Overcoming The Plateau: 4 Tips To Resume Your Weight Loss

Weight loss rarely, if ever, occurs without putting in the effort to make it happen. As such, lifestyle changes such as cutting out sweets and unnecessary calories, eating more greens, and regular exercise are highly recommended for those who want to lose the extra pounds. However, after your body adjusts to these new changes, it’s not unusual for your scale to show minimal to no changes in your weight for weeks or more.

Weight loss plateau is a common occurrence that happens to nearly everyone who wants to lose weight. Experiencing it can be somewhat demotivating, potentially affecting one’s determination to persevere with their programs. Thankfully, breaking out of this plateau is not impossible nor challenging, and here are four practical ways to resume your progress once more.

Switch up your fitness routine

Suppose you’ve been following the same fitness routine for weeks now. In that case, it’s only natural that your body will become accustomed to the usual physical activities and become more efficient at performing them. If your body reaches this point, it doesn’t have to work as hard as before, which means fewer calories are burned.

Therefore, the solution is simple: take on more challenging workouts that prompt your body to do more work. A few ways to achieve this are by increasing your fitness routine’s intensity, decreasing your rest time, or completely overhauling certain aspects of it, such as substituting reps to continuing until failure (wherein your muscles are no longer capable of completing another repetition).

Add in strength training to your workouts

It’s proven that your body’s muscle tissues burn more calories than fat even while at rest. As such, adding strength training to your workouts is another excellent way to break through your weight loss plateau. Some of the most popular strength training exercises include push-ups, weightlifting, or using resistance bands.

Start small, and don’t force yourself to take on more intensive routines to avoid injury. Follow guidelines on how to build up muscle for a certain exercise and then gradually increase the intensity while finding the perfect balance between challenging and doable.

Include more protein in your diet

Adding more protein to your diet can jumpstart your weight loss progress in several ways, namely:

a) Higher calorie consumption

Compared to carbohydrates or fats, our bodies require more calories to digest proteins fully.

b) Surge in satiety hormones

A diet with a higher protein count can provide you with greater satiety, curbing your appetite for an extended amount of time and diminishing the need to eat.

c) Protects against muscle loss

More muscle tissue means more calories burned and a higher metabolic rate.

When following this advice, keep in mind to only increase your intake for your lifestyle if necessary. As an example, for the average adult that performs minimal physical activities, it’s recommended to eat at least .8 grams of protein per kilogram of their body weight daily.

Otherwise, for the more active ones, it’s necessary to intake more to promote muscle growth.

Track your caloric intake

Another possible reason why your weight loss progress may have stalled is due to your eating habits. It’s easy to underestimate how much one is eating when one is stressed or tired in day-to-day life, which can prompt extra calories to find their way into your diet sneakily.

Therefore, tracking your caloric intake is essential to determine if you’re still within your daily limits. Keep a journal with you throughout the day, record everything you eat or drink along, and do your best to determine their calorie portions as well accurately.

Along with those data, it’s also best to jot down the times of day when you consume them and how you feel when you eat. Once you have enough written down, identify any unhealthy eating habits and develop healthier alternatives that will sate any cravings you may have.

Conclusion

Slimming down starts with yourself and your determination to achieve your ideal weight. However, sometimes, plateaus are inevitable and require extra effort, help, or both to breakthrough. Apart from the tips mentioned above, why not include a supplementary TCM slimming program that can help you get out of your weight loss rut and accelerate your progress?

If you’re looking to try out TCM slimming in Singapore, look no further than Slim Couture. We are regarded as the best slimming centre on the island thanks to our effective and safe weight loss programs that rely on traditional Chinese medicine. The medicine helps you lose those extra pounds faster, all without any side effects that other methods typically have.

When To Eat: How Important Is Meal Timing For Losing Weight

There’s no denying that a healthy diet and more physical movements are part of maintaining weight control. Hence, you are probably trying your best to avoid certain foods every mealtime and do your best to sweat off by exercising.

However, if you still struggle with a few extra pounds, there may be another variable you might want to tweak a little: the timing of your meals! 

As the saying goes, timing is everything! When it comes to eating, it’s also important to follow the right timing, especially if you’re trying to lose weight. Although it sounds too good to be true, research shows that changing when you eat may help you shed off those extra pounds and improve your overall health at the same time!  Read on to find out the importance of meal timing for losing weight!

How important is meal timing?

