Excess fat is damaging on both a physical and psychological level. It hurts your joints, bones, tendons, self-esteem, and spirit. At the office of James B DeStephens in Gainesville, FL, we strongly believe that everyone is capable of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight for his or her height. With real weight loss solutions, you can achieve anything.
Your Comprehensive Guide to Real Weight Loss Solutions
Eat Fewer Carbs
All weight loss solutions worth their salt will include this simple piece of advice. To lose weight fast, you need to cut carbs now. For one thing, quick carbs spike your blood sugar and cause a subsequent rapid crash. You start to feel ill and know that eating more carbs will make you feel better.
You get stuck in this vicious cycle of eating quick carbs throughout the day. This results in excess calorie consumption which causes fat gain. Moreover, carbs act as a sponge. For every gram of carbohydrates you eat, your body retains three to four grams of water. When your body burns four calories from stored carbs, you lose four to five grams in weight.
Eat More Protein
Some people find it easy to cut carbs for a day or two. They purge all the chips, cookies, and breakfast bars from their pantries and they are left with no temptation. Unfortunately, removing temptation from your home isn’t quite enough to lose weight successfully. Hunger will still strike if you don’t fuel your body with healthy foods.
Both protein and carbohydrates contain four calories per gram. However, protein is much harder for your body to break down. This means you will feel fuller for far longer, even when you compare slow carbs to fast protein. By giving your body the fuel it needs, you will most likely find that you’re not tempted to reach for quick fuel. If you still have cravings, try CBD oil.
Take CBD Oil
Many people find CBD oil, also known as cannabidiol oil, to be an important part of their weight loss journey. It affects the endocannabinoid system in the brain, regulating everything from your mood to your appetite. By stopping panic attacks in their tracks, it prevents you from stress eating. By controlling your appetite, it helps you make healthier food choices.
By easing everything from joint pain to muscle pain, it makes you more inclined to exercise. You can spend less time recovering from your last work out and more time planning how you are going to crush it in the gym tomorrow. Then you can enjoy your execution and go home feeling great about your accomplishments and motivated to work even harder the next day.
Drink More Water
Most people need to drink around half a gallon of water per day to stay hydrated. Active people in Gainesville usually need around a gallon of water daily to stay hydrated. Adequate hydration is important to keeping your metabolism revved, breaking down fat, building muscle, keeping your energy levels high, and curbing cravings and appetite.
We strongly encourage you to track how much water you drink on a typical day. If you fall short of a gallon of water daily, use an app on your phone to remind you to drink eight ounces of water per hour for 16 hours. If you find water to taste too boring, you can unsweetened coffee or tea or try adding lime to your water. Just don’t reach for the soda.
Go for a Walk
You don’t have to run, bike, and swim for two hours a day to lose weight fast. The most important of all weight loss solutions to remember is consuming fewer calories than your body burns, every day, until you hit your ideal weight. However, doing some cardio will help you see results a lot faster.
Glycogen is a polysaccharide that is essentially one gram of carbs combined with three or four grams of water. A carb has four calories. Even when you ignore water lost by respiration and perspiration, if you burn 100 calories on a walk, you’ve burned 25 grams of carbs and released 75 to 100 grams of stored water. This is incredibly significant.
Pump Some Iron
Performing at least 2.5 hours of cardiovascular exercise per week is essential for everyone’s health. Unfortunately, it is only one piece of the weight loss puzzle. When people talk about wanting to lose weight, what they really want is to lose fat. One of the best ways to lose fat and keep it off is to build muscle.
Muscle is magnitudes more metabolically active than fat. This means you can consume more calories and maintain your weight because your body simply needs more calories. To build muscle, lift weights. It doesn’t matter if you perform fewer repetitions with heavier weights or more repetitions with lighter weights. Overloading your muscles will result in muscle gain.
Receive Weekly Vitamin B12 Injections
Receiving weekly vitamin B12 injections is one of the most important steps in your quick weight loss program journey. Vitamin B12 is responsible for over a dozen physical and psychological functions, including mood regulation, motivation, fat metabolism, protein metabolism, and hunger.
People with a vitamin B12 deficiency may feel depressed, anxious, angry, lethargic, fatigued, apathetic or hungry. This deficiency can make workouts seem so daunting that they just don’t get done. People may eat out of boredom, stress, or depression. It’s just a terrible cycle that can be avoided simply by coming in once a week for an intramuscular injection.
Weigh Yourself Every Monday Morning
One of the most significant pitfalls to solutions is daily weigh-ins. When you cut carbs, your body flushes out an inordinate amount of water. When you perspire during exercise, you lose a lot of water. All of this water loss results in a rapid weight loss program on the scale.
Once you’re done flushing out all the excess water weight in your body, weight loss on the scale slows. Many people find this to be so discouraging that they give up on a successful quick weight loss program. To mitigate this, weigh yourself only on Monday mornings after using the restroom and before eating breakfast.
Use a Spreadsheet
Weighing yourself only once a week goes a long way in keeping you from feeling discouraged. But what will keep you motivated to stay the proven course? Observing trends. Use Google Sheets or similar spreadsheet software to track your weekly weight. Use the A column to track the dates and the B column to track your weight. Then, create a graph of your data.
If seeing your weight decrease every week isn’t motivating enough, add a trