Guide To A 1-Week No Sugar Challenge To Lose Weight Fast

There’s no denying that sugar makes everything taste better, but most people are getting too much sugar in their bodies! Besides contributing to health issues, too much sugar intake doesn’t help when you’re trying to lose weight. To reduce the contribution to the sugar in their body, some people take part in “no sugar” challenges by cutting out all forms of sugar for a certain amount of time!

Desserts such as cakes and ice creams are mostly some of the people’s go-to favourite sweets! Going completely sugar-free in an instant is not easy, so cutting down on sugar and loading up on healthier options is the best thing to do!

If you are trying to cut down some of those carbs and looking for other options besides the TCM slimming method, follow this 1-week, no-sugar challenge to lose weight quickly!

What is sugar-free?

When you buy packed food or drinks, you’ve probably noticed the terms “no sugar added” and “sugar-free” on the front page, which has attracted people’s attention and identified it as a healthier food choice.

However, while that statement is widespread and can be found on food packaging, you should understand the terms and recognise the food label, which contains nutritional information and ingredients to determine the true face of the product.

Tips for the no sugar challenge

Completely removing sugar from your food or drinks is not easy, so the wise thing to do would be to do it gradually. Along with bad eating habits that can lead to weight gain, focusing on controlling your sugar intake is also one of the most effective ways!

Below are some tips you can try to get started with the no sugar challenge and make your way to a healthier lifestyle!

Step 1: Understand what is added sugar

Sugar comes in different forms, ranging from sugar to syrup. It’s essential to understand the different types of sugar and know what sugar is in your favourite food to control your intake!

• Sugar – Icing sugar, brown sugar, organic raw sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, golden sugar, castor sugar, confectioner’s sugar
• Syrup – Maple syrup, corn syrup, rice syrup, sorghum syrup, buttered syrup, golden syrup, refiner’s syrup, buttered syrup

Now that you know the sugar types, you can read the food ingredient list and food labels to help you identify the hidden sugar from the product before purchasing it.

Step 2: Change a high-sugar diet to a no-sugar diet gradually

It may be hard to cut down sugar for the first few days, but it gets easier with a determined mindset and proper routine! You may start by omitting obvious sugar food sources such as desserts, chocolates, pastries, and sugary drinks.

Step 3: Switch from simple carbs to complex carbs

Besides obvious sugar food sources, you should cut down on simple carbs intakes such as food sources made from white rice, white paste, white flour, and white bread.

Replace it with complex carbs or starchy vegetables to prevent carbohydrates from breaking down too fast and raising your blood sugar.

Step 4: Stay away from drinks that contain sugar 

The sugary beverage is becoming popular, and you may be drinking it without realising its sugar content! These sugary beverages include juice, bubble milk tea, soft drink, sodas, coffee, and herbal teas.

Even the packaging that claims their juice is ‘healthy’, contains as much sugar as a can of soft drink. 

Step 5: Plan your meals

The most crucial step would be planning your meals to prevent the consumption of hidden sugary snacks when hunger strikes. When you get hungry, it’s easy to crave for sugary and unhealthy fast food, so it’s best to prepare healthy meals.

Remember to prepare complex carbs and include a high-quality protein food such as fish. Lastly, load your plate with green vegetables for a healthy balanced meal.

Conclusion

Saying no to your favourite sweet desserts and snacks can be difficult to stop! Most people have been eating their favourite food without knowing that sugar has been doing more harm than good, especially when it comes to losing weight. While controlling what you eat has its benefits, the TCM method is also a safe and healthy way to lose weight!

Here at Slim Couture, we’ve integrated the practice of TCM methods into our program to help you safely lose weight! Contact us for more information and start your weight loss journey with the best slimming centre in the country!

8 Types Of Food To Avoid If You Want To Burn Stomach Fat

Having fat around your midsection is entirely normal, and keep in mind that you are not alone. What’s uncommon is having minimal body fat and toned abs. This issue lies in the type of fat you have — subcutaneous fat (fat that resides under your skin) and visceral fat (fat that resides below and around the internal organs).

Everyone loves to eat, but not everyone is aware that what you eat plays a more prominent role in the weight progress than perceived. For instance, bad eating habits can end up causing you to gain more weight instead.

When trying to lose weight, you must be aware of which types of food to avoid. Here is a list of food that shouldn’t touch your plate:

1. Processed Meats 

While meat can be a healthy part of your diet since it supplies a heavy dose of protein to your body, processed meats are high in saturated fat. Often, processed meat consists of high amounts of salt, fat, and cholesterol, which can add to your belly fat and increase the risk of heart disease.

2. Soft Drinks

 Soft Drinks are made sweet by using artificial sugars and high-fructose corn syrup, increasing intestinal fat and adding unnecessary calories. This excess sugar will be converted to fat and triggers your body to produce insulin, which can cause higher blood sugar and a larger waist circumference.

3. Cheese

Cheese is also high in calories and saturated fat. However, not all dairy-based foods should be consumed. After all, there are healthier choices like skim milk to supply your body with calcium and protein. However, if you are aiming for a slender belly, stay away from processed and melted cheese.

4. Alcohol 

We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that weekly happy hour could be harming your body, rather than helping it. Alcohol contains seven calories per gram, slightly less than fat. Regardless of what type of alcohol drink it is, it probably would not help you achieve your goal.

5. Refined Bread

Refined bread is just another word for refined carbohydrates, and they should be avoided or limited in a healthy diet. Studies found that food rich in heavy acellular carbohydrates” causes swelling and increase in weight.

6. Salt

While salt won’t contribute to the addition of fats, excess amounts of intake are a common cause for bloat and can make you feel like you gained a few extra pounds overnight. If you can’t stay away from salt, the healthiest to use is unrefined salt, but keep in mind to consider the amount of salt you use when cooking.

7. Fried food

Whether it’s a small bag of chips or one piece of crispy chicken, fried foods have the “magical” ability to satisfy a craving. However, fried food contains more oil, cholesterol, and fat, which contradicts your goal towards a flatter stomach.

8. Cereal

According to experts, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but if your meal consists of eating one to two bowls of cereal every morning, your gastrointestinal system won’t have enough time to digest the food effectively.

Plus, it contains high sugar content and processed white flour that can lead to weight gain.

Conclusion

Certain habits and saying no to your favourite food can be difficult to stop. Some people will eat all the food listed above without knowing that those types of food have been doing more harm than good to their slimming goals.

Partner with our slimming centre if you are looking for a safe and healthy way to lose weight. We offer the best weight loss program to help you achieve the body that you’ve always wanted.

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.