When talking about meal timing, it’s essential to remember that your mealtime should align with your circadian rhythm – your body’s natural internal rhythm. Your body is designed to produce a different combination of hormones in the morning than at night: the morning combination aims to help you feel awake and alert, while the nighttime hormones help you sleep.

Concerning weight loss, studies have shown that your body’s fat cells have a circadian rhythm as well. Earlier in the day, its activities aim to help your body use fat and energy, while your body is likely to accumulate fat at night. Research also shows that people who work at night typically weigh more than people who work during the day.

When is the right time to eat?

The desire to eat bangs at your stomach’s doors every 3-5 hours by using your body’s internal rhythm. This is why several people are used to having 3-4 meals a day! To help you out, check out when is the right timing to eat.

Breakfast

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day! It’s good to ingest a high-protein breakfast between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. when you aim for weight loss. Eating between these hours helps reduce the risk of fat accumulation in the body, making you feel less hungry throughout the day.

Mid-morning snack

A mid-morning snack is unnecessary, but if you get hungry quickly, it’s fine as long as you follow the right timing. Your body takes a minimum of 4 hours to digest and absorb the food you eat, so it is advised to consume your mid-morning snacks at least 2 to 4 hours after eating your breakfast.

Lunch

Having a satisfying lunch is also critical. It is advised that this meal of the day is when you should eat the most. Never skip lunch if you’re trying to lose weight because skipping lunch will leave you hungry and might lead to overeating during dinner. If possible, you should eat your lunch before 3 p.m.

Afternoon Snack

Like your mid-morning snack, you should take your afternoon snack 2 to 4 hours after your lunch. Eating snacks in between meals prevents you from overeating. To speed up your weight loss process, try to have snacks such as fruits, smoothies, or nuts and increase your vegetable intake too!

Dinner 

When it comes to dinner, it’s advisable to have a light dinner at night, and it should be taken before 7 PM. Dinner should be consumed at least three hours before your bedtime.  Should you be hungry and crave a midnight snack, keep in mind that it is advisable not to have anything 2 hours before sleeping to lose weight.

Conclusion

Your weight loss journey can be challenging, and there may be times that you’ll only see little progress. Along with a healthy diet and a proper workout, meal timing is also an important factor in losing weight, so make sure to keep in mind the recommended meal times.

Aside from the three primary keys – diet, exercise, and meal timing, you may also try TCM slimming treatment to achieve your desired body in no time. Here at Slim Couture, we have experts that use traditional Chinese medicine techniques to help you shed some extra pounds and achieve your dream physique! Feel free to contact us and start your weight loss journey at the best slimming centre in town.

Last Stop: 5 Tips & Tricks To Lose Those Last Few Pounds

You’ve pushed through exhausting workout sessions, tracked your calories seriously, and given up your favourite cheat meal to eat a healthy diet – yet those last few pounds can’t seem to go away! When you’ve come a long way and finally hit those last few pounds wall, making some simple changes to your workout routine or your diet meal plan can be extremely helpful.

If you are one of those people with a long-term weight loss goal, you probably know how amazing it feels to see your hard work reflected on the weighing scale – and how frustrating it is to see that a certain number get stuck just a few pounds away from your target weight! Get rid of your frustrations by checking out these 5 tips and tricks you can try to finally shed those last few pounds.

Lift weights

The most effective way to increase your metabolism is strength or resistance training because muscle burns more calories than fat! Unlike fats, muscle is a metabolically active tissue, which means muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does pound-per-pound.

Just remember that adding muscle won’t transform you into a calorie-burning machine; it is just a strategy to lose those last few pounds.

Don’t skip your post-workout meal

There’s no denying that you might not feel hungry immediately following your workout session. In fact, intense workout sessions may crush your appetite for up to 90 minutes after the workout is complete.

However, eating after your workout session is extremely important, and it can be the reason why you just can’t lose those extra pounds! Eating a protein-packed snack containing enough carbs will grant you the nutrients your body needs to repair your muscles.

Make a food journal

If you can’t think of other ways to lose those last few pounds, try making a food journal and write down your food intake for a few days, you might be surprised! Sometimes, people don’t realise the occasional few bites here and there can accumulate. Therefore, it becomes a possible factor as to why you’re not losing weight completely.

To help you with this, try writing down your exact food intake. You may figure out that you’re actually nibbling more than you think.

