10 Diet and exercise lifestyle tips.

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10 Diet and Exercise Lifestyle Tips for Weight Loss.

Dieting should not be about quick fixes to a weight problem, but should be about eating a balanced diet, and engaging in regular exercise. There are however some important principles that you can follow that will make it easier to maintain good weight balance, and live a normal life without constantly struggling to say 'no' to food.

The following 10 diet and exercise lifestyle tips will provide a good foundation for an eating plan and exercise regime that can fit in with your lifestyle, and be maintainable for as long as you wish.
 

10 Simple Steps fo Controlling Your Diet.
  1. Reduce your plate size and eat less. It has been shown that when plate size is reduced, we typically eat 22% less food. Where more food is available, we will eat more. Avoid cooking so much food that 'seconds' are inevitable.

    Reference: Wansink B, van Ittersum K, Painter JE. Ice cream illusions: bowls, spoons, and self-served portion sizes. Am J Prev Med. 2006 Sep;31(3):240-3.
     
  2. Reduce the variety of food available and you will eat less. When faced with a broad variety of options, we feel we have to sample a lot. For this reasons, buffet meals are not a good tool in diet control.

    Reference: "Dietary Variety, Energy Regulation, and Obesity," Hollie A. Raynor, Ph.D., and Leonard H. Epstein, Ph.D., University of Buffalo; Psychological Bulletin, Vol 127, No. 3

Practical Dietary Changes for Losing Weight.

  1. Count calories and you will lose weight. Think about what you eat, and where possible choose the low calorie option. If you concentrate on eating low calorie, high volume food, still feel full but have fewer calories to burn off.

    Reference: Sacks FM, Bray GA, Carey VJ, et al. Comparison of weight-loss diets with different compositions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. N Engl J Med 2009;360:859–73.
     
  2. Eat food as soup, and it will sustain you for longer. The soup expands your stomach, but does not contain the same number of calories as the equivalent volume of solid food. The volume is retained longer than an equivalent amount of water. Soup is a high volume, low calorie food format. Our bodies are used to eating the same volume of food, whether high or low calorie.

    Reference: Rolls B. Salad and satiety: Do portion size and energy density of a first course affect lunch intake? Abstract 89-OR. Program and abstracts from the North American Society for the Study of Obesity Annual Meeting; October 11-15, 2003; Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Chemical Control in Dieting for Weight Loss

  1. Don't skip breakfast. Your body is conditioned to look for high calorie, fatty food when you are hungry. A hormone called Ghrelin is released when you are hungry to stimulate your desire for high calorie food. Have a good breakfast, high in protein, and you will not need to eat so soon.

    Reference: Daniela Jakubowicz, M.D., clinical professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, and endocrinologist, Hospital de Clinicas Caracas, Venezuela; Geri Brewster, R.D., M.P.H., nutritionist and wellness consultant, Northern Westchester Hospital Center, Mount Kisco, N.Y.; June 17, 2008, presentations, The Endocrine Society annual meeting, San Francisco
     
  2. Protein makes you feel fuller for longer. While the hormone Ghrelin is released when you feel hungry and stimulates your appetite, the hormone PYY suppresses hunger. PYY is secreted from cells in the small intestine in response to food consumption. PYY release is triggered by protein, more than any other food type. By increasing the proportion of protein in your diet, you will find food more sustaining, and will therefore nee less to satisfy.

    Reference: Batterham et al. 2002. Gut Hormone PYY physiologically inhibits food intake. Nature. 418. pp650-654 - Initial evidence of the role of PYY in inhibiting appetite.

    Tschoep et al. & Batterham et al. 2004. Physiology: Does gut hormone PYY decrease food intake in rodents? Nature. 430. pp1-4 - The contradictory research as found by Tscho?p et al. followed by a reply from Batterham
     
  3. Eat Low Fat Dairy Products for Calcium. It has been shown that the calcium in dairy products will combine with fat in meals, and will double the amount of fat excreted in waste. If you use low fat dairy products you will increase your calcium intake in your diet, but will decrease the amount of fat retained. The same effect does not occur when using calcium supplements.

    Reference: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. March 2007, Volume 85, Number 3, Pages 678-687
    "Effect of dairy calcium or supplementary calcium intake on postprandial fat metabolism, appetite, and subsequent energy intake"
    Authors: J.K. Lorenzen, S. Nielsen, J.J. Holst, I. Tetens, J.F. Rehfeld and A. Astrup

Exercise for Weight Loss

  1. Don't blame your obesity on slow metabolism. You will put on weight when you eat more calories than you need. All other considerations are secondary to that principle. We have a tendency to oner-estimate the amount of exercise we take, and to under-estimate or record the number of calories we consume.Portion size and snacks all contribute to this calorie 'blindness'.

    Reference: Wansink B and Chandon P (2006) Meal size, not body size, explains errors in estimating the calorie content of meals. Ann Intern Med 145: 326–332
     
  2. Effects of exercise continue even after exercise has ceased. When you exercise, you not only burn calories during exercise, but will burn extra calories for up to 24 hours after exercise. This process is known as 'excess post-exercise oxygen consumption', or EPOC. The number of calories burned after exercise will be approximately 10% of the calories expended during an exercise session.

    Reference: Borsheim, E. and Bahr, R. 2003. Effect of exercise intensity, duration and mode on post-exercise oxygen consumption. Sports Medicine, 33(14) 1037-1060.
     
  3. Use NEAT options where possible. NEAT is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, and simply describes the process of building exercise into everyday activities, for example take the stairs instead of the lift or elevator. Visit NEAT for exercise and fitness for a more detailed description of NEAT.

    Reference: Levine JA, Eberhardt NL, Jensen MD. Fidgety and Fit:The Concept is NEAT. Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat gain in humans. Science. 1999;283:212–214.

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