Basic Weight Loss 101
There is a base level to the weight loss process that forms that basis of just about all the programs and plans that are currently in existence at the present time. Once a person who is keen to shed some weight gains a good understanding of these basics, then they can achieve whatever they set out to do as long as they stick to what they have learned and don’t go off the rails.
The three main areas that form these basic tips for weight loss are already well known and will seem pretty obvious to you once you read them, but maybe you have never thought of them in such a way before. These areas are:
- Healthy Diet
- Exercise
- Mental Attitude
Healthy Diet
The saying that “you are what you eat” is very true and not something that has just been created by the media to try and sell you something (well, maybe it has been borrowed for such, but that’s not the original sentiment). When you eat a healthy, wholesome diet in moderate portions at the right intervals throughout the day in proportion to the amount of activity you do during the day, you should not gain weight.
That’s a pretty sweeping statement, but when you analyze it, you’ll see its perfectly true. As long as you are eating enough to fuel your body for the activity level it has in a day, then all the fuel you consume will be used and there will be none left over for the body to store as fat. Once you start eating more than you need, or eating a lot of unhealthy food containing high levels of refined sugars, high GI carbs or saturated fats, then you are going to start storing fat because your body can’t use it all up.
Exercise
As long as you exercise in sufficient amounts during the day to burn off all the energy you consume through your diet, you will not gain weight.
That’s another a sweeping statement that when you analyze it, you will see it is also quite true. You can’t burn off all the energy (measured in calories, of course) that you have consumed through your diet through exercise each day and store any fat. There’s none left over for your body to store! Its when your exercise levels dwindle yet you keep eating the same levels of food or drinking soda and other unhealthy drinks full of empty calories that you start gaining weight. Even then, it takes time because your metabolism can deal with a lot more than many people realize. But put that metabolism under strain with too much food to process and it can’t cope. The excess that it doesn’t process get stored as fat.
Mental Attitude
To even begin to work with the previous two factors in your daily life, you have to have the right mental attitude. You really do have to have the motivation to eat right and exercise regularly. If you don’t the chances are you won’t do what you have to do and you will gain weight.
So you see that in order to maintain a healthy body that is at its correct weight, you need to satisfy those three main basics. When you can do that, you can lose weight and keep it off.