Do less high-intensity interval training

High-intensity interval training or HIIT has been proven to offer weight-loss benefits, and studies show that it’s not uncommon for people working out for weight loss to get too comfortable and happy with HIIT.

This may be unhealthy because when HIIT is done excessively, it can cause unpleasant side effects, such as extreme fatigue and soreness, trouble sleeping, and lack of motivation, which is unhelpful in losing those pounds.

Get enough sleep

Your tiresome workout session and healthy diet meal plans won’t be effective if you don’t get enough amount of sleep! Having not enough sleep seriously messes with your hunger hormones to spike, which makes losing those last few pounds impossible to get rid of.

Research shows that people who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to crave fatty foods or sweets. Not only that, they will have a slower metabolism.

Conclusion

Losing those last few pounds is the most challenging part of your weight loss journey. However, if you’ve tried everything on the list of tips for how to get rid of those pounds and you still can’t say goodbye to them, maybe it’s time to switch up your routine!

If you have carefully followed a healthy diet, a proper meal timing plan, and workout sessions, but to no avail, you might want to try the TCM slimming method!

At Slim Couture, we’ve integrated the practice of traditional Chinese medicine methods into our program to help you get rid of those last few pounds effectively! This treatment helps remove body toxins from your system and boost your metabolism to safely get rid of the extra few pounds. Contact us to know more and start your weight loss journey with the best slimming centre in town!

5 Exercises To Help Your Body Melt Unwanted Belly Fat Fast

Getting rid of belly fat may seem like an overwhelming goal that is almost impossible. While it is true there are other factors to consider such as eating properly, it seems to many of us that even carefully picking the right food to eat and doing countless hours of workouts don’t seem to yield the desired results with the fat around the belly.

The gut part is one of the most threatening places to store fat in the body, so it is important that we focus on this area. Let’s take a look at this part of our body and the exercises we can do to condition it.

Knowing your body

The fat in your stomach can be divided into two types – subcutaneous fat (resides under the skin) and visceral fat (the invisible type that resides below the surface and around internal organs).

Besides contributing to the layers of the belly, visceral fat has been proven to increase the risk of serious medical problems such as cardiac disease, malignancy, and diabetes. Unfortunately, this type of fat can be one of the hardest types to get rid of. Even when you exercise and eat healthily, it can seem like a stubborn fat around the gut wants to hold on for the long haul.

Why is your workout routine not working?

If you tried to do some exercises or eating healthy to get rid of your belly fat, you have probably observed that losing weight doesn’t get rid of the fats completely. This is because you can’t target belly fat directly when you eat a diet meal, but losing a few pounds can help you reduce your waistline!

There are various factors contributing to why you are having trouble with fat loss in the stomach area, such as age, workout routine, stress, diet, and alcohol intake. The key to this issue is to combine effective sets of exercises with the right nutrition. Here are a few abdominal exercises to do the magic.

1. Mountain Climbers

Mountain Climber can be a rigorous workout. This is a powerful exercise because it allows your core to work intensively to keep your body straight and stable while you move your legs.

2. Burpees

Burpees is a fast-paced exercise that consist of transitioning from a push-up stance to a jump in the air and then going back again. This move hits every muscle from head to toe and can help burn belly fat fast.

3. Medicine Ball Slams

Medicine Ball Slam requires the use of all the muscles between your neck and hips to work together. The strength and pace needed for this workout movement can increase your pulse rate and burn crucial tummy fat.

4. Kettlebell Swings

The kettlebell swing is one of the best calorie-burning moves ever because it requires you to use fat-burning muscle groups like your hips, back, and quadriceps. Moving the kettlebell back and forth elevates your pulse rate and targets your core.

5. Dumbbell Lunge

Lifting a heavy dumbbell and doing lunge requires all the muscles in your upper body to work together and keep the core tight and weight in place. This exercise uses your back and butt which could contribute to getting rid of stomach fat.

Conclusion

There are several simple exercises (although some do require additional equipment) you can try to burn belly fat and achieve the slim body that you have always dreamed of. Losing weight may be a difficult and challenging process, but it is not impossible.

With the right mindset and following the right habits, you can certainly lose those extra pounds, feel confident, and live a healthier life.

If you are looking for a safe and healthy weight loss alternative, you can try our TCM slimming method. We offer effective weight loss programs that follow traditional Chinese medicine methods to help you achieve your body goal quickly.