Body composition maintenance over time or loosing unhealthy levels of fat from one's body can be accomplished using healthier strategies. But some people still try to do it using techniques that most if not all health professionals would seriously question.
Besides healthy diet and sound exercise habits, the most scientifically proven way to loose "weight" off of a person's body can be found here: New and Proven Scientific Weight Loss program link
Hope you get the point...
On your own
A few people in this country are motivated enough to maintain a healthier body composition without having to turn to fad diets or extreme exercise routines. They do it through sound healthy lifestyle choices (engaging in physical activity and keeping meals packed with nutrition and smaller portion sizes). But this types of people are in minority (go back and look at the trends in BMI changes in the U.S. from earlier in this course).
But with a little bit of knowledge on your side (which hopefully you are working on this semester), you can do this on your own. However, if you do happen to want to lose a little bit of body fat, try to take the mindset of doing so over a longer (months, not weeks) period of time. If a person happens to lose too much weight off of his/her body in a short period of time, then his/her metabolism will drop... so you'll burn less calories at rest because your brain will think it is starving.
3,500 calories is what a person would need to burn (or reduce caloric intake) to take off 1 pound of fat off of the body.
A safe weight loss if you are just dieting is taking 500 calories out of your daily diet. If you take 500 calories out per day for 7 days in a week, you could lose up to 1 pound per week and not affect your metabolism. So if you were eating 2,500 calories (according to your Food Analysis assignment, for example), then you would find a way to get down to 2,000 calories and stay there for a while. When looking at what you ate, is there anything that you can remove that would be considered "empty calories", such as soda or other sugary drinks? Could you substitute high fat choices (such as mayonaise) with lower fat choices (such as ketchup or mustard)? When people eat healthy, they don't starve... they make better choices.
If you are just exercising, then you could try to add 500 calories of activity to your day (7 days a week would also allow you to lose 1 pound per week). This extra 500 calories could come from exercising. It could come from taking stairs instead of the elevator. It could come from walking from class to class (instead of driving). It could come from walking whilst you work (see the NEAT video from a module before this one in section 9).
But if you cut 500 calories out of your AND you exercise (engage in more physical activity) for 500 more calories per day. Then a safe weight lose, where your metabolism is not affected would be 2 pounds per week.
Here is a recent video that may provide additional information of how to eat the same amount of food but still lose weight:
Lifestyle Factors
Eating Habits
Limit total number of calories by portion control.
Usually this can be accomplished by reducing portion sizes and reducing fat calories. The reason we say reduce portion sizes is because your body has a twenty minutes window from the time you start eating until the time you feel full. That is, you can eat a ton of food within a short period of time and not feel full because your cells in your body won’t tell your brain to stop eating for at least twenty minutes after you put the first bite of food in your mouth.
... and by slowing down
At the same time you limit your portion size, you should also slow down. By slowing down, you’ll eat less food in the same amount of time and, therefore, less calories. Many diet clinics preach this practice of slowing down, some even take it to an extreme by asking clients to pick up his or her fork, stab their food, put the food in their mouth, put the fork down, and then chew and you are not allowed to pick the fork up until all the food in your mouth has been swallowed.
Fat and Simple Sugar Calories
Besides the portion sizes and slowing down, also cut down on the number of fat calories and sugar calories because both of those will most likely get stored as fat in the body. One way to cut down on sugar is to stop ingesting sugary drinks with every meal. If you have some kind of juice for breakfast, soda at lunch, soda at dinner, ice tea, lemonade, etc, then you take in a ton of simple sugars that will get stored as fat in your body.
Limit total protein
A person also needs to limit protein intake, as discussed in the material from last week, due an the excess amount of protein taken in through the diet will be stored as fat on the body.
Small, more frequent meals
And finally, in the other presentation this week, it was stated that you burn calories when you eat, so why not take advantage of that. We have been trained to eat 3 square meals a day for our whole lives, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead of burning calories during only three meals a day, why not eat three planned, smaller meals during the day plus planned snacks and burn more calories throughout the whole day. What you could do is to take something out of your breakfast that you would normally eat and have it as a snack between breakfast and lunch. Then take something out of your lunch and have it as a snack between lunch and dinner. That way, you don’t have to stop eating to help with weight control, you just spread your calorie burn from eating throughout the entire day.
Physical Activity and Exercise
Besides Diet and eating habits, we also have to pay attention to our physical activity levels, which we have discussed extensively during this course. But when you get out into the working world, you have to become an informed consumer because people will try and sell you anything, anywhere, anytime. And if you don’t pay attention to the small print or you don’t research what you are getting, you can be taken for a ride.
Guidelines for Healthy Weight Management
Assess motivation and commitment
First you have to assess your level of motivation and commitment to staying healthy. For those of you who lack the motivation now, what is it going to take to get you motivated? Your first heart attack at age 40?
Set reasonable goals (both short and longer term goals)
Assess your current energy balance
You can assess your current energy balance. You have already or will complete the energy intake part of the energy balance equation by completing the Food Analysis assignment. To calculate the energy output, you could email me to provide you with the equation that calculates how many calories you are burning during the day.
Increase levels of physical activity
To help with this latter half of the energy balance equation, you could always try to increase your physical activity anywhere possible, whether through exercise or increases in moderate physical activity.
Make changes in diet and eating habits
We discussed in length a few diet and eating habits that can help with weight maintenance. But even with all of this talking that I am doing, if you don’t put your plan into action, you might end up as a typical American who succumbs to creeping obesity, or adding a pound or two to your body weight each year. Just image being your parents age and weighing about 25 to 50 pounds more than you do now. That is a typical American after he or she graduates from college, they add weight to their bodies and don’t pay any attention to it. Don’t believe me, go ask both of your parents how much they weighed when they were in college, then ask them how much they weigh now. After they slap you silly for such a question, find out their current weight and see if they gave into creeping obesity. For many of them the answer is that they have.