Tips On How To Become Slim
How to become slim and lose weight safely at the same time? The healthiest way to lose weight is is to gradually implement lifestyle changes and adopt healthy eating habits. To achieve this, you have to eat less calories and burn more! Diet pills and crash diets do not work. The best method to lose weight and maintain a healthy body weight is to eat a nutritionally balanced diet on an ongoing basis that is distributed in the right proportions across fat, protein and carbohydrate food groups.
Motivate Yourself To Lose Weight
The answer to how to become slim is to achieve a lifelong change in diet and exercise patterns. This requires methodical planning. Once you have made a commitment to commence the journey, set yourself goals to measure your progress along the way. While you need a long term goal to focus on, such as a target weight you want to reach, also set goals for the month and for each week. Goals will motivate you!
The Best Weight Loss Plan Includes An Eating Plan
Identify your eating patterns by keeping a food diary. You need to become aware of what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, and what impact your emotions have on your eating patterns. Review your food diary regularly and identify areas of concern, which you can then work on by changing your eating patterns.
Actively plan your meals. In order to support your goal of eating healthy and nutritious food, you must you plan meals in advance, to stop the temptation to grab any food that is available when you’re hungry. Decide your whole menu for the week, and make a list of all the food you’ll need, which you can then use as a shopping list.
Never go shopping without a list when you go shopping. If you stick to your list, you’ll avoid filling up your trolley with junk. You can also ensure that you stock your pantry with healthy snacks rather than junk food. If you need to keep less nutritious snacks for the rest of your family, keep these out of sight, so that you’re not tempted to eat them.
Be prepared! Carry a healthy snack around with you in your bag, like an apple, or some crackers or nuts, so you don’t have to resort to junk food.
Use our BMR calculator to work out what your daily calorie intake should be, and what percentage of this should be from fat, carbohydrates and proteins. Align your food choices with this plan. Record what you eat on a daily basis in your food diary, and total up the calories at the end of the day. If you find that you are not keeping within your recommended allowance, take action, and make the necessary changes.
The best weight loss plan includes exercise. Ensure that you make time for exercise every day. Exercise helps burn fat.
- Walking to lose weight is the easiest and least expensive way of incorporating aerobic exercise into your daily routine. For most people a 30-60 minute daily brisk walk, just enough to break a light sweat is sufficient for gradual weight loss. The amount of calories burned through walking depends on your weight and the rate at which you walk. A person who weighs 60kg (132 pounds) would burn 141 calories by walking at 3 mph (approximately 5 km/h) for 30 minutes. A good target is to try and walk at least 5 times a week, for 45 minutes, for a distance of 3 miles (5 km). To boost your calorie burning, include walking on an incline for parts of the session.
- Anaerobic exercise, or strength training is an excellent way to lose fat and sustain a healthy body weight. Strength training builds up muscle tissue which is the metabolic engine of the body. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even at resting state. Strength training with weights is one of the main ways to engage in muscle building exercise. You can either join a gym and use weight machines or use free weights at home. Ideally, your fitness program should include at least 3 sessions a week on alternate days of 30 minutes of strength training.
6 Tips On How To Become Slim
1. Eat Smaller Servings
Watch your portion sizes when serving food and eating slowly is a key factor on how to become slim. Cutting down on portion sizes means you will consume less calories, while still enjoying a wide range of food. If you consume 500 calories less than the calories you need to sustain your current weight, you should lose 0.5 kg per week. Keep in mind that you should not drastically reduce your caloric intake; our bodies require at least 1200 calories daily. Use the BMR calorie calculator to determine how many calories you need for your age, gender, height and activity level.
2. Exercise To Lose Weight
Exercise is a necessary factor in how to become slim. Permanent weight control requires a combination of exercise and diet. Increase your level of physical activity gradually. Ideally, you want to reach a goal of 45 minutes of uninterrupted activity daily for effective weight loss. You may need to work you way up to this time in stages. Begin with activities that you enjoy such as walking with friends, swimming and make small changes into your daily routine to increase your level of physical activity. Add strength training exercises 2-3 times a week to your schedule. As your lean muscle mass increases, you will begin to burn more fat with daily activities.
