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Sep 18

How to Lose Weight – Diet Doctor

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Do you have trouble losing weight? Or would you like to lose faster? Youve finally come to exactly the right place.

The sad truth is that conventional ideas eat less, run more do not work long term. Counting calories, exercising for hours every day and trying to ignore your hunger? Thats needless suffering and it wastes your time and precious willpower. Its weight loss for masochists. Eventually almost everyone gives up. Thats why we have an obesity epidemic.

Fortunately theres a better way. Get ready for effortless weight loss. li The bottom line? Your weight is hormonally regulated. All thats necessary is reducing your fat-storing hormone, insulin, and youll effortlessly lose excess weight.

Below is a practical step-by-step guide to do exactly that.

Are you ready? Here we go.

Start at the top of the list (most important) and go down as far as you need. Klick on any tip to read all about it. Perhaps you only need the first piece of advice?

Eighteen tips too many for you? Check out this new high-quality video course with the five most important ones. Sign up for free updates and youll get instant access to it:

or keep reading below for all 18.

If you want to lose weight you should start by avoiding sugar and starch (like bread). This is an old idea: For 150 years or more there have been an infinite number of weight-loss diets based on eating less carbs. Whats new is that dozens of modern scientific studies have proven that, yes, low carbis the most effective way to lose weight.

Obviously its still possible to lose weight on any diet just eat less calories than you burn, right? The problem with this simplistic advice is that it ignores the elephant in the room: Hunger. Most people dont like to just eat less, i.e. being hungry forever. Thats dieting for masochists. Sooner or later a normal person will give up and eat, hence the prevalence of yo-yo dieting.

The main advantage of low carb diets is that they cause you to want to eat less. Even without counting calories most overweight people eat far fewer calories on low carb. Sugar and starch may increase your hunger, avoiding it may decrease your appetite to an adequate level. If your body wants to eat an appropriate number of calories you dont need to bother counting them. Thus: Calories count, but you dont need to count them.

A 2012 study also showed that people on a low carb dietburned 300 more calories a day while resting!According to one of the Harvard professors behind the study this advantagewould equal the number of calories typically burned in an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity. Imagine that: an entire bonus hour of exercise every day, without actually doing it.

Bottom line: A low carb diet reduces your hunger and makes it easier to eat less. And it might even increase your fat burning at rest. Study after study show that low carb is the smart way to lose weight and that it improves important health markers.

Do you want to watch a new high-quality 11-minute video course on how to eat low-carb, high-fat (LCHF)? And about the most important things to think about? Sign up for free updates and youll get instant access to it:

Do you want to know more about exactly what to eat on low carb, exactly how to do it, potential problems and solutions and lots of great recipes?

Start here: LCHF for Beginners

Dont be hungry. The most common mistake when starting a low carb diet: Reducing carb intake while still being afraid of fat. The problem is that carbs and fat are the bodys two main energy sources.It needs at least one. Low carb AND low fat = starvation

Avoiding both carbs and fat results in hunger, cravings and fatigue. Sooner or later people cant stand it and give up. The solution is toeat more natural fat until you feel satisfied. For example:

Always eat enough, so that you feel satisfied, especially in the beginning of the weight-loss process.Doing this on a low carb diet means that the fat you eat will be burned as fuel by your body, as your levels of the fat storing hormone insulin will be lowered. Youll become a fat burning machine. Youll lose excess weight without hunger.

Do you still fear saturated fat? Dont. The fear of saturated fat is based on obsolete theories that have beenproven incorrect by modern science. Butter is a fine food. However, feel free to eat mostly unsaturated fat (e.g. olive oil, avocado, fatty fish) if you prefer. This could be called a Mediterranean low carb diet andworks great too.

Eating when hungry also implies something else:If youre not hungry you probably dont need to eat yet. When on a LCHF diet you can trust your feelings of hunger and satiety again. Feel free to eat as many times per day that works best for you.

Some people eat three times a day and occasionallysnackin between (note that frequent snacking could mean that youd benefit from adding fat to your meals, to increase satiety).Some people only eat once or twice a day and never snack. Whatever works for you. Just eat when youre hungry.

Read More about Why Eating When Hungry is Smarter than Counting Calories

On a low-carb diet you should aim to eat when hungry (see tip #2 above). And if youre not hungry? Dont eat. Nothing slows down weight loss more than frequently eating a lot of food that you do not need. This, in fact, is so important that its worth this section of its own.

Unnecessary snacking can be a problem on LCHF too. Some things are easy to eat just because theyre tasty and easily available. Here are three common traps to watch out for on LCHF:

Do you have to eat breakfast? No, of course not. Dont eat if youre not hungry. And this goes for any meal.

On a strict LCHF diet the hunger and urge to eat tends to decrease a lot, especially if you have excess weight to lose. Your body may behappilyburning your fat stores, reducing the need to eat.

If this happens, be happy! Dont fight it by eating food you dont want. Instead wait for the hunger to return before you eat again. This will save you both time and money, while speeding up your weight loss.

Some people fear that they will lose control if they dont eat every three hours, thus making them eat thousands of calories and blowing their diets completely. So they obsessively snack all the time.

This obsessive snacking may be necessary on a diet high in sugar/processed carbs to control hunger cravings, but itsusually completely unnecessary on an LCHF diet. Hunger will only slowly return and youll have plenty of time to prepare food or grab a snack.

To lose weight quickly and sustainably: Eat when youre hungry but only when youre hungry.Forget the clock and listen to your body instead.

Learn more in these videos:

Tracking successful weight loss is sometimes trickier than youd think. Focusing only on weight and stepping on the scale every day might be misleading, cause unnecessary anxiety and undermine your motivation for no good reason.

The scale is not necessarily your friend. You may want to lose fat but the scale measures muscles, bone and internal organs as well. Gaining muscle is a good thing. Thus weight orBMIare imperfect ways to measure your progress. This is especially trueif youre just coming off a long period of semi-starvation (calorie counting), as your body may want to restore lost muscles etc. Starting weight training and gaining muscle can also hide your fat loss.

Losing fat and gaining muscles is great progress, but you may miss this if you only measure your weight. Thus its smart to also track the disappearance of your belly fat, by measuring yourwaist circumference.

Heres how to do it:

Compare your result to these recommendations:

I recommend aiming for excellent but its not always realistic. Young people can usually achieve this, but for some middle-aged or older women it may be a major victory to get all the way to decent.

I suggest measuring your waist circumference and weight before starting and then perhaps once a week or once a month. Write the results down so that you can track your progress.If you want you can measure more areas: around the buttocks, the chest, the arms, legs, etc.

Note that your weight can fluctuate up and down several pounds from day to day, depending on fluid balance and stomach contents: Dont worry about short term changes, instead follow the long-term trend.

If you can, try tocheck other important health markerswhen starting out, like these:

These markers are almost universally improved on a low carb diet, even before major weight loss. Re-checking these health markers after a few months can be great for your motivation astheyll usually showthat youre not just losing weight, youre gaining health too.

PS:Dont have a measuring tape at home? Try these options:

It usually takes years or decades to gain a lot of weight. Trying to lose it all as quickly as possible by starving yourself rarely works well long-term, thats just the recipe for yo-yo dieting. To succeed you need something that works long term.

Its common to lose2-6 pounds (1-3 kg) within the first weekon a strict low carb diet, and then on average aboutone pound (0.5 kg) per week as long as you have a lot of weight remaining to lose.This translates into about 50 pounds (25 kilos) per year.

Every 5 pounds of fat loss roughly equals 1 inch lost around the waist (1 kilo = 1 cm).

Young males sometimes lose weight quicker than this, perhaps twice as fast. Post-menopausal women may lose at a slightly slower pace. People on a very strict low carb diet may lose weight quicker, as well as those who exercise a lot (a bonus). And if you have an enormous amount of excess weight to lose you could start out much faster.

As you get closer to your ideal weight the loss slows, until you stabilize at a weight that your body feels is right. Hardly anyone gets underweight on a low carb diet as long as they eat when hungry.

Examples: Weight loss stories.

Are you coming off a period of semi-starvation (calorie counting)? Focus on your waist circumference and health markers (see advice #4) at first as it sometimes takes several weeks before weight loss is apparent.

Expect weight loss plateaus: Days or weeks where nothing seems to happen on the scale. Everybody hits them. Stay calm. Keep doing what youre doing and eventually things will start happening again (if not, check the other 16 tips).

Losing a lot of weight long-term and keeping it off forever wont happen unless youchange your habits forever. If you lose weight and then return to living exactly the way did when you gained weight, dont be surprised when the excess weight returns. It will.

Maintaining weight loss requires long-term change and patience. If this doesnt seem possible for you, then youre perhaps more interested inone of these magical diet scams.

Forget quick fixes:If you lose some weight every month, eventually youll get rid of all your excess weight.Thats inevitable progress. Thats what you want.

PS:Long-term change is only hard in the beginning, especially during the first couple of weeks.Its like quitting smoking.Once you develop new habits it becomes easier and easier every week. Eventually it comes naturally.

Keep reading!

This is a tip that goes for men as well, of course, but eating fruit is a more common obstacle for women trying to lose weight.

This advice is controversial as fruit has an almost magical health aura today. People may believe that fruit is nutritious butunfortunatelyfruit contains a lot of sugar around 10% by weight (the rest is mostly water). Just taste an orange or a grape. Sweet, right?

Five servings of fruit per day is equivalent to the amount of sugar in 16 ounces of soda (500 ml). Contrary to what many people believe the sugar is more or less identical (about 50% glucose, 50% fructose).

Sugar from fruit can shut down fat burning. This can increase your hunger and slow your weight loss.For best results avoid fruit or enjoy it occasionally as a treat.

Bottom line:Fruit is candy from nature.

Most people believe that fruit is natural, but todays fruit in the supermarket have very little in common with what fruit used to look like before. Theres way more sugar in modern domesticated fruit.

What Fruits and Vegetables Looked like Before

This applies to women too, but men drink more beer on average. Beer contains rapidly digested carbsthat shut down fat burning. Thats why beer is sometimes referred to as liquid bread. Theres a good reason for the term beer belly.

Here aresmarter alcoholic optionsfor losing weight:

These drinks hardly contain any sugar/carbohydrates so theyre better than beer. However, large amounts of alcohol might slow weight loss somewhat, so moderation is still a good idea.

LowCarbAlcohol theBest and the Worst

Many people replace sugar with artificial sweeteners in the belief that this will reduce their calorie intake and cause weight loss. It sounds plausible. Several studies, however, have failed to show any positive effect on weight loss by consuming artificial sweeteners instead of plain sugar.

Instead, according to scientific studies,artificial sweeteners canincrease appetite and maintain cravings for sweet food. And one recent independent study showed that switching drinks with artificial sweeteners to water clearly helped women lose weight:

Study: Avoiding Diet Beverages Helps Women Lose Weight

This could be because the body increases insulin secretion in anticipation that the sugar will appear in the blood. When this doesnt happen, blood sugar drops and hunger increases. Whether this chain of events regularly take place is somewhat unclear. Something odd happened when I tested Pepsi Max though, and there are well-designed studies showing increased insulin when using artificial sweeteners.

Furthermore, artificial sweeteners can maintain an addiction to sweets and lead to snack cravings. And the long term effects of consuming artificial sweeteners are unknown.

Studies claiming to show neutral or positive effects of sweeteners are usually funded by the beverage industry.

By the way, Stevia is marketed as a natural alternative to artificial sweeteners. Thats marketing talk. There is nothing natural abouta processed super-sweet white powder like Stevia.

If youre having trouble losing weight I suggest that you completely avoid sweeteners. As a bonus youll soon start to enjoy the natural sweetness of real food, once youre no longer adapted to the overpowering artificial sweetness of junk food and diet sodas.

23706:35Do you find the idea of avoiding sweeteners almost impossible to imagine? Addiction to sugar and sweet foods is very common, but its possible to become free. Check out our video course with addiction specialist Bitten Jonsson, RN.

Read More about Artificial Sweeteners

Many prescription drugs can stall your weight loss. Discuss any change in treatment with your doctor. Here are the worst three:

These other medications can also cause problems:

Have you ever wished for more hours of sleep, and a less stressful life in general? Most people have and that can be bad news for their weight.

Chronic stress may increase levels of stress hormones such as cortisol in your body. This can cause increased hunger and result in weight gain. If youre looking to lose weight, you should review possible ways to decrease or better handle excessive stress in your life. Although this often demands substantial changes, even altering small things such as posture may immediately affect your stress hormone levels, and perhaps your weight.

You should also make an effort to get enough good sleep, preferably every night. Strive to wake up refreshed of your own accord, independently of the alarm clock. If youre the kind of person who always gets brutally woken up by the alarm ringing, you might never be giving your body adequate rest.

One way to combat this is to go to bed early enough for your body to wake up autonomously before the alarm clock goes off. Letting yourself get a good nights sleep is another way of reducing stress hormone levels.

Sleep deprivation, on the other hand, comes hand in hand with sugar cravings. It also has an adverse effect on self-discipline and makes it painfully easy to give in to temptation (its no coincidence that induced sleep deprivation is a common interrogation technique). Similarly, sleep deprivation weakens your resolve to work out.

Do you have trouble sleeping even if theres ample time for it? Here are five tips from an expert:

Finally, make sure that your bedroom is dark enough, and stays at a pleasant temperature. Sleep well!

Many may find the above guidelines difficult to follow, perhaps because of a lack of time (or the equivalent small children!). But stressing less and sleeping more doesnt just feel good. It can also play a part in helping you get thinner.

Read More About the Benefits of Sleep

See more here:
How to Lose Weight - Diet Doctor

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