The 9 most effective weight loss methods....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 1-10-2013

(This is my upgraded version of an article making the first 5 points from Medical News Today for Thurs, 1-3-2013. 

The first 5 are my upgrades of their 5 points and 6, 7, 8, & 9 which are of equal or greater importance, are my points entirely.)

1. Eat breakfast within one hour of waking up in the morning. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it boosts the body's metabolism by over 20%, which can really help with weight loss.

Always eat breakfast; and if it will be more than an hour after getting up, have a prebreakfast snack too.

Always include a health OK protein food and something with fiber too so your breakfast stops you from being hungry until lunch.

If you allow yourself any whole grains, eat them at breakfast.  And any fruit you eat or small drinks of real juice eat them at breakfast after your protein and other fiber.  Eating the other foods first lowers the glycemic impact of those foods.  AND, your body digests whole grains and fruit better and with less blood sugar and insulin surge at breakfast than at any other time of day.

Last but far from least studies show that people who always eat breakfast are LESS fat and eat MORE calories than people who don’t!

In addition they have far fewer food cravings and have far more control over how much they eat at lunch and dinner later that day.

This can be empowering if those have been problems for you.

If you’ve not been eating breakfast, start with a small serving of a health OK protein food.  Once you get used to that, eat a bit more of it and add the fiber food and any whole fruit you like.  This works because once you begin, you eat less at dinner eventually and then become hungry at breakfast.  It also helps to have something you really like such as an omelet with diced onions and parmesan cheese. Or it can help to have something super fast like 3 tablespoons of nonfat Greek yogurt and a piece of string cheese and a banana.

2.  Consistently measure how much you weigh.

Weigh yourself each week and track how much weight you've either put on or lost because this will allow you to see what actions work for you while the possible reasons are fresh in your mind.  If you gain, ask yourself what you did or stopped doing.  And, if you lost, ask yourself what might have caused it. Then try something to fix that for the next couple of weeks.

Do your weekly weigh in at the exact same time on the same weekday each week.  (The time I find most consistent is right after breakfast on Saturday mornings because I’m far less rushed.)  One day a month I weigh before and after my breakfast and measure my waist, chest, & hips too.  Then I average the before and after to get closest to my real average weight.  But the after breakfast weight every week does show more accurately what lowers or increases my weight since what I did different that week is fresher then.  The monthly measurements show my progress over time.  And, it also helps to keep a logbook or log file that you save when you do this!

3.  Exercise is essential!

 Moderate physical activity for at least one hour every day does help.  But unless you are retired or spend your lunch hour walking or have an at your desk exerciser, it's quite hard to fit in for most people.

BUT, doing 10 to 30 minutes of some interval cardio AND some strength training almost every morning at home IS doable.  That's the minimum requirement for good health. 

If you can add moderate exercise and one or two 30 to 60 minute sessions of strength training at a gym too, that can help.

The new breakthrough here is that just a set of 5 reps in strength training once or twice a week with 14 seconds up and 14 seconds down, though VERY challenging to do can add muscle mass without taking very much work out time each week.  Plus since the weights are lower, your chances of injury are less. That can take as little as 20 minutes once or twice a week!  Plus using dumbbells or kettle bells or your bodyweight for leg exercises you can do it at home.

Similarly, doing 3 very fast cardio but short sets with a break long enough in between to catch your breath and have your heart slow back down two or three times a week can take as little as 10 minutes a day to do.

If you have time for more exercise, it does help.  People in the registry of those who have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for 5 years or more average over 2800 calories a week of exercise.

4.  Limit the amount of time you spend watching TV. Limit watching TV to a maximum of 14 hours a week. And spend at least half that time on an exercise bike or treadmill while you watch.

(More than half of the NWCR members, people who have lost more than 30 pounds and kept it off over 5 years, watched TV for fewer than 10 hours a week.)

You use fewer calories watching TV than you do when sleeping!  And the foods and drinks in the ads are almost all bad for you and fattening.  So when you watch mute those!

Instead, find activities that are more physically active such as walking or playing ping pong or house work or gardening -- or going to the gym or a group exercise class or martial arts class.  Even doing housework is better for you than watching TV!

Never have a TV in a bedroom!  For adults, it cuts down sleep and sex!  Both BAD ideas for losing fat you keep off!

And, "children who have a TV in their bedroom are much more likely to become obese, a recent study found."  In my experience, ALL of them are fat!

