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This is the continuation of the previous Fitness Forum column that will unveil the second part of the ten easy steps to weight loss. In case you forgot, the first five are as follows: don’t skip breakfast, eat five to six small meals each day, bring leftovers home, get plenty of sleep, and avoid consuming excessive amounts of alcohol. Below are the second five steps you need to complete your journey. 1) Drink plenty of water daily. In general, most people don’t consume enough water on a daily basis in part because they’re just not aware of what their body requires, or because they’re under the misconception that sodas, flavored drinks, and other beverages meet their daily water requirements simply because they are made mostly of water. Unfortunately, any other beverage other than water itself isn’t treated as water by the body. Try to get yourself into a healthy habit of drinking plain, good old-fashioned water either bottled or filtered, but without additives. Once you develop a taste for it, water is pretty good! You should be drinking about half your body weight in ounces a day. In other words, if you weight 160 pounds, you should drink approximately 80 ounces each day. This may sound like a lot, but it’s just a little more than three 24 oz bottles of Arrowhead. 2) Whenever possible, order from the light menu when going out to eat. The majority of foods in the average restaurant are cooked with fats, oils, or sauces to make them more palatable to American standards. Over time, most people have gotten used to them and feel that a meal is bland if not prepared with these unhealthy additives. But just like anything else, you can adjust over time. Eventually healthy foods will taste just as good to you as the unhealthy ones once did. You will probably even get to a point when a meal high in fat (like a fast-food burger) will upset your stomach. 3) Avoid fried foods and foods high in sugar content—if it tastes too good to be true, then it probably is. Aside from offering very little nutritional value, foods high in sugar cause your blood insulin levels to skyrocket due to the sugar surge, often leaving you feeling tired. In addition, they really pack in the calories. And fried foods simply pack in too many fat calories along with saturated fats. It may surprise you to find out just how many calories a given dessert contains, which brings us to the next step. 4) Read food labels. Often times a person deceives himself/ herself into thinking that the food they are consuming is healthy, or at minimum “not bad” for them. Since our serving sizes have increase dramatically over the past decade, what was once deemed a serving has grown exponentially. So read the label a little closer to be sure that the one cup serving of 150 calories is truly that. You may be surprised to find out that the serving size you are about to consume is closer to 2 ½ or maybe even 3 cups. 5) Keep a journal of your food intake. This is simpler than it sounds and can consist of daily amounts, frequency, and general consistency of food and drink only, rather than the more detailed descriptions of calories and nutrients. The goal here is simply make you more aware of what you are putting into your body on a regular basis. You may be surprised when at the end of the week you’re reading over your diary and that “weekly” serving of dessert somehow ballooned into 3 desserts in a one week period. Hopefully this sheds a little light on losing weight and simplifies the steps in the process. You don’t have to be a nutritionist to eat right, it just takes some good, common sense. So give these tips a try and see the outcome for yourself. After all, what do you have to lose! ©Melissa Allen, Optimum Condition. Melissa is a certified personal trainer, Blackbelt & fitness consultant, as well as the owner of Optimum Condition—custom fitness services and mobile personal training. She is a self-syndicated columnist who welcomes input from her readers, so please contact her with any questions or comments by calling (619) 252-4993, or visit her website at www.OptimumCondition.com.
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