Weight Loss: Fact and Fiction

With it being 3 months after January, the majority of the population has either backed out or continued their New Year’s Resolution; the most popular of resolutions being Weight Loss. With it being the most popular, many seem to not know the Fact and Fiction of weight loss. So what are the Facts and Fictions when it comes to losing weight? Let’s start with some facts: 

- Eating a healthy, low fat breakfast is the best option when it comes to losing weight. Breakfast will help you to lose weight and is a better choice than skipping the meal. Skipping it will leave you tired, and may cause you to overcompensate with forbidden foods later in the day. So if you don’t have time to eat breakfast, make time. 

- When eating to lose weight you will need to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. If you love to eat these two foods you are in luck because you can eat as much of them as you like. 

- Exercise! Stretch out your muscles and become very active. A trip to the gym three times a week won’t hurt. Just be sure to somehow fit a workout into your hectic day/night schedule. Whether it’s walking, dancing, sports or any other physical movement it will help you to lose weight. Weight training is also a great idea because it not only increases muscle mass but awaken the metabolism as well. 

- Water flushes your body and is the best thing to drink when dieting. It contains no calories and can be found anywhere and drank any time of the day. 

Now here goes some of the fiction: 

- Most diets recommend that you eat only foods with low calories. Although this is true, you need to be very careful. Studies have shown if a person’s calorie intake drops too low, their metabolism will stop. 

- Fad Diets are not long term solutions, they rely on eliminating or reducing entire food groups, such as fats or carbohydrates, or that are based entirely on consuming large amounts of one type of food (think: grapefruit diet, watermelon diet, soybean diet.) This deprives your body of necessary nutritional elements. In some cases, the body may even conserve fat because it thinks it’s starving. 

- Fiction: “Skipping meals will help me lose weight.” When you skip meals, you don’t give your body the energy it needs to work. Hunger makes you more likely to overeat later on. It’s best to spread your meals throughout the day. Eat at least 3 meals a day. 

- Fiction: “The faster I lose weight, the better.” Rapid weight loss is usually due to loss of water or muscle mass. What you’re trying to get rid of is extra fat. Aim to lose 1/2–2 pounds a week. Then you’re more likely to lose fat rather than water or muscle. 

When losing weight, make sure to understand your fact from your fiction and good luck on your mission to lose weight!