Thursday 12 April 2012

General slimming guidelines…Do You Feel Fat??



1. Drink a lot of water especially before eating - it helps you feel full faster and makes you eat less by simmering down your hunger. In fact, make water your best friend. Always opt for water whenever you need to drink. Try to make one-third of your stomach content food, one-third; water and leave the other one-third empty, this helps prevent your stomach from bulging.
2. Skip dinner if you can. If you can’t, eat as early as possible, preferably before 8pm.
3. Allow at least 2 hours after a meal before sleeping.
4. Eat smaller portions every few hours instead of large portions once or twice a day. Its better to eat small portions 6 times a day than large portions for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
5. Get as much exercise as you can, especially cardio. 2 hours of rigorous workout, two or three times a week is enough. I personally recommend dancing and outdoor games. You get to have fun while doing them so they don’t feel like exercise. Register in a gym if you can afford it and stay dedicated.  When you start noticing changes in your weight, you need to do stretches to firm up the different areas of your body.
6. Look critically at yourself in the mirror, preferably without your clothes and also weigh yourself at least 2 times a week, daily if possible. It helps you keep focused on your weight loss goal as well as track of your progress.
7. A lot of people will have different things to say to you about why you shouldnt lose weight. you shouldnt listen to them if you really want to lose weight. it’s your body and your decision. They’ll tell you that you look better fat, that you’ll look sick if you are slim, that one bottle of soft drink or plate of food wont make you fat… you have to stay Focused
8. Slimming/weight loss is a slow and steady process. Emphasis on SLOW but don’t give up. At the start of your diet, your body will try to fight back the loss of energy through exercise and decrease in food coming in to replenish it, by making you hungry. You have to be strong. you’ll start to see results as soon as your body adjusts.
9. Surround yourself with fruits and vegetables instead of snacks for the times when you’ll just feel like putting something in your mouth.
10. Keep track of your daily food intake. If you realise you’ve had too much in one day, make up for it by cutting down the next day. If you have to go to a party where you plan to eat and drink all sorts of fattening food, prepare for it by eating less or going on a fruit diet 2 or 3 days before the event.
11. Dont forget that what makes you fat is the excess food you eat that your body doesn’t need. The body stores it unless you burn it off through exercise and eating less so that your body doesn’t keep storing the excess.
12. As you start shedding weight, after a while, you may notice that your weight may become stable at which point, you are neither losing nor gaining weight, this means that your body has balanced between your food intake and exercise. If at that time, you still havent achieved your desired weight goal, then you’ll need tofurther cut down on your calorie intake and further increase your exercise.                            
13. Endeavour to set a realistic weight loss goal in a realistic time frame. You may want to visit a Doctor and get checked out, to help you set a weight loss goal that wont harm your overall health. Dont expect to shed all your weight in one or two months. Like I said before, it’s a slow process.

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