Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Maintain Weight Loss
Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Maintain Weight Loss
The focus of this site to this point has been using drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, as an aid to losing weight. Before drugs are used, however, other steps must be taken to begin the weight loss process. The first is to assess a patient’s weight by calculating his or her BMI and measuring his or her waist circumference (as described in Chapter 1). After determining these values, the next step is to figure out the safest methods for that person to achieve weight loss. Finally, strategies for maintaining weight loss over a long time must be established. Obesity is a lifelong disease and successful treatment involves a lifetime of weight control.
Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Maintain Weight Loss
WEIGHT MANAGEMENT
Effective weight control involves many techniques including diet modification, physical activity, and behavior therapy. Generally, doctors and health-care providers recommend that a person looking to lose weight attempt these strategies before considering drug therapy and surgery. Treatment strategies should encourage weight loss and long-term weight control.
There are several ways to begin the weight loss process. Modifying diet and increasing physical activity can influence obesityrelated risk factors (when weight affects the heart, for example).
Recommended changes in diet not only modify how many calories someone takes in, but also reduce fat, cholesterol, and sodium found in the person’s diet.How much a person exercises is important because it not only helps with weight loss, but also weight maintenance. In addition, exercise can prevent and sometimes even reverse some of the damage done when a person has developed weight-related health problems (for example, high blood pressure). Weight loss should also take into account the needs of the patient. Overall, treatment of overweight and obesity is a commitment that must be taken seriously by both the patient and the health-care professional.
DIETARY THERAPY
People who are overweight or obese should start off by setting a goal for their weight loss. Calorie intake should be reduced by 500 to 1,000 calories per day. This can be done in a number of ways. Simply cutting out one to two sodas a day, for example,may reduce calories; some people switch to diet soda and find that they can shed pounds. This reduction in calories can produce a one- to two-pound weight loss per week. Daily reductions of more than 1,000 calories are not recommended. A person who adopts such extreme calorie reduction will most likely end up in diet failure. He or she may feel so hungry (because of diet restrictions) with the first week or two of dieting, that he or she may simply stop dieting and go back to previous eating habits.
In adjusting a person’s diet, it is important to assess the individual’s food preferences and make modifications from there. If someone loves to eat chocolate chip cookies, suggesting a low-fat version may be the first step—keeping in mind that reducing fat without reducing calories will not result in weight loss. An overweight or obese person must realize that long-term changes in the diet will lead to long-term weight loss and weight management.
A number of educational efforts can also be undertaken to help an overweight or obese person lose weight. These include:
- Learning how to read nutrition labels This can help a person determine how many calories a particular food item has and also understand how much fat, carbohydrate, and protein is contained in a food.
- Learning new strategies for purchasing foods (for example, buying low-calorie foods).
- Learning methods for food preparation that incorporate lower amounts of oil and fat (for example, using margarine instead of butter or oil to prepare fried chicken, or baking instead of frying).
- Encouraging a person to drink more water. People— even those who are not trying to lose weight—should be in the habit of drinking 6 to 8 8-ounce glasses of water every day.
- Learning how to choose correct portion sizes.
- 6. Learning to substitute low-calorie snacks to help curb the appetite (for example, eating celery and carrot sticks instead of filling up on potato chips).
- Encouraging a limit on alcohol consumption, because alcohol (beer, wine, and other hard liquors) is high in calories.
Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Maintain Weight Loss
Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Maintain Weight Loss
A nutrition label can look daunting if you have not read one before. Consumers should pay attention to certain aspects of the label when determining the health content of the food. First, it is important to notice the number of servings in a package. For example, you might be used to eating the whole package of macaroni and cheese, but you can tell from the label that there are 2 servings per package. This information is important when reading the rest of the label. Next, look at the number of calories per serving. Even more important is the total fat and saturated fat content in the food. Saturated fat is the “bad” fat and having more of this makes the food even more unhealthy. If you eat all of the macaroni and cheese, you have doubled the serving size and thus doubled the calories and fat.
There are many national organizations that may be of assistance in helping people lose weight and maintain weight loss; Weight Watchers is one example. In addition, there are a number of “fad diets” for weight loss, which include the Atkins® Diet, South Beach Diet™, and Mediterranean Diet.
The main appeal of these diets is that they claim to produce fast weight loss. On the other hand, diets such as the one Weight Watchers recommends helps a person lose weight over approximately 6 months. Studies have found that even though “fad diets” are able to help bring about weight loss quickly, the amount of weight lost after six months for both kinds of diets was the same. Overall, it is very hard to stick to “fad diets” that restrict one type of food (for example, carbohydrates). Weight Watchers allows a person to eat foods (in moderation) that can cause weight gain, and even offers recipes that are low fat but taste good.
Метки:alcohol, buy, cause weight gain, diet, diet modification, dieting, drugs, Health, health problems, losing weight, maintaining weight loss, obese, overweight and obesity, risk, ways to lose weight, weight maintenance
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