? In the middle of the night? Or anytime in the day? It is then time to start counting calories. Identify the times when you tend to eat more. Identify what triggers your snacking habits and accordingly make a note of it. It is recommended you maintain a logger or a journal that can help you note down your snacking habits. Having a look at your own unhealthy snacking habits can actually help you avoid eating unhealthy snacks. 

5. Avoid eating processed foods – All kinds of processed food items such as frozen meals, boxed dinners, etc are full of excess sugar, sodium, or fat. And all of that is harmful to your waistline. Eat cleaner, unprocessed foods and find healthy alternatives to processed foods. Eating unprocessed and healthy food items in their natural forms can help you reduce a lot of weight.

Foods to Avoid to Promote Weight Loss

Apart from the above eating habits that can help you in losing weight, there are certain food items that can help you stay fit simply if you avoid them. These foods are high-calorie foods starting from fried food items, sugary drinks, foods rich in sugar such as candies, cakes, and pastries, ice creams. There is a complete list of unhealthy foods that you can avoid in order to lose some weight and stay fit.

When you cut down on all such unhealthy high-calorie food items and combine them with a healthy lifestyle and a good exercise regime you can achieve your weight loss targets sooner than expected. 

Exercise for Weight Loss

Merely following good eating habits or heating healthy foods cannot help you in achieving your weight loss targets. You must combine it with a regular exercise regime. Here is what you can do when including exercises in your weight loss plan:

1. Ensure you workout regularly – If you wish to achieve the maximum results out of your exercise regime, you will need to ensure you include a good blend of both cardio and strength training. The cardio workouts help in burning fats and excessive calories whereas strength training helps you in building lean muscles and tissues. Strength training helps in after-workout calorie burn when at rest. 

Maintain a proper routine of your workout regime and ensure that you stick to your routine. Make sure you are regularly working out. If you are too lazy to hit the gym, you can even do a lot of fat-burning exercises at home. And if you can go to the gym everyday stick to a proper cardio and strength training exercise plan to ensure maximum weight loss. 

2. Opt for HIIT – If you want your exercise plan to be more effective, ensure you are opting for High-Intensity Interval Training which involves small bursts of full-throttle exercise followed by short periods of rest. HIIT workouts burn more calories than any conventional workout plan can and when you do these exercises regularly your body burns calories even when at rest. A such these intense HIIT workouts help you burn more calories quickly thereby helping you to reduce weight faster

3. Be Patient and Do Not Give Up – Transformations take a lot of time. As per studies, most beginners tend to stop hitting the gym or stop a plan within the very first month or in some cases in the first few days. You may not be able to see any substantial differences initially. You may even not feel like getting to the gym all the time every day. It does happen and it is fine. But make sure you do not lose focus. Make sure you go out for that walk or run or hit the gym every day. If not every day, make sure you follow a certain exercise pattern like 3 days of workout or 2 days of rest or vice versa – whatever suits you. 

4. Give yourself good recovery time – This is an important part that people often neglect and ignore. Ensure that you give your body enough recovery time after every workout day. Make sure you get ample sleep when you are working out. Sleep relaxes your mind and rejuvenates your body by activating the repair mechanism of muscle tissues making you ready for your next intense workouts. 

If you want to get some results quickly you can consider having weight loss supplements along with a good diet plan and a good exercise regime. These weight loss supplements can help you augment the efficacy of your weight loss plan by acting as catalysts in increasing your body fat metabolism, reducing inflammation, so on and so forth. 

Top 3 Weight Loss Supplements

Benefits of Weight Loss

Losing weight or staying fit is extremely important for many obvious reasons which can be stated as under:

There are many other benefits of losing weight but to sum it up losing weight and staying fit is the key to living a good, healthy, and disease-free life. 

Final Thoughts

To conclude and to summarize – Losing weight is not an easy thing to do. Having said that as a beginner if you start off with the right diet, the right kind of exercises, and some supplements as well you can achieve long term weight loss. The key to weight loss is determination and resolve to stick to the weight loss plan no matter what. The results may take time to show up. But when they do show up – It will all be worth all the pain. 

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