After giving it many laps and postponing everything
possible, you have made the decision to lose weight. You may do it for
aesthetics, health, or both at the same time. After all, losing weight is not
just a way of looking better: overweight and obesity are decisive factors in
our quality of life and can have an impact on our health in the medium and long
term, from joint problems to increased risk of cardiovascular, metabolic and
cancer diseases.
Of course, losing weight is not always an easy task:
contradictory advice, hundreds of diets and training plans, miraculous tricks,
dietary products ... It is difficult to distinguish what is important and what
is not.
If this is your case and you don't know where to start, keep
reading because here are some basic ideas that can help you.
1. The calories that come in for those that come out
The first thing to keep in mind when losing weight is that
there is only one trick to get it: consume fewer calories than your body
spends.
Calories are a way of measuring energy, in this case, the
energy your body uses to carry out its daily tasks, from breathing to running a
marathon. If you want to lose weight, you must get your body to resort to the
calories it has stored in the form of body fat and for this, you have to eat
fewer calories than your body needs.
That does not mean that all calories are equal and only
their number is important: the quality of the food you eat will decisively
influence your health status. But at the time of losing weight, the number is
what counts.
2. Diet is more important than exercise
Exercising regularly is an essential part of a healthy life,
as it brings many benefits that go beyond losing weight, a variable that also
has influence.
But considering the caloric calculations we talked about in
the previous point, the next basic rule is that food is what most influences
our weight.
By exercising you can increase the number of calories your
body requires per day. On the one hand, because exercise itself requires that
your body spend more energy, and on the other, because muscle tissue has a
higher metabolism than fatty tissue, so increasing it will increase your
metabolism even while at rest.
But all this will be useless if you do not control the
number of calories you eat, and that will always depend on the diet.
3. Start with sugary drinks (and alcohol)
To reach that caloric deficit, there is a very clear place
where you can start: dispense with sugary drinks. Soft drinks, juices and
processed smoothies (including coffee) are a huge source of calories that
hardly give us any interesting nutrient. You may think that you cannot leave
them, but it is not true. With a little effort you can do without them and in a
few days, you will not miss them.
Replace them with infusions (hot or cold), coffee or
sparkling water with a little lemon. Fruit juices can be substituted for
whipped whole fruits so that you keep all their flavor but also their fiber
contributions).
Special mention of alcohol, which not only has calories
without any nutritional consideration (in fact alcohol is harmful to your body
for many reasons ) but also in many cases consumed with other sugary drinks,
such as soda. If you want to lose weight, the further the better.
4. Less supermarket, and more market
Shopping in the supermarket usually leads us to buy more
processed foods, while in the market we usually buy fresh, natural foods.
Although you have heard about the dangers of additives,
everything that is for sale has passed strict quality controls and all its
ingredients are in quantities below the maximum levels allowed.
But keep in mind that insurance does not mean the same as
healthy: processed foods contain ingredients that are often not the healthiest
and that, of course, can be a problem when losing weight, such as added sugars,
salt, bad fats quality, refined flours ...
When you buy the fresh ingredients in the market and prepare
them at home, you make sure that you know what all the foods you eat carry. If
in any case, you find it more convenient to make the purchase in the
supermarket, do not forget to take a look at the nutritional label of the
products you buy.
5. Better strength training than cardio
Once your diet is in order, physical exercise can, so you
sign up for the gym and, once there, what? The main thing is that you choose an
activity that you enjoy so that it costs you less to take the training routine.
If your thing is to dance, sign up for Zumba. If you prefer to give everything
on the bike, do spinning classes. If you prefer to start with something softer
and increase in intensity, the tape can become your best friend.
Of course, it is useful to keep the following in mind when
choosing: if you want to lose weight, strength training is more effective than
cardio, understanding how effective the relationship between effort and result.
Cardio training causes our body to burn calories while we do
it, while strength training burns them during exercise and also after. In
addition, strength training increases our muscle mass, which needs more energy
consumption than fat mass, which means that at rest we burn more calories than
before.
6. This is a long run, not a sprint
Forget about the Operation Swimsuit concept. Losing weight
should not be a race to get as much as possible in the shortest possible time
to look body in summer and then when the cold forces us to wear more clothes on
top, retrace the walk and return to being overweight.
Instead, consider it as a way to take care of your body,
which in the end is your inseparable life partner. Instead of going on a strict
diet, change habits. Use summer as a date to set an intermediate goal, but not
as the ultimate goal of your effort.
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