Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference in Weight Control

If there’s one thing that you need to understand it’s the fact that changing your diet to a better more balanced one that will help you to lose weight and eventually live longer doesn’t have to be a struggle.

It takes most people years to get to the stage of being obese, and even to the stage where they are carrying just a little too much body weight so you can’t expect to reverse any long term habits overnight.

Even making a few small changes to your diet can have a dramatic effect on your weight when viewed over a longer period of time.

Just the reduction of a hundred or so calories a day will amount to a very large reduction in calories over the term of one year and that will also amount to a sizeable decrease in body fat.

This can be done by simply removing a small portion of the amount of food you consume with each meal.

If you find that this is causing more than normal hunger then have a glass of water a half hour or so before each meal and you will be less inclined to feel like you require more food.

You can replace a similar quantity of low value food with good food and this will also reduce hunger and will help to lose weight.

By doing it in this manner you will find that you will begin to enjoy the ‘new’ foods in your diet just as you learnt to enjoy the poor foods that you have been eating up to this stage of your life.

Many people find it hard to accept that they will be able to get the same enjoyment out of the food that they know they should be eating but that is only because they have been accustomed to the tastes of the food they eat at the current time.

A good example of this is the reaction people have to drinking a cup of tea with sugar in it after they have stopped having sugar for a while. Most people find it difficult to drink as it seems too sweet after having been without it for some time.

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We are Different from Animals When it Comes to Weight

While we can’t compare ourselves with animals we can begin to understand eating habits and the reason why humans become over weight.

Consider how many animals you will see that are over weight. In the wild you wouldn’t find any and it is not because of a lack of food - although that certainly will cause a wild animal to be under weight.

No; even where there is abundance of food animals in the wild don’t get obese like humans do and it is not because of their metabolism or digestive systems.
It is because they are eating the correct foods that nature designed their systems to eat to ensure that they are getting the correct nutrition to maintain good health and obesity certainly isn’t a good healthy state to be in.

I doubt you will find any animals that are obese other than those that we keep as pets and that is because humans not only eat the wrong foods themselves but they also feed their pets the wrong foods.

We feed our pet’s processed pet food that has all sorts of colors, additives and other rubbish that they were never designed to have.
And the result of feeding them a poor diet is the high and ever increasing incidence of diabetes in domestic animals.

We are not only making ourselves sick with poor food choices but we are also reducing the chances our pets have of living long and healthy lives.

Just like the food we buy for ourselves, the food we buy for our pets is often determined by the quality of the marketing campaigns that promote those foods.

So the only living beings that seem to make the wrong choices in food consumption are humans and we are supposed to be the most intelligent!

And the only other living beings that are affected by poor food consumption are pets because they have to rely on the poor decisions that are made by humans.

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Don’t Use Age as an Excuse for Getting Fat

There’s no doubt about the fact that the body changes as we age and fat is stored in places that we didn’t have to worry about when we were younger.

The metabolism slows and the digestive system doesn’t work as well as it once did.

Hormonal changes in the body can also affect the shape that you are in but there is one thing that always remains the same at all ages - If you eat too much food and drink too much alcohol you will gain weight.

Many people use their age as an excuse for being over weight but this is not acceptable. Consider how many elderly people there are who are still slim, fit and healthy and you will see that age is not an excuse.

Lifestyles create the body we have to live with and the effects of poor lifestyle choices are multiplied as we age because the abuse that we have been giving our body through poor food choices throughout our life accumulates with fat and other health related problems due to poor nutrition.

You can and should expect to keep your fat percentage at an optimum level throughout your life. The health benefits from doing so will pay dividends with a better quality of life and reduced dependence on medication and other health related expenditure as you age.

At any stage in your life, no matter how old you are you can benefit from improved nutrition and exercise.

Anything that will reduce the excess levels in your body fat will assist in helping you to live longer and to enjoy that time more.

Starting on an exercise program and taking care to improve your nutrition is the best way to turn back the body clock and it is never too late to start winding back the years. Obviously the sooner you start the better but starting is the essential ingredient that you need right now.

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Sleep and Weight Loss

Many people don’t realize that a lack of sleep can have a detrimental effect on your weight.

When you are constantly over tired your energy levels are naturally lacking and the first thing that most people do to boost their energy levels is to eat more food.

Naturally eating more food is going to cause you to increase weight and the digestion of the food will burn up even more energy so you get into a vicious circle of tiredness eating and more tiredness.

The constant tiredness also affects the way that your body functions where it becomes less efficient and in doing so you will tend to store more fat and gain weight.

Simply getting a bit more sleep at regular times at night can boost your energy levels and in doing so reduce your dependence upon food for energy and help you to lose weight without having to go on any diets.

If there are no alternatives to your lack of sleep due to circumstances in your life then you need to concentrate on increasing your intake of water as this will help you to get more energy and make you feel less hungry due to your tiredness.

Shift workers in particular have a difficult time in maintaining their weight because not only are they getting a lack of sleep but they will also be sleeping at various different times of the day and night and that affects your eating habits and your digestion.

Long-term lack of sleep will result in the body storing additional fat so it is essential to do all you can where possible to get a regular night’s sleep at reasonable hours to maintain good health and a reasonable body fat percentage.

Obviously taking this to the other extreme where you are sleeping all hours of the day and not getting any exercise will also cause you to retain more body fat and increase weight.

Once again lifestyle has a huge bearing on whether you are at your optimum body weight or not.

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Set Goals for Weight Loss Success

Most successful people find that setting goals is one of the most important parts of achieving those goals and this applies to almost everything in life including your ability to be successful with weight loss.

What you do have to realize however is these goals need to be realistic and you need to believe that you can achieve them or you will be starting off on the wrong foot and failure will be imminent.

To make your goal achievable you need to look at it over an extended period of time rather than believing that you can lose 15 pounds in a couple of weeks.

While this might be possible it is certainly a lot harder to achieve than to expect to lose that weight over the course of several months.

Keeping a diary helps a lot of people to achieve their goals as it helps to enforce the actions that are required to meet those goals on a daily basis.

In your diary you can record your body weight, the foods you’ve been eating, any supplements you have been taking and the results that you have been getting from these actions.

This helps you to readjust your goals and make changes to your fitness and nutrition as things change in the course of your weight loss program.

Within your major goal you should also have short-term goals and once again these need to be realistic to keep you motivated.

These short-term goals will change from time to time as during the course of your weight loss program you will probably find that progress accelerates after certain stages of your plan.

Sometimes you will also plateau for a while where your weight loss will tend to slow down and by having a diary you will be able to look at those areas that you might be able to change to get over that plateau and continue to progress.

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