How to beat hunger when losing weight

Unlike people who visit the slimming centre to lose weight, people who choose to go the calorie-reduction way often face problems like tiredness and hunger pangs. If you are managing your diet to lose weight, you need to ensure that you are fulfilling your daily protein and carbohydrate intake, while cutting out sugar and extra calories. Diet planning lets you do this while controlling how much you eat. Many are still in dilemma between diet vs exercise when it comes to losing weight. When in fact, you need both in order to lose the extra calories. To know how to beat obstacles like intense cravings and lethargy, read these tips.

Include more flavours in your diet

Weight loss by diet management requires you to give up high-calorie foods. This can make you feel deprived and often results in more binge-eating, which is dangerous. Consequently, totally doing away with flavours in your food can upset your weight loss program. Instead, experiment with spicy flavours and tangy fruits. Add ingredients like basil, oregano, coriander and mint. Texture also goes a long way in ensuring that you enjoy your meals thoroughly. For instance, you can toss chopped nuts on the greens and add muesli to your yogurt.

Keep low calorie starters

Using low calorie appetizers to calm your hunger. You can try starting with simple vegetable soup or vegetable salad as the first course of the meal. In fact, it has been suggested that having soup before meals reduces your meal’s calorie intake by 20%. However, this is not true for a baked potato soup that you might get at a restaurant. Black bean dips and Japanese mushroom soups are good low-calorie alternatives for starters.

Snack up on whole fruits and veggies

The logic behind consuming fruits and vegetables to beat hunger pangs is that they have more water content. Thus, they leave you feeling contented and are low-calorie choices. One good way to have fruits on a regular basis is to replace fries and cookies with freshly chopped fruits. You can even carry them on your way to the slimming centre, since they provide essential vitamins and minerals. They have also been found to be beneficial for blood-pressure.

Increase your fibre intake

Fibre not only helps in water absorption and digestion, but increases satiety. You can increase your intake of fibre by eating whole grains and cereals. Fibrous vegetables and fruits are also beneficial. Psyllium husk helps you feel fullness, and prevents you from overeating. The daily recommended fibre intake for both children and adults is 14 gm for every 1000 calories consumed. Fibre-based foods require chewing for longer, and help you feeling full for longer.

Avoid skipping meals

It is an established fact that people who skip breakfast tend to overeat later in the day and hence put on weight. Psychologically, skipping the first meal of the day reduces control over what you eat, and enforces binge-eating behaviour. It is ideal to have three meals in a day spread over 12 hours. If you are reducing your portion control, it is a good idea to have low calorie snacks once daily. It is essential to drink sufficient water to induce fullness.

It is important to cut empty calories out from your diet, but eating well is equally necessary. Alternatively, consider visiting a slimming centre that uses Traditional Chinese Medicine to help lose weight, without having to control hunger.

Does quitting sugar help lose weight?

Experts say daily sugar intake for men and women should not be more than 37.5 grams and 25 grams, respectively. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended that the amount for men too should be 25 grams. The fact remains, however, that the average city dweller consumes five times the recommended amount, leading to expanding waistlines, increasing body weight, and the risk of deadly health problems. It is only rational than that many health-conscious men and women are quitting sugar for weight loss. And many too are signing up for weight loss program in Singapore, trying their best in changing their mindset into losing weight to lead a healthier lifestyle. Here are some important things to know about quitting sugar.

What quitting sugar actually means

Quitting sugar definitely helps to lose weight. Essentially, this can be done by eliminating processed foods from your diet. Processed foods do not only contain calories but preservatives and other synthetic substances that impact your health negatively. It has been observed that people who quit sugar by giving up ketchup, barbeque sauce and fizzy drinks instantly start losing bulk around the face and the abdomen.

Quitting sugar means cutting on calories and more

Even though one teaspoon of refined sugar has 16 calories/70 kilojoules of energy, as an ingredient in foods, it comes with fat and refined starches. There is more to sugar than just calories. Many tried to substitute their habit for taking in sugar by going for long walks to shed the ‘extra weight’. However, by walking alone without cutting down on the sugar intake is only an exercise in futility. For instance, by quitting shortbread biscuits, soft drinks and bakery products, you can also avoid fat and other substances leading to weight gain. By quitting a total of 10 teaspoons of sugar every day, you can lose one pound of weight in just three weeks.

