If you want to lose weight or stay healthy, in most cases, the most critical factor to consider is your diet. Often, you hear someone say, “I am checking my diet,” which shows why diet is the most important factor to consider in checking our weight.
We can all agree that losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight is not through taking too much of your diet. It is about moderating and taking the minimum calories you need to give the body enough energy and maintain the body’s normal functions. There are two key goals to achieve when we wish to maintain a healthy weight or lose weight: decreasing appetite and increasing metabolism.
How to decrease appetite
Appetite is described as the natural desire to meet the food desires of our bodies. An individual’s appetite dictates what type of food to eat and in what quantities. If you discover that your appetite is more and dictates that you eat more food than your body needs, such appetite can be reduced by examining and addressing the causative issue, it the trigger for appetite. Hence there is no universally agreed way of reducing appetite.
If one is eating more due to anxiety and stress, then avoiding and controlling stress could be helpful through approaches such as mindfulness meditation.
What do the experts say?
A review in 2014 by the National Library of Medicine evidences that mindfulness meditation is an active intervention for emotional eating, binge eating and weight loss.
Other recommended strategies that can be applied to reduce appetite include the following:
- Drinking water before a meal to minimize the urge to eat more
- Chewing thoroughly and taking small bites
- Breathing deeply before a meal to release any tension
- Avoid taking food before you are moderately hungry as opposed to when ravenously hungry.
- Taking your meals in a distraction-free environment such as TVs
As noted earlier, you can achieve your target weight by reducing your appetite or increasing your metabolism rates. Having health with the evidence-backed methods of reducing appetite, we now focus on how to increase metabolism.
What is metabolism
This is the process undertaken by the body to convert the food we eat into energy. Food is combined with oxygen through a respiration process to release energy into the body. Some of the research-backed ways of increasing metabolism rate include the following:
- Working out to build muscle weight. Body muscles require more energy to keep them active than fat. Practical activities include lifting weights and regual exercise.
- Eating frequently. Eating at regular intervals helps keep the body at balance in terms of energy requirements. Going for too long without food is linked to low metabolism rates. Typically, eating small meals while observing a 3-4 hour window is ideal.
- Drinking enough water to keep the body hydrated. Water is critical for the optimal functioning of the body.
- Reduce stress levels. Stress triggers the body to release the cortisol hormone, which drives hunger and yield disordered eating. Unhealthy eating often resulting from high-stress levels can disrupt the normal metabolism rate.
