How can you lose your weight the fastest, but safely? No lies and no gimmicks.

A picture of Anne Marie Ponce de Leon

Anne Marie Ponce de Leon

What is Best for Weight Loss: Exercise or Healthy Diet?

Often, many people say that they don’t have time in doing physical activities. But, maintaining a healthy body weight is very critical to your health. Losing your body weight is important. Obesity and carrying too much weight can make you feel very uncomfortable, and it can also affect your health. It can also lead to many serious health issues including, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.

How can you lose your weight the fastest, but safely? No lies and no gimmicks. These nutrition strategies can help you to start and achieve a healthy slim body as soon as possible!

  • Prioritize whole, real foods

Whole, real foods are completely unprocessed or minimally processed once you take them into your body. Therefore, this type of food is free from fats, sodium, added sugars, and preservatives, which should all be limited in a diet. Aside from that, you can also help yourself to prevent chronic diseases and have better feelings, healthy body weight by eating whole foods which are primarily rich in vitamins, fibers, minerals, and phytonutrients.

By cutting the processed food out in your diet, you also limit your intake of calories, avoiding gain weight. Whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, also contain high satiating dietary fibers that can help you to be filled-up and make you feel full.

  • Skip sugary drinks or beverages

By cutting your intake of sweet and sugary beverages, you can lose much weight; this is one of the most proven methods to lose weight. Probably, some of you cut your intake of sweet by just eliminating you daily desserts while others stop and skip drinking sugary beverages or avoid eating foods with high sugar. Sodas and some other sugary beverages can increase ones’ risk of overweight or obesity.

These can even cause some illnesses such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Instead of drinking sugary beverages, drink plenty of water each day as it is one of the potential strategies to reduce the risk of diseases and gaining weight. Nutrition researchers even suggest skipping drinking soda and other sugary drinks as it can help in your weight loss plan.

  • Eat more spicy foods

Probably some of you love more spicy foods while some love a little spice. But, don’t you know that eating more spicy foods is great as it can contribute a lot to your weight loss. Just adding hot sauce or more spice to your meal can probably lead to weight loss.

In fact, many studies found out the significance of spices such as ginger, black chili pepper, and red pepper is good enough to increase ones’ metabolic rate though raising the body temperature, causing a person to burn some calories and a great help to lose weight.

  • Get enough sleep

Can’t lose your weight? Get enough rest and sleep as it can control your diet and therefore lead to gain a healthy body weight faster. The debate regarding the right way in achieving a healthy body weight often revolves around movement & eating. If you like to achieve better looks, one of the usual suggestion is to move more and eat less. But it is not simple as that.

Sometimes, because of work, exercising, and other activities that you do in your life, getting enough sleep is neglected. Or maybe, some of you don’t know that sleeping is one of the keys to getting better results of your fitness efforts and diet.

Diet or Exercise? – Why Diet is More Important for your Weight Loss?

If you’re trying to lose your weight, but still you can’t get better results, this can be very beneficial to you. Food choices you make is more beneficial than exercising. Food & fitness are both important for you to stay slim and achieve overall healthy body. However, researchers have found out that most people particularly, Americans are becoming fatter due to their food choices.

People should not ignore the physical activities in their battle against overweight or obesity and must indeed promote due to its many health benefits. However, expectations about exercise should be tempered. More emphasis must be placed on encouraging individuals to make healthy food choices.

When it comes to losing your weight, keep exercising, and more importantly, change what you’re eating.

The Facts About Eating More for Weight Loss

The good news for those people who want to lose their weight is that you can now eat plentifully. This is a good big portion to lose weight. Well, this scientifical approach is about choosing the right and nutritious foods which will give the satiety calorie, foods include:

Fresh vegetable
Fresh fruits
Brown rice and whole grains, hot cereals
White poultry and seafood
Pinto beans and black beans
Smart eating is not settingless. But, it’s all about putting plenty of right foods on your plate.

Benefits of Exercise vs. Healthy Diet

A diet is more effective if combined with exercise, depending on the calorie restrictions alone, cannot be very effective to lose your body weight. Exercise can help a lot to lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, which may avoid a heart attack. Additionally, when you do exercising, you are helping yourself to prevent risk and the development of individual cancer types such as breast cancer and colon.

In fact, exercise can also contribute to a person’s well-being and sense of self-confidence, thus possibly help to lower rates of depression, stress, and anxiety. That’s why exercise is very helpful in losing weight and maintaining a healthy body weight. It can also increase metabolism and help maintain a person’s body mass, that helps to increase the calories burn each day.

How Often Should You Exercise to Lose Weight?

It is the best advice to perform the exercise for at least thrice a week and about 20 minutes. But, more than the given time is better, especially if you want to lose weight in just 20 days or less. Incorporating only 15 minutes’ moderate exercise, like walking can be a big help to burn up your extra calories. Burning up 100-700 calories in a week is equal to 10 lbs. – that can be a great contribute to your goal.

What are the Different Examples of Exercise?

It is important that you choose the best type of exercise that you want to do or where you enjoy. But, just like what some people say that whatever type of exercise you choose, it doesn’t matter much. What more important is, you are doing it, and you stick to it as your routine. If you pick the best type of exercise for your weight loss but, you are not doing it, it’s useless. Experts recommend some exercises that you can choose to make your regular exercise more fun and exciting.

  • Aerobic

Cardiovascular exercise or aerobic is included in any exercise programs. Aerobic exercises can improve your blood volume, increase respiration efficiency and improve your cardiovascular efficiency. Aerobic exercises include cycling, walking, dancing, swimming, and jogging. You can even work out using some fitness machines, like the treadmill, stair stepper or elliptical.

  • Weight Training

Aside from shedding fat, building your muscles is one of the big advantages that you can get in working out your weights. The muscles, in turn, can burn calories. That’s why experts recommend working all your muscle groups for at least three times a week. This involves; back, biceps, triceps, abs, chest, shoulders, forearms, calves, traps, quads, and hamstrings.

  • Yoga

This type of exercise is not intense, unlike the other exercises. However, this can contribute a lot to your weight loss goals. In fact, according to some researchers, those people who perform yoga are mindful about the foods they eat; therefore, they are less likely in gaining much weight.

  • Incorporating Exercise in Your Lifestyle

The exercise you do in a day is more helpful than whether you don’t or engage in one session. That is the reason why the small changes to your daily activities can bring a big difference.

  • A healthy lifestyle to consider:

Walking or cycling to work
Parking away from your destination and walk remaining distance
Take the stairs rather than elevator
Before you Begin your Exercise Program

One of the important things to consider before you start your exercise program is to talk your doctor especially if you’re planning to do vigorous exercise or when you have, diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, arthritis and kidney disease. Also, those people with too much weight or quit smoking must talk their doctors first if planning to engage in an exercise program.

Anne Marie Ponce de Leon

Medical Director

About Anne Marie Ponce de Leon

Anne Marie Ponce de Leon MD is a proud native Houstonian. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Houston Baptist University with a double major in Biology and History. For medical school, she attended the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston (recently renamed McGovern Medical School). She began her family practice training at Tufts University Medical School in Boston, MA, but subsequently returned to Houston where she completed her residency at the Memorial Southwest Family Practice Program.

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