Change Your Lifestyle to Lose Weight
Welcome back to another of my Top 100 weight loss tips. This post is article number 7 in the series and provides another of my really great tips to help you lose weight.
This post is all about putting yourself into the driving seat when it comes to the way you live your life so that you can better control your own weight loss strategy and make it a success through your own positive way of living.
Weight Loss and Lifestyle
If you've ever wondered about why so many people gain weight in the first place, when our bodies are designed to balance themselves out in an optimum way to maximize health and fitness, then you only have to take a look at their lifestyles to see where the problems lie. Most people, especially in our fast paced Western way of life, have gotten so caught up in their jobs and maintaining a way of life that is high stress and high maintenance that they've forgotten that they're bodies are suffering under the weight of it all.
The result is after eating a bad diet of fast, junk food and getting little or no exercise to at least go some way to burning off the excess calories, followed by weight gain. It's a bad situation because if not checked can spiral out of control and lead to type 2 diabetes and of course obesity.
Getting unnaturally heavier over time also places strain on your heart and circulatory system. The lack of exercise causes muscle wastage and loss of muscle tissue mass which compounds the problem making the body less able to deal with all the extra calories. Which end up being stored as ever more fat.
Make Changes
So the only way to turn this around is by making some lifestyle changes that will go some way to altering your body's state of health without going all out and completely changing your life. Which of course is something that is not open to most people as they have a family, home and place in society to maintain.
So the lifestyle changes you need to make can be partial while allowing your life to continue as it is while at the same time making improvements to your health.
The biggest and most effective changes you can make is in your diet because you don't need to quit your job and move into a cave to eat better!
Instead of eating hamburgers and fries or pizza, or hot dogs etc for lunch every day, switch to weight loss food that incorporate something healthy like salads or home cooked meals made from fresh ingredients. If you can't get them where you work, there are two alternatives.
You can sign up to one of the diet food delivery companies like Nutrisystem, Diet to Go, Jenny Craig or Bistro MD and have them create all your diet meals for you that you can take to work and avoid eating junk food.
Learn to Make Your Own Healthy Food
Or if you don't want to pay out for that kind of service, you can make a week's supply of healthy, low calorie meals yourself at home at the weekend when you have some spare time and freeze them in individual containers. How hard is that?
When you get to work, microwave them or heat those meals up in your workplace's canteen microwave. If there is no way to do that, then make a way! Take on a "can do" attitude when it comes to your diet and you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish in that department!
Exercising
When it comes to exercise, you are going to have to get creative if your job entails spending all day sitting down. It doesn't matter if that means you are behind a desk or at the wheel of a car, taxi, bus or truck or whatever. You need to get more active!
If you drive to work, consider leaving the car at home and cycling if it's not too far. If there is a gym nearby where you work, then use it a lunchtimes for maybe half an hour and then eat a nutritious lunch afterwards. Is there a public pool nearby? Then go do some swimming! If there is an elevator you normally take to your office floor, then take the stairs instead!
There are loads of things you can do to subtly change your lifestyle without making major changes that will help to turn your health around for the better and allow you to lose weight instead of gain it!
100 Weight Loss Tips number 6 follows in the next post!
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Posted on Sun, 06 Dec 2009 in Top 100 Weight Loss Tips | 1 Comments
1 thoughts on "Change Your Lifestyle to Lose Weight"
Matthew says:
I can see how changing your lifestyle can change a lot of things about the way you live your life and if the old way was to eat too much junk food and not exercise enough then the new way should be the opposite. Meaning no more junk and plenty of exercise! Great post, thanks!