Understanding Weight Management
In order to understand weight management, you must first understand what makes you fat, fit, and skinny-fat.
The answer to all sides of the equation are the same: food + exercise.
Weight management results come from how you apply the formula.
- Processed foods, high fat foods, empty calories + lack of exercise = Fat body
- Whole foods, healthy fats, fibre + regular exercise = Fit body
- Processed foods, diet drinks & energy bars, caffeine, diet pills + minimal exercise = Skinny-fat body
Which equation are you using?
The Fat Body
The fat body is developed gradually over a long period of time and because the weight comes on slowly, you don’t realize how big you’re getting – until you see a fat body staring back at you from the other side of the mirror.
How does this happen?
Below is a list of habits that make your body fat. Make note of the ones you’ve already claimed as your own.
- Late night eating: a recipe for disaster as your body cannot burn off the excess calories before bedtime.
- Take-out food: eating take-out 4 to 5 times a week (lunches and dinners) will pack on the pounds over time. High sodium, saturated fats, and empty calories are what you’re paying for. Is it really worth the extra 20 minutes you save by not prepping your own healthy meals? Your body doesn’t think so!
- Irregular meal times: if your body doesn’t have a regular eating schedule, it will get confused, in turn screwing up your metabolism.
- Using food to make you feel better: eating for emotional reasons may lead to overeating and making poor choices in the process. If you’re feeling down, miserable or just plain sluggish, food is not the answer. The answer is to get up and move your body. This will increase blood flow and bring oxygen and nutrients to your system, along with all the feel-good endorphins.
- Lack of exercise: a lack of exercise results in a soft, squishy body and a sluggish cardiovascular system. The body needs to move in order to keep the muscles toned and the cardiovascular system fit.
Having poor eating and exercise habits and a fat body can lead to medical issues including, but not limited to, increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, adult on-set diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and deep vein thrombosis.
What can you do about it?
Develop a weight management strategy.
Draw a line down the middle of a page. Make a list on one side of the page for all the unhealthy habits in your life. On the other side of the page make a list of the things you can do to change these bad habits. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
- Decrease portion size and eat five to six regular meals per day.
- Ditch the fast food and start cooking/preparing your meals at home.
- Choose whole foods as often as possible and keep the processed food to a minimum.
- Eat slowly – chew food thoroughly.
- Take part in physical activity for a minimum of 30 minutes per day.
Click here for tips on how to
cut the fat
and apply
portion control.
The Fit Body
The fit body is developed through proper food choices, taking meals at regular intervals and taking part in some form of physical activity. Everyone is born with their best physical starting point. It’s what you do to your body and with your body over the years that makes it unfit.
Follow a fit person through the grocery store. You will see that they choose whole foods, mainly vegetables, followed with some fruit, whole grains, beans, fish, and chicken. You won’t see a lot of prepackaged, processed foods in their carts.
That's what I call a healthy weight management program.
If you want a fit body, eat like a fit person and develop a regular exercise routine.
Click here for more information on a
Fit Food Pyramid.
The Skinny-Fat Body
The skinny-fat body is an unhealthy form of weight management. Taking super small portions, filling up on energy drinks and meal replacement bars & shakes, and countless supplements/pills, this body is a walking time bomb. Due to all the supplements, diet pills, and processed diet food, this body does not get the nutrients it requires to stay healthy and without the clothes and hairstyle to define gender, this body takes on an androgynous look.
The dangers associated with a skinny-fat body include:
- Low BMI = decreased breast size (women, of course)
- Reproductive problems
- Heart problems
- Osteoporosis
- Stress fractures
- Hair shedding and eventual balding
- Sallow skin
- Brittle nails
What can you do to correct this?
Start by getting off the diet pills, and then use the following guidelines:
- Start eating more vegetables and whole grains to get your required intake of nutrients. The supplements are just that – supplements – they’re not designed to take the place of balanced meals with real food choices.
- Increase your portion size of real food at each meal. If it doesn’t look like a fruit, a vegetable, a grain, or a piece of meat/fish/poultry, it’s not real food.
- Include healthy fats such as olive oil with your meals. This will benefit your skin and hair.
- Ditch the energy drinks and caffeine and replace them with water.
- Learn to enjoy real food again. Your body will love you for it.
- Develop a regular exercise routine to build muscle and to keep your cardiovascular system in working order.
Do you want to get the garbage out? Try a
healthy cleanse.
Great Change Begins With Small Choices - get on the right path to weight management.
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