3. Eat Lower Calorie Foods
Eating healthy low-calorie foods will help you keep to your daily calorie limit while leaving you feeling full. Cut back on high calorie foods like fats and oils, which are dense in calories. Switch to healthy fats and low fat cooking methods. Start with a low calorie breakfast and have lots of high fibre foods and high protein foods. Fruits and vegetables are natural fat burners and your diet should be mainly made up of plant foods.
4. Eat More Protein
Proteins slow down the movement of food from the stomach to the intestine, leaving you feeling fuller for longer. By including high protein food at each meal, you will keep your hunger at bay and learn how to become slim. The best choices of protein are those that contain less fat, and provide fibre, such as fish, lean white meat, legumes and lentils. Yogurt is a natural fat burner and is a food that is high in protein and can help you lose stomach fat.
5. Eat Low GI
If you want to know how to become slim, know that you need to kick the carbohydrate addiction and choose low carbohydrate foods to eat. The best method to lose weight is to restrict consumption of high glycemic load carbohydrates, such as sugary and starchy foods. These types of foods rapidly increase blood glucose levels and cause insulin spikes resulting in cravings for more carbohydrates. By limiting refined carbohydrates, and including more high fibre carbohydrates in your diet such as beans, lentils and whole grains you will break the cycle of cravings and lose weight.
6. Eat Regularly
Eating regularly and not skipping meals is integral to how to become slim, as this keeps your metabolism going. When you skip meals, your body slows down and burns less calories. When you eventually do get to eat, you will tend to make the wrong food choices and eat more than you normally would. The type of foods and amount of foods should be adjusted during different times of the day. Follow the saying: “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a commoner and dinner like a peasant”. Your body needs more calories in the morning to burn through the day. Smaller meals are recommended at dinner since you are not burning as many calories at night.
Strategies For Regaining Control Of Your Weight
- Limit the availability of foods you have a weakness for. Do not stock these foods, or keep them out of sight.
- Limit the frequency of problem foods, enjoying them only as a treat on special occasions, or at a particular time, such as the weekend.
- Limit the quantity when you eat a food that you have a problem with. Eat a smaller serving, or share it with someone else.
- Delay eating the food you're craving for. As time passes, you may find that you no longer want it.
- Block the behavior. For example, stop yourself from finishing leftovers, or from eating in front of the TV.
- Substitution. Eat a healthy alternative to a food that will make you fat.
- Diversion. Get involved in an interesting activity to get you mind off food
What Is A Healthy Rate Of Weight Loss?
If you’re wondering how to become slim with a healthy rate of weight loss, then the answer is that you should aim to lose about 1-2 pounds (about 0.5 kg) per week, that can be accomplished by burning around 500-1000 calories more every week. Sudden weight loss does not only reduce the amount of muscle mass. It also slows down your metabolism which makes weight loss harder. Remember that the quicker you lose weight, the more likely you are to put it back on. Losing weight fast has many disadvantages. It is healthier to shed those extra pounds gradually by burning fat and still enjoying nutritious meals.
How To Become Slim By Speeding Up Your Metabolism
Your metabolic rate determines the speed at which your body burns up calories, and the 2 most important factors which affect your metabolic rate are your lean muscle mass and the foods you eat.
- Weight training is the best way to build muscle and permanently increase your metabolism, as the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when your body is at rest and you’re not doing anything.
- You need to eat enough food. We all know that to lose weight, you have to consume fewer calories. However, if you don’t eat enough food, your metabolism will slow down, making it harder for you to lose weight. When you starve yourself or skip meals, your resting metabolic rate automatically slows down. Also, a sharp and sudden reduction in the amount of calories you eat (for example in a “crash diet”), will cause your body to react by preserving your fat stores, and start burning muscle instead. You will ultimately end up fatter.