5.  Make sure you are consistent with your diet plan and lifestyle upgrades.  

Keep doing what works and do it every week!  Keep up the vigorous exercise every week.

Massive food splurges will seriously undermine your progress. Avoid them at least 362 days a year if you can. If you avoid even quite modest splurges except for 2 or 3 a month, you can achieve substantial weight loss and keep it off!

Be very careful not to overdo on weekends.  People who do often gain back what they lost during the week.

6.  Eat more nonstarchy vegetables -- either steamed or raw or some of each.  Eat one or two cruciferous vegetables each day and one or two vegetables high in carotenes, which except for dark green vegetables are yellow or orange.  This is as important to fat loss and good health as regular exercise. 

You even LOOK healthier if you do this studies found!  Even better the people who see you know you look better and healthier but they don’t know why.  (The carotenes give you a kind of ruddy glow.)

Best of all these vegetables hardly have more calories than what it takes to digest them and when you eat them, you automatically are full enough to eat less of things far more fattening!

That surprised me when it first happened to me and eating less with no effort at all was nice!

7.  Completely, repeat, completely stop stuff that makes you fat or harms you!

Drink zero soft drinks BOTH regular and diet.  Always read labels and never willingly buy or eat or drink things with high fructose corn syrup, ANY hydrogenated oils, or MSG.  Never eat foods with corn or soy or safflower or canola oil!  The omega 6 oils in them are both harmful and fattening! (Use extra virgin olive oil instead.)

And, virtually stop ALL foods made of refined grains and cut back to zero to low moderate even on 100% whole grains. And cut WAY back on real sugar also.

You’ll actually be LESS hungry if you do this and you will be dramatically healthier!

The DASH II diet with more vegetables and fewer grains or the Mediterranean diet with more vegetables and fewer grains or a combination of the two you like, is what to eat instead.

The Paleo diet or other low carb diets also work.  BUT be SURE if you use those, to eat LOTS of nonstarchy vegetables and health OK fats like avocados or nuts and use extra virgin olive oil. Also go VERY easy on fats or protein from grain fed animals if you use these diets.

8.  Eat more health OK protein foods and some health OK fattier foods such as eggs from pasture fed hens, very lean chicken or turkey, 100 % grass fed beef, whey supplements, 100 % grass fed lamb, and wild caught fish + some beans and lentils --AND avocados and tree nuts if you aren't allergic in addition to the extra virgin olive oil. 

People who do this have better health and lose more fat and are less hungry AND tend NOT to trigger the famine response that slams your fat loss to a stop!

People who eat nuts and other health OK fats are LESS fat, far healthier, and have better success with fat loss than people on nonfat diets!

9.  People who join support groups double their chances of success studies found!

Weight Watchers isn’t perfect since they suggest over aggressive goals at first and their online support system is too time inefficient in my view.  But their meetings have a great track record and their point system in print is a lot more time efficient to use. (I’m working on a better online support group myself now.)

Why is support so critical? 

a) The most important thing is to make the things that remove fat and keep it off habitual and routine and aim at that instead of boosting willpower.  Your upgraded lifestyle then becomes close to effortless to do!

Weight Watcher’s CEO is a very good and bright man. (Read his recent book for more about him.)

Here’s a key quote from him, David Kirchoff, Weight Watchers CEO, from a Huffington Post article:

"There is too much emphasis placed on this notion of will-power and discipline and not enough on establishing healthy habits.

The difference between healthy habits and discipline is that a habit is something you don't have to think about doing.

You do something enough, you're disciplined about it, and you put in the time. Eventually you don't have to think about it. It's routine."  

Going to their meetings until that happens for you really helps.

b) The second thing ongoing is to have a place to go when your fat loss stops or goes backwards.

At their meetings or at other support groups, you can get methods to restart your fat loss and help finding out what you may have done wrong and ideas of how to do better that have actually worked for other people!

This keeps you doing the things you’ve gotten used to that will keep your fat off and upgrades your methods and keeps you going!

He and I both lost and then regained and then lost and then regained; and that’s typical.

So this second effect is hugely important because at the most critical times for you, it helps you keep going and succeed eventually.

He did according to his recent book.  And I’m getting close to what I define as full success too. 

The best news is that each time you start at a better point than the time before and your lower and better times keep getting better until you get where you want to go!