THE CAUSES OF EXCESSIVE WEIGHT If you eat more nutrients containing energy than you need for your daily activities, for the internal processes of your body, and for the burning process that maintains the body temperature, the excessive nutrients can be transformed to fat and stored in the fat depots in your body. The causes of this occurring, and thus of overweight, are one or more of these factors: 1. Consuming too much fat: Fat is the most energy-rich nutrient, and over-consume will cause the excessive fat consumed to be deposited in the body. 2. Consuming too much sugar, starch or other carbohydrates: Carbohydrates are also important energy sources. Over-consume of carbohydrates will cause the excess to be converted to fat and stored in the body. 3 Consuming too much alcohol: Also this substance contains energy, and excessive consume results in fat stored in your body. 4 Consuming too much of preprocessed products with added, and often hidden fat or sugar, like sweet beverages, cakes, ice-cream, fast food and snacks. 5. Eating too much altogether: Perhaps your food is not fat- or sugar-laden, but you simply eat too much altogether. Also protein will be converted to fat if it is overconsumed. 6. Irregular eating, like eating much at one time, little at another time, wait long between some meals, consuming huge doses of sugar at some times, no sugar at other times: If you eat irregularly, you can get an uncontrollable appetite, a swinging blood sugar level, and an abnormal physiology that makes you deposit fat in your body. 7. A still sitting life with little exercise so that you burn little fat and sugar. 8. Boredom in your daily life: If you do not have much hobbies, or leisure activities, or isolate yourself from other people, you may suffer form boredom, and excessive eating may be your way of getting entertainment. 9. The body has some capacity of burning some extra amount of sugar or fat. This capacity may be decreased because of lack of vitamins and minerals, and because of an unsound diet. 10. An abnormal appetite that urges you to eat far more than you need: This abnormal appetite may originate from psychological causes, an unsound diet or lack of exercise. ANALYZE YOUR OBESITY PROBLEMS Before beginning your weight reduction program, go through all obesity causing factors listed above, to find out what factors contribute to your over-weight problem. Go down to details. For example: If you find you consume too much sugar, find out the exact food types contributing to your excessive sugar consume. Write everything down. MAKE A PLAN With the performed analysis in hand, make a plan for your weigh reduction. Decide a goal for your weight. Decide one or more measures for each component contributing to your problem. Write down your plan. HOW TO REDUCE WEIGHT In order to successfully loose weight, you must attack every component you have found to be a causing factor of your obesity problem. Here are the concrete measures you can use, and put into your plan: 1. Eat less fat If you eat much fat, you must reduce the daily intake of fat, to do so: * Choose fat poor fish, fat poor meat/beef, chicken, turkey, mushrooms and other food sources with law fat content as the main components for dishes. * Cut away visible fat from meat or other food sources. * Do not add much margarine, butter or oil to your food. * When you fry something, try to use as little fatty smear in the pan as possible. 2. Eat less sugar If you eat much sugar, reduce your daily intake of free sugar, or bounded sugar as in flour, potatoes and the like: * Do not add much sugar to your food. * You may also need to consume less bread, potatoes, peas and beans, if you eat very much of it, but do not stop eating these kinds of food, since they contain valuable nutrients. However, use bread made of full corn. 3. Avoid excessive alcohol consume Alcohol contains energy, and will be transformed to fat, if you consume too much of it. 4. Avoid preprocessed food with added and often hidden fat or sugar Some food contains a great amount of hidden fat or sugar, especially fast food, snacks or preprocessed food. * Therefore you should avoid eating much of products like: cakes, sweet drinks, snacks, chocolate, ice-cream or fast-food. * You should also buy all the food you use in a natural form, and make your dishes yourself. Then you achieve an absolute control over the amount of fat and sugar in your dishes. 5. Eat less altogether, but do not starve yourself Having reduced the amount of sugar and fat from your diet, you may fall to the temptation of eating more than before, because the new composition of your food does not satisfy your hunger. You should be aware of, and avoid this trap. * When trying to loose weight, you should reduce the total amount of the food you eat. * However, you should not starve yourself. To starve will only make you tired and sick, and then make you interrupt your efforts to get slim. 6. Eat regularly Regular eating habits will give you a stable blood sugar level, help you control your appetite and normalize your fat burning physiology. * You should eat three or four meals each day. * Each meal should contain the same moderate amount of sugar and fat. * Each meal should contain some protein sources like fish, meat, eggs, mushrooms or protein-rich seeds, and in every means be as nutritionally complete as possible. 7. Increase your daily physical activity Physical activity increases fat burning and will help you control your appetite. * Do some daily exercises of a kind that increases energy consumption: Jogging, cycling, swimming, ball play, skiing, and so on. * Do also some exercises to increase your muscular volume, since muscles will burn fat, for example weight lifting. 8. Find some new hobby or interest If you find yourself some new hobby or leisure activity, you will avoid boredom and the temptation to over-eat because you are bored. Try also to do interesting activities together with other people. The new activities will also give you less time to only sit eating. 9. Eat healthy food to increase your fat burning capacity It is not possible to loose weight without sticking to the above mentioned basic fat reduction principles, but you will also benefit from applying some measures that will increase your ability to passively burn fat: * Eat as natural food as possible, avoid food that has been heavily cooked, heavily fried or chemically processed. Natural food has its content of protein, vitamins minerals and anti-oxidants intact, and these are necessary for the fat burning abilities. * Eat some raw fruit and vegetables to each meal, since these contain vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants you need. * You may benefit from supplements of vitamins, minerals, herbs, anti-oxidants, as these will make your body more capable of burning fat. * The little fat you use in your diet, should come from sources like olive, peanuts, canola, fish, nuts, sun-flower, etc. Then you will get a good balance between mono-unsaturated fat (olive, canola, and peanuts), poly-unsaturated fat of the omaga-3-type (fish) and poly-unsaturated fat of the omega-6-type (sunflower). * Consume whole cereals or bread made from whole unrefined cereals. * There are also natural products on the market you can use to increase your break down and burning of fat. 10. Bring your appetite under control Many of the measures already listed, will also help you to control your appetite. If this still is difficult, this problem may be attacked by specific means: * You can use some medicines to reduce appetite for some time or to reduce the uptake of fat or carbohydrates in your intestines. There are both natural medicines based on herbs, vitamins and minerals and pharmacological products to achieve this. * Daily meditation can help to relax your mind and gain control. * Psychological counseling may be necessary. 11. The ratio between fat and sugar in your diet The total mount of fat and carbohydrates combined, is a key factor in causing obesity, not fat alone or carbohydrates alone. In some weight loosing regimes, one eats very little carbohydrates, and fairly much fat. In others one eats fairly much carbohydrates, and very little fat. The proponents of each type of regime claim that their approach helps the body to burn fat better. Probably people are different, and react differently when trying to manipulate the diet in these ways. As a first approach, it is probably not wise to try such extreme approaches. However, if you have brought your eating habits under control, and still not achieved a satisfactory result, you can try to manipulate the fat/carbohydrate ratio to see if this will help. But do not stop consuming fat altogether. You will always need some essential fatty acids in your diet. CARRYING OUT YOUR PLAN Having made your plan for your weight reduction, the time has come to carry it out. After each week, go through the points in your plan, and evaluate how well you did. Also check your weight. Write down for every point in your plan how well you did. |
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