Eating a balanced and nutritious diet and engaging in physical activity is the best way to stay healthy and fit. To maintain a stable weight, your energy output should be balanced with your energy intake. If you use energy more than you store and consume, you will lose weight. Meanwhile, if your energy intake is more than you use, you will gain weight.
The sensible approach to losing excess weight is to make changes in your eating habits. These changes should be things that you can manage and maintain as part of your daily lifestyle – that way it will help you get rid of the excess weight and keep it off.
The following are some pointers that can help you start off your journey to weight loss.
Avoid skipping meals
Skipping meals is not recommended. Whenever you skip meals, you may find yourself eating more you should when you do eat. To make sure you are safely losing weight, you can consult a general practitioner (GP), a dietitian or nutritionist before starting a diet regime.
Do not overeat
Studies have shown that the stomach will stretch if large individual meals are eaten which could lead to eating more than you need before you start feeling "full''. It is important to only eat what is only necessary.
If overeating is a problem for you, think about when and why you overeat. The following are some of the factors that can lead to weight gain or overeating:
- A night eater
- A social eater
- An emotional eater
If you can avoid unplanned or habitual eating and stick to planned eating, this will help you to lose weight. Emotional or night eating leads to overeating. If you are an emotional eater, you should look for healthy ways to cope with stress and emotional upsets.
A healthier approach to food
Making a few changes in your eating habits can help you lose excess body fat. You can lose body fat if you:
- Avoid yoyo diets
- Eat a wide variety of foods from all food groups such as wholegrain bread and cereals, vegetables, fruit, dairy, and meat, fish and legumes
- Increase your fruit and vegetable intake, especially vegetables,
- Reduce your intake of foods that are high in added fat, sugar and salt
- Reduce your intake of processed foods
- Exercise
- Cut down on saturated fats and alcohol
- Replace sugary drinks with water
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