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Weight loss: 6 strategies for success
4. Enjoy healthier foods
Adopting a new eating style that promotes weight loss must include lowering your total calorie intake. But decreasing calories need not mean giving up taste, satisfaction or even ease of meal preparation. One way you can lower your calorie intake is by eating more plant-based foods — fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Strive for variety to help you achieve your goals without giving up taste or nutrition.
5. Get active, stay active
Dieting alone can help you lose weight. Cutting 500 calories from your daily diet can help you lose about a pound a week: 3,500 calories equals 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) of fat. But add a 45- to 60-minute brisk walk four days a week, and you can double your rate of weight loss.
The goal of exercise for weight loss is to burn more calories, although exercise offers many other benefits as well. How many calories you burn depends on the frequency, duration and intensity of your activities. One of the best ways to lose body fat is through steady aerobic exercise — such as walking — for more than 30 minutes most days of the week.
Even though regularly scheduled aerobic exercise is best for losing fat, any extra movement helps burn calories. Lifestyle activities may be easier to fit into your day. Think about ways you can increase your physical activity throughout the day. For example, make several trips up and down stairs instead of using the elevator, or park at the far end of the lot.
6. Change your lifestyle
It's not enough to eat healthy foods and exercise for only a few weeks or even several months. You have to include these behaviors in your lifestyle. To do that, you have to change the behaviors that helped make you overweight in the first place. Lifestyle changes start with taking an honest look at your eating habits and daily routine.
After assessing your personal challenges to weight loss, try working out a strategy to gradually change habits and attitudes that have sabotaged your past efforts. Simply admitting your own challenges won't get you past them entirely. But it helps in planning how you'll deal with them and whether you're going to succeed in losing weight once and for all.
You likely will have an occasional setback. But instead of giving up entirely, simply start fresh the next day. Remember that you're planning to change your life. It won't happen all at once, but stick to your healthy lifestyle and the results will be worth it.
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- Do you know your health risks for being overweight? National Institute of Digestive & Diabetes & Kidney Diseases. http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/health_risks.htm. Accessed Oct. 30, 2008.
- Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults: The evidence report. Bethesda, Md.: National Institutes of Health. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_gdlns.htm. Accessed Oct. 30, 2008.
- Hensrud DD, ed. Healthy Weight for Everybody. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medication Education and Research; 2005:24.
- 4. Ainsworth BE, et al. Compendium of physical activities: An update of activity codes and MET intensities. Medicine and Sciences in Sports and Exercise. 2000;32:S498.
- 5. Duyff RL. American Dietetic Association: Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. 3rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons; 2006:29.
