If you are looking to shed that extra fat, you should take into account your lifestyle. In most cases, obesity is due to lack of exercise and improper diet. If these two factors are addressed, weight loss will be more achievable. Other factors that could contribute to weight gain could be certain health conditions that affect the performance of the glands and organs, resulting in excess weight.It all ultimately boils down to how you plan your diet and if you follow a weight loss program. You may have heard about carbs being talked about frequently when it comes to weight loss. Here are some insights about carbs and its role in weight gain.

Should You Say ‘No’ To Carbs

For those that browsed the Internet about diet plans for weight loss, you may find carbs being portrayed as your enemy. The truth is just the opposite. Carbs are as much a necessary part of your diet to stay healthy as other nutrients and minerals. You get your energy supply from carbohydrates, and hence they should be included in your regular diet. Carbs are used as soon as you consume them, and hence your body does not store them. The proteins and fats you consume are converted into carbs. The fat that is stored aids and energises you when you are hungry. Hence, cutting down on your fair share of carbs will make you tired. Carbs are essential; it all depends on the type and amount of carbs that you consume.

Avoid Consuming Excessive Starchy Carbs

Starchy carbs are turned into glucose by enzymes that digest them. As you are well aware, glucose supplies required energy to the body. However, when you cross the required limit of starchy carbs consumption, excess glucose is produced, which is stored in the liver as glycogen or in adipose tissue as fat. That eventually leads to weight gain. It is hence essential to check one’s consumption of starchy carbs if you aim to have healthy weight loss.

Carbs To Be Included

Fruits and vegetables contain carbs and fibres that are essential for keeping you fit. Go for whole grains as well. Your diet should include a variety of fruits and vegetables to ensure that you get the right amount of nutrients and vitamins to keep you going. Dieticians usually suggest an intake of at least five fruits a day.

Fruits such as plums, peaches, apricots, strawberries, blackberries and cherries should be a part of your diet. Other food items include onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and radishes as those can provide you with the energy you need to see the day through.

What Are The Starchy Carbs To Be Avoided?

Some food with starchy carbs content includes white potatoes, white bread, cookies, pastries, refined grains, doughnuts, honey, sugar, jam, refined white grains and so on.

Know What Food Helps In Weight Loss

Against popular belief, eating carbs wisely could assist you in keeping your body in great shape. Certain foods that are rich in carbs are appetite suppressants. Hence, you get a feeling of fullness with a reduced consumption of such food. While it is true that carbs could shoot up blood sugar levels, eating the right types of carbs can help in keeping your blood sugar level in control. You could replace white rice with brown rice.

If you are trying to lose weight in a short time, here is a secret: starving will not assist you at all, in fact, it will cause more problems and a faster weight gain instead of weight loss. You cannot lose weight by depriving yourself of food. Just because you reduce the number of calories you consumed drastically, you may observe weight loss for a short period, but in the long term, this will inevitably be a massive failure. Simply put, your body gets used to the amount of food that you consume every day, and when it thinks you are in a “malnutrition” state, it stores your calories as fat.

How to lose weight fast without starving

Firstly, you must learn how to eat more intelligently. Eat small meals throughout the day and count the number of calories consumed. If you continue to eat the same number of calories your body burns in a day, you will not lose weight. Try to eat your meals at breakfast and lunch rather than evening. Your body burns calories faster while you are awake and active than it does during the rest periods. You can also go for slimming treatment in order to aid your weight loss.

How does it work?

To lose weight, do not eat meals or snacks high in calories before bedtime. Your body can convert some calories into fat because it burns the calories even while you are sleeping. A person weighing 70 pounds will burn about 12 calories every 10 minutes of sleep. If that same person sleeps, eight hours will burn about 72 calories per hour or 576 calories in just one night. That does not leave much room for snacking in the evening, does it?

Don’t eat before bedtime!

Some people think they should just eat a snack before bedtime to avoid hunger the next day. However, this is a misconception as if you want to lose weight; you need to burn your calorie intake with proper nutrition and regular physical activity instead of adding extra calories.

You can lose weight without having to eat special foods or do a hunger strike, as these practices tend to have the opposite effect than intended. Instead, focus your efforts on eating fewer calories than your body burns each day. That is the only way to lose weight without putting your health at risk.

We always hear that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Beyond that, research shows that it also helps your weight loss efforts by curbing hunger, reducing caloric intake and increasing fibre consumption. All of which when combined, can help you to lose weight especially when eaten before meals. The apple has long been said to be the healthiest fruit we have and is the second most popular fruit among Americans after oranges, with an average annual consumption of 7 pounds per person in 2005.

Aside from its delicious flavour, the apple provides several nutrients that contribute to weight loss. It helps to lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation and provide important anti-aging polyphenols. A large apple that weighs about 8 ounces contains 5.4 g of fibre or 22 percent of the 25 g Food and Drug Administration daily value.

The fibre in apples is primarily apple pectin, which slows the absorption of carbohydrates. That helps maintain a balanced blood glucose level that discourages weight gain and development of type-2 diabetes.

An apple a day also plays a vital role in the fight against obesity as seen by the result of a Penn State Study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University. The subjects were 59 men and women who were brought to the test lab for five weeks. They were segmented into groups. One group consumed an apple before lunch, and the other groups were given applesauce, apple juice or nothing at all. The subjects who ate apples consumed 187 fewer calories during lunch, and the researchers suggest that eating a low-calorie food – like apples and other fruits, as well as soups or salads – at the beginning of a meal provides a feeling of fullness which results in less food consumption.

There were also researchers at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who conducted a study in which 400 women were placed into three groups and given oat cookies, apples or pears, respectively, at a rate of three times a day for 12 weeks. The subjects who ate oak cookies did not experience substantial weight loss; however, the groups that consumed either the apples or the pears lost an average of 1.21 kilogrammes, which is equivalent to 2.67 pounds, in the 12-week period. As a bonus, the group eating apples or pear also had lower blood glucose levels.

However, it is also advisable to not consume apples excessively. Although apples are healthy, they still contain calories and sugars, which may inhibit your slimming treatment when consumed with other food.

Home cooked meals are the best thing that you can add into your weight loss program due to how doing so can help you to lose weight. A research found that eating home cooked meals resulted in fewer calories consumed as compared to eating out at restaurants. Also, those that eat home cooked meals were also found to have consumed fewer calories when they do eat out. However, it is important to note that there are a variety of cooking methods that can be used depending on the food in question. Within those, there are unhealthier cooking methods that should be avoided if you intend to lose weight.

Unhealthy cooking methods

The way we cook our food can play a significant role in our diet because if a meal is prepared in the right way, it can increase our intake of valuable nutrients and vitamins. Cooking at a very high temperature for a long time will usually destroy most of the essential vitamins and nutrients in the food that your body needs. During a diet, there will be drastic changes in your eating habit, and that will result in an increased need for vitamins and nutrients. Deep-frying food is the unhealthiest way of preparing your food, due to the significant amount of oil that is usually used.

Healthy cooking methods

Steaming is one of the best ways of making a home cooked meal as healthy as possible. You can use this technique while following a Mediterranean diet plan because chicken and fish are delicious when cooked that way. Additionally, boiling your vegetables for salads is a great way to make your food healthier. However, you should try to avoid eating mashed potatoes or potatoes of any kind, because they have a high level of starch which will inhibit your weight loss.

What you should eat

Try recipes that include vegetables that are rich in vitamins, like carrots. Do you know that carrots have more vitamin C than every other fruit or vegetable? If you want to receive all the benefits you can get from vegetables, try to eat lots of salads. Salads are a great way of incorporating more vegetables into your diet. For those that want to eat salads as a more filling meal, you can also add some carbohydrates and protein like pasta and grilled salmon respectively.

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