By reading this you would learn how you can lose excess body weight
- Without going to gym
- Without buying expensive / exotic food & supplements
- Without calculating calories obsessively
- In a practical and sustainable way
- By making small changes to your life style
What Causes Overweight?
To lose weight, you need to understand how you gained it in the first place. When you eat more food than you need, it will be converted into fat and stored for future use. This fat makes you heavier. When you eat less food than required, this stored fat will be burned and used by the body. This makes you lighter.
Fundamentally, you should take less food than required and work out more to lose weight.
How To Lose Weight?
Measure Your Weight Every Morning
Every morning, when your stomach is empty after you just come out of washroom, measure your weight. Note it down and compare with the previous day’s, week’s measurement. By following the below tricks, you would lose significant weight every week. If you are not losing, find out what you are not doing correctly.
Don’t skip this step, as you cannot control what you don’t measure.
Reduce Your Stomach’s Capacity, Instead of Controlling the Appetite
Stop eating before you feel full, and eat again later if required.
The brain senses it when the stomach is about 100% full and sends a signal which makes you feel full and stop eating. But if you still continue eating, the stomach stretches.
If you regularly take 10% more food, your stomach easily stores 110% of it’s capacity by stretching. The brain also adapts to it and makes you stop eating when the stomach is 110% full. So, you always eat 10% extra food and gain extra weight.
For example, if your stomach’s normal capacity is 4 roti but you usually eat 5 roti. You are always stretching your stomach and you feel full only when eat that extra roti. Every time you eat that extra roti, you gain extra weight.
Bariatric surgery for weight-loss, which many celebrities undergo, is based in similar principle. Here doctors surgically restrict stomach’s capacity to about 25% by using staples and bands. After the surgery, a person feels full just by eating 25% of what he normally eats. As food consumption is reduced, he/she loses weight. Such surgeries are expensive and have side-effects. But we can make use of the underlying principle without undergoing any bariatric surgery.
Always stop eating when the stomach is about 85% full and eat the remaining 15% food 30 to 40 mins later, if required at all.
Let’s take the example of roti again. Instead of eating 5 roti at once, first eat just 3 roti and stop. You feel slightly hungry because you ate 1 less than your stomach’s capacity and 2 less than what you generally eat. Still, you can stop at 3 comfortably as there is some food in your stomach. After 30 to 40 minutes, a portion of what you already had would be partly digested and out of your stomach. Now eat the remaining 1 or 2 roti, if you are hungry.
When you ate 3 roti, your stomach is just 75% full. When you ate the remaining food 40 mins. later, your stomach is not more than 85% full as previously consumed food would have been partly digested.
With this trick your stomach is never more than 85% full. Do this for a few weeks, your brains adapts and you feel full when the stomach is just 85% full. You don’t even feel like eating the 2nd set of two roti. Your stomach will be lighter.
Let’s improve it! Many are not comfortable with sitting for the 2nd breakfast/lunch. Instead of the 2nd set of two roti, one can eat fruits & vegetables (bananas, apples, carrots, cucumber etc.) after 40 min. With this, you are not just reducing total food intake, but also having a variety of food. Fruits and vegetables are anyway healthy. Each fruit and vegetable has its unique benefits. The more variety you eat the better.
Fill The Stomach Cleverly
You can feel full by eating just one apple or, instead, a glass of juice made of two apples. It means you get double the calories (and weight) by drinking juice instead of the fruit directly as you need more liquid (juice) to fill the stomach than solid (fruit). Also, liquids need less digestion and are absorbed quickly, which make a feel hungry faster again.
Similarly, you can eat 3 roti or, instead, just 2 ½ roti with good amount of curry (made of vegetables, pulses, beans etc.). the latter offers low calories, more protein & fibre than the former. Instead of 3 plain dosa, you can eat 2 onion dosa. If you eat rice, try to eat it with as much vegetable curry as possible so that your total rice intake reduces as you are filling the stomach with vegetable curry. Vegetable sambhar is also helps lose weight easily as you tend to consume less rice since vegetables in sambhar make you full easily.
Instead of eating 5 roti at once, eating 2 ½ roti, with vegetable curry and another set of roti / fruit / vegetable with 30 to 40 mins. gap would make you lose a lot weight without having to control your appetite.
Roti is just an example, you can apply these tricks to any food you eat.
Eat Fiber Rich Food
Many fruits, vegetables (bananas, apples, carrots etc.) have good amount of fiber. Your body doesn’t get any calories / weight from fiber as human beings cannot absorb or digest fiber. So, fiber fills your stomach, satisfies your hunger without adding any calories/weight. Fiber also helps control blood sugar levels and get rid of constipation.
Instead of eating fully polished white rice, eat semi-polished rice with millets as they have more fiber.
Increase Physical Activities
Physical activity helps you burn fat and keeps your body fit.
- Take steps instead of lift whenever possible.
- For shorter distances, ride a cycle or go by walk, instead of using a bike or car.
- Learn swimming and dancing.
- Play sports that you like (badminton, cricket, tennis, volleyball etc.)
- If your profession requires you to sit for long duration, drink more water so that every once in a while, you tend to get up, WALK to washroom.
- While talking on phone, at least stand up or walk to-and-fro in your place. You might spend 30 to 40 mins in a day on phone.
Additional Information
- Every 1 kg weight you lose, decreases the force on your knees by 3 to 4 kgs.
- A significant portion of chronic problems (BP, diabetes) etc. are due to overweight.
- Don’t eat when you are not hungry. Don’t starve yourself, when you need food.
- Eat smaller pizza, smaller chocolate, smaller burger instead of bigger alternatives (read diminishing marginal utility for food)
- Don’t take tea / coffee / ice cream / fruits / juice / desserts immediately after breakfast/lunch/dinner. Give at least 30 to 40 mins break. Otherwise, your stomach stretches and you get used to eat more that your stomach’s normal capacity.
- Eat in smaller plates, you tend to consume less.
- Some weight-loss programs rely on starving you unnaturally and providing essential nutrients in the form of supplements (tablets / powders). They offer temporarily solution only, with serious side-effects.
- Obesity runs in families. If your parents or siblings are obese, you are more likely to be obese. This is not always due to genetics. Your family members and you usually have similar food habits and life style.
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