Weight Loss Truths: Things you should understand before start !

1. You have to exercise more than you think.

Getting at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week is great for improving heart health and staying active, but research indicates that those looking to lose weight or maintain weight loss have to do more—about twice as much.

In other words, things like taking the stairs, walking to the store, and gardening are great ways to boost activity level, but losing serious weight means exercising regularly for an hour or so.

2. A half-hour walk doesn’t equal a brownie.

It’s easy to underestimate how many calories some foods contain, it’s also easy to overestimate how many calories we burn while exercising.

Even if you exercise a fair amount, it’s not like you can eat whatever you want.

Although exercise does burn calories during and after exercise, you should be clear about the fact that for substantially reducing body weight nutritional modifications are also necessary and spending calories exercising will have limited results.

In other words, to lose weight, you have to cut calories and increase exercise.

3. Eating more of something won’t help you lose weight.

This idea—that eating more of a certain type of product will help you lose weight is in direct opposition to the basic idea behind weight loss—that we have to eat less, not more.

4. Simple Calories in = calories out won’t do!!!

The type of calories we eat matters and avoiding certain types helps to lose or prevent weight.

As logical sense would tell us, drinking 500 calories of soda is not equal to eating 500 calories of fruits and vegetables. One is simply “empty” calories, provides no real nutritional benefit and don’t do much to combat hunger. Whether you ascribe to the simple idea of trying to burn more calories than you take in or focus on avoiding certain types of calories, you want to minimize intake of empty calories, and maximize nutrient-dense calories.

5. Your body is always working against you.

Most people have noticed that it’s hard to lose weight, but easy to gain it. This is a relic of harder times, when food was not as abundant as it is today. Our genetic taste buds made energy-dense food desirable because it was necessary to pack away calories so we could make it through the thin times. We feasted when we could, in preparation for the famine.

But now that we live in a time of abundance, that system predisposes many of us for weight gain and retention. And for obese dieters, this system is even harder to overcome; after weight loss, they become better at storing fat, making it harder to keep weight off.



6. Our cultural environment.

It’s hard for people to come to a healthy sense of themselves given the cultural climate, and nutritious and pleasurable options for healthy food are not as easily accessible as less nutritious ones.

That doesn’t mean this can’t be overcome, but it does require maybe putting other parts of your life on a “diet.” like fast food restaurants, a bad-influence friend, or driving, which may help increase walking and biking.



7. Maybe you don’t need to lose weight.

It’s true that people can be fit and healthy and not necessarily be thin, just as it’s true that thin people may not necessarily be healthy. Good health, rather than weight, should be our focus; too often, it’s not.

Striving for an unhealthy level of thinness may be detrimental to our health, but understanding the health repercussions of obesity is also critical.



8. This is not a diet; this is your life.

We are made to think that we can lose weight fast, and that’s that. But most people who maintain their weight understand that eating and exercising are not temporary conditions, to be dumped once a pair of jeans fit. Instead, they are lifestyle choices, and ones to be made for the long haul.