Giving up sugar helps think rationally

Refined sugar is bad not only for your body weight but for your brain. A healthy mind is essential for weight loss. It also helps maintain a sound health. Sodas, bread, coffees, energy drinks and even low-fat snacks contain some amount of sugar that can affect your mind or thinking process. In fact, consuming sugar can make you rash and intolerant. People who had abandoned refined sugar reported that they experienced improvement in their cognitive capabilities. They have been able to think more logically, choose the right diet, and thus take the rights steps towards losing weight.

Quitting sugar helps cut on unhealthy foods

Weight loss isn’t only about cutting calories and getting back in shape. It is also about building strength and keeping lifestyle diseases at bay. Even the highly recommended Traditional Chinese Slimming method requires that you eat a balanced diet and avoid overloading the spleen. Thus, when you quit sugar, you are indirectly quitting foods that inhibit muscle-building and helps in digestion. Cupcakes, sodas, processed foods are of an inferior nutritional composition. They are low in fibre and rather high on the GI.

Find alternatives to sugar

So consider quitting unhealthy foods with added sugar and replace them with natural foods. For instance, you can replace fizzy beverages with water and natural drinks like coconut water. Instead of having packaged fruit juice, you can actually use your juicer to prepare natural fruit juice. Replace snacks with fruits and salad. More vegetables, lean meat and fish will mean a better weight loss.

Walking tips for weight loss

Time and other constraints mean that losing weight is not as straightforward as it seems. Often, you will find yourself trying other successful options for your weight loss program. Some try techniques like Traditional Chinese Medicine, while some take up walking to get fit. It is a safe enough exercise, and if you stick to your routine, it can help you to lose as much as a pound of weight per week. Walking is also a great way to tone your body and keep the risks of diabetes and arthritis at bay. If you are planning to start walking for weight loss, what’s important is to change your mindset first before starting your weight-loss challenge physically. Read these tips on how to lose weight by walking.

Walk regularly and at a consistent pace

The amount of calories burnt in walking depends on one’s body weight and walking speed. Experts say that walking at four miles per hour for an hour can help burn about 400 calories. However, walking takes up time and one doesn’t need to walk four miles every day. You can simply commit to walking 2-3 miles for your weight loss program. You can take even shorter distances, combining it in your everyday schedule. Professionals recommend walking 30 minutes for four days a week.

Get a pedometer to record your walking

Pedometers and wrist bands have become necessary devices for a number of people with weight loss programs. The pedometer is a device that can be attached to the hip. It is not too heavy and packs in a number of features apart from counting the number of steps you take in a day. Counting steps using a pedometer is important for losing weight. If you are talking 6000 steps a day and are not losing weight, you can increase the number of steps. Also take note of what you are consuming on a daily basis. Both diet has to work with exercise for weight loss.

Take 2000 steps per mile

Walking one mile can burn about 100 calories. For weight loss, you will have to walk 2000 steps in one mile. To lose one pound, you will have to create a deficit of 500 calories every day, which will be achieved by walking 10,000 steps a day. This number need not intimidate you, since you can fit it into your daily schedule. When going to work, get off a stop before. Use the stairs instead of the elevator, and park your car further away.

Walk with a good posture and a good technique

Walking is a natural activity, but doing it with a bad posture all these years could have led to you developing a poor style of walking. Walking with good posture is crucial for your weight loss program. Keep your chin up, look ahead at a distance of about 10 feet, hold the gluts firm, pull the abdomen in, and walk with a long stride.

Do not let any monotony creep in

It is necessary to keep yourself entertained while walking. It is important to feel burdened when you are in the midst of walking as this will only demotivate you. You can do this by choosing different places for walking with a close friend. In case if you are alone, walk at different parks and neighbourhoods and carry a music player along to keep yourself entertained. If it is too cold or raining outside, do not miss your hour of walking. Instead, do it on your treadmill. Get them along now!