Weight loss | Lose weight sensibly

Problems on being overweight: An overweight person, apart from looking unattractive, may face a number of other problems too:

Being overweight can actually be due to some internal disease, most commonly this is hormonal — diabetes, adrenal gland problems and abnormalities of the ovaries.

People who are overweight have an increased chance of developing skin infections, especially fungal infections.

High blood pressure and heart attacks are more frequent in the obese.

So not only for looking good, but also being fit, it is necessary for you to lose excess weight

Counting calories: 

All the food you eat is a source of energy and can fatten you, but some foodstuffs are more fattening than others. For instance, weight for weight, fats are more fattening than both carbohydrates and proteins. Calories are a simple way to measure, how much energy and how much fattening potential your foods contain. Foodstuffs differ in their caloric content because of two reasons: firstly they contain Varying amount of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates and secondly, they contain different amounts of water, an ingredient which truly has zero calories. Similarly, the energy you spend when working or exercising can be measured in calories. So the simple basis of a ‘calori control’ diet would be to limit your calori intake. Your body will then have to draw upon the fat stores to fill the energy gap and you would begin to lose weight.

Lose weight sensibly: 

The safest and the most effective way of slimming is to lose weight slowly. Crash diets should be avoided as they often fail. This is simply because they just cannot be sustained. Moreover crash dieting can adversely affect your beauty, making you look haggard. An advantage of a gradual diet control, is that your taste in foods can be adjusted over a reasonable period of time so that the craving for certain food items is reduced.

An average woman spends about 2,300 calories a day. If you want to reduce your weight, you should aim to eat about 1,200-1,300 calories daily. If you persistently eat about 1,000 Calories less every day, your body will have to make up the short fall, by using up about 100 grams of your body fat daily. So in about ten days you would be able to lose a kilo of your weight. On this diet you should not expect a rapid loss of weight. It may take you sometime to lose the desired weight. Even though it would be slow, if you are steady in your diet control you are sure to be a winner.

 Avoid high protein foods for lose weight

There is a popular notion that protein-rich foods are not fattening. This is absolutely a myth. Proteins actually provide the same number of calories per gram as carbohydrates and so are equally fattening. But protein-rich foods, do not leave the stomach as quickly as carbohydrates, so they tend to satisfy your appetite for longer periods of time and you do not feel hungry quickly. It is for this very reason that a serving of mutton appears to be far more filling than a bowl of cereal and sugar.

Cut down on fat for weight loss

Since fats contain more than twice as many Calories to a gram as carbohydrates and proteins, a low fat diet would seem a very sensible way to cut down on the calories in your daily meals. But this is only going to help you, if you make sure that the rest of your diet does not run out of control. The danger here lies in the fact that when you cut out on the fatty bit of your meals, you tend to feel hungry much sooner and if you succumb to your hunger-pangs, you might well end up eating more snacks, sweets and other foods before your next meal is due. This can ruin your diet program..

We consume a large amount of fat in our diet; actually 40% of our daily calorie intake is derived from fats. Half of this, is visible as the oil we cook our food in, the ghee on our paranthas and the butter we spread on the breakfast bread. The other half, however, is not so obvious: the margarine present in the cakes and biscuits, the fatin a boiled egg and the cream in our morning cup of tea or coffee.

It is really not too difficult to reduce the fat content of a normal meal to about 25% — removing the cream from your morning cup of milk, banishing fried items off the menu and avoiding ghee on the chappatis.

Diet plan for weight loss:

For general calculations it is good to know the caloric values of the items of foods which are consumed routinely — these values are given in Table 

Table : 

Caloric values of common dietary items 

Milk (1 glass skimmed) :                  70 calories 

Tea (1 cup + 1/2 teaspoon sugar):     20 calories 

Egg (1 boiled) :                                 80 calories 

Cottage cheese (25 g) :                     70 calories 

Bread (1 large slice) :                       75 calories 

Chappati (1 medium sized) :            85 calories 

Rice (1 helping of 25 g) :                 87 calories 

Seasonal vegetables:                        35 calories 

Dal (1 helping):                                80 calories 

Fruit :                                               40 calories

  (1 helping 100 g except mangoes, grapes,

      bananas and chiku): 

Curd (1 helping of 125 g):               75 calories 

Cold drinks (1 bottle):                      80 calories 

Oil ( 1 teaspoon) :                            45 calories 

Sugar (1 teaspoon):                          20 calories

An effective diet for reducing weight normally contains about 1,200 calories. An example of such a diet is given below. There is a balance of carbohydrates (193 g), Proteins (48 g) and fats (24 g) in this diet and it contains adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals too. 

Breakfast: 1 cup tea,1 slice bread or 1 idli or 3 tablespoons of cooked porridge 1 egg or 25 g cottage cheese 

Lunch : 1 cup soup 2 chappatis or 2 helpings of cooked rice 1 helping of dal 1 helping of seasonal vegetables 1 helping of curds 1 helping of fruits 

Evening snack Dinner: 1 cup tea or coffee 2 chappatis or 2 helpings of cooked rice or 2 helpings of noodles 1 helping of meat, fish or dal 1 helping of seasonal vegetables Plenty of green salads.

 While on a weight loss diet there are certain foods you must avoid: 

1. All fried foods: puris, pakoras, samosas, paranthas.  

2. All sweets: honey, ice-creams, cakes, pastries, jams, chocolates, candies. 

3. Dry fruits andnuts: peanuts, almonds, cashewnuts. 

4. All alcoholic drinks. 

5. Fruits: bananas, chiku, grapes, mangoes. 

6. Vegetables: potatoes, arbi and other tubers. 

Foods which you can eat as much as desired without causing any problems in weight loss diet. 

1. Salads: carrots, radish, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, lettuce. 

2. Drinks: clear soups, lemon juice, jaljeera, butermilk.

Cellulite: Definition, causes, prevention and treatment