Fat Loss Tips.

If you want to lose weight effectively and with a lasting effect, it needs three things: You need to eat healthier. You need to be more physically active. And you mustn’t limit all this to a few weeks but must make it a permanent part of your life. Losing weight is to a big extent about changing your habits.

Any additional physical activity you take up will help you to lose weight, but some support your body in a special way, for example muscle building training. If your state of health allows it, it’s a good idea to include some muscle building activities into your exercise program. The reason: Muscles are excellent calorie burners. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, and the more weight you lose. And of course, you also burn calories when building these muscles.

Muscle building and carbohydrates

It takes more to build muscles than simply exercising them. If you want them to grow, you need to feed them properly. To grow, your muscles need energy, and this energy comes from carbohydrates. Yes, carbohydrates are not enemy number one of weight loss. In fact, they are a very important energy source of our body.

Complex carbohydrates on the other hand are absorbed and metabolized slower, forming a steady source of energy that keeps us running longer. They are low in fat and keep our blood sugar level fairly constant, whereas simple carbohydrates make it rise and drop quickly, causing huge fluctuations.

The problem is that we often eat too many simple carbohydrates. These give us a quick energy boost but are metabolized quickly. This energy doesn’t last very long. And if you eat more simple carbohydrates than you burn, the excess ones are stored as fat.

How to effectively use muscle building and carbohydrates for weight loss?

To effectively grow your muscles and make them help you to lose weight, you need to eat the right carbohydrates at the right time:

• complex carbohydrates before exercising
• simple carbohydrates after exercising

Both types of carbohydrates are important.

1. Complex carbohydrates before exercising

Eat more foods high in complex carbohydrates in general and especially before exercising. They are stored in your body, and when you exercise, they are converted to energy. Complex carbohydrates will give you the energy you need for the exercises.

Some foods rich in complex carbohydrates:

• grains (wheat, buckwheat, rye, barley)
• whole grain products (whole grain bread, cereals or pasta)
• legumes (lentils, dried beans)
• potatoes
• rice
• corn
• bananas

2. Simple carbohydrates after exercising

After exercising, your glycogen level is quite down and needs to be replenished quickly. On the one hand, you now need a quick boost of energy to recover from the exertion. On the other hand, you need to raise your insulin level so that nutrients are absorbed faster by your cells, feeding your muscles and helping them to build new tissue, in other words: to grow. And the best and quickest way to raise your insulin level is to eat simple carbohydrates.

Don’t go for chocolate or cookies now. Choose healthy simple carbohydrate foods which also contain fiber and many other nutrients:

• apples
• black-, cran-, rasp- or strawberries
• citrus fruits
• kiwis
• cherries
• peaches
• melons
• plums
• pears

So, start building your muscles! You can go for a specific training program in the gym. If you don’t like this kind of exercising, remember that there are many sports that include heavy muscle activity. Riding a bicycle, for example, is a great exercise for your leg muscles. But no matter which method you choose to build your muscles, don’t forget to feed them the right fuel so that they can grow: mainly grains and whole grain products for lasting energy and endurance, and some fruit after the exercise to replenish your glycogen level and improve nutrient absorption. This way, you can lose weight faster and easier, but still in a healthy way.

The battle against overweight seems to be a never-ending story for many. Crash diets promise fast weight loss in a short time without much effort, but if they work it’s only a temporary solution to the problem and more often than not the weight comes back after a while. The reason for this is simple: They don’t teach you how to eat right. And you can’t stick to them for a lifetime.

If you not only want to successfully lose weight but also keep it off, there mustn’t be a turning back to your old style of eating after a diet. You need to change your eating habits – permanently. Many of us are not prepared to make all these sacrifices. We don’t want to give up the foods we love. The secret of changing your diet for successful and healthy weight loss is to focus on making the meals you eat healthier rather than banning foods or even food groups from your diet. This will ensure a way of eating you can grow old with and that ensures you get all the nutrients you need.

Three key principles of making your favorite meals healthier are:

• Reducing calories  
• Adding healthy foods
• Adapting portion sizes

Reducing calories  

If you want to lose weight, you need to cut down on calories, namely fat and carbohydrates.

• Fat has the highest content of calories and is therefore the first thing to be reduced. You can easily do that by swapping dairy products (e.g. milk, cheese, yoghurt) for their low-fat or fat-free versions. Ricotta for example is a good low-fat replacement for mascarpone. Use low-fat margarine and spreads. Reduce the amount of oil you use when cooking, and preferably use olive or rape-seed oil which are the healthiest oils.
• To reduce carbohydrates, cut down on sugar. Use natural sweeteners like honey instead. Naturally sweet foods like sweet potatoes, fresh or dried fruit can also help reducing the sugar amount in your meals. Use only small amounts of dried fruit as they contain more calories than the same amount of fresh fruit. Further, swap your carbs for complex carbohydrates: whole grain bread and cereals, brown rice, whole wheat pasta. These will keep you going for longer as they are absorbed gradually over a longer period, and they are less likely to be stored as fat.

Add healthy foods

Fruits and vegetables are great providers of important nutrients, and because most of them are low in calories you don’t have to worry so much about how much you eat. Try the following: 

• Top up your favorite meals by smuggling some fruit or vegetables in.
• Serve vegetables along with your meal as a side dish.
• Alternately, you could serve a vegetable soup as a starter or fruit as a dessert. Fruit purees are easy to make and a great addition to any ice-cream. Fruit goes excellent in chocolate cream or trifles.

Adapt portion sizes

Nowadays, our portion sizes have often grown out of proportion. Listen to your body to find out how much (or rather: how little) food you really need. Serve smaller portions, eat them slowly and enjoy them. Your body needs about twenty minutes to notify you that you had enough food, so give it a chance. If you are still hungry afterwards, you can always have more.

As you can see, you don’t need to ban your favorite dishes to lose weight. Follow the outlined principles to make them as healthy as possible, and the foods that remain high in calories you just keep for occasional treats. If you eat healthy most of the time, some sweets once in a while won’t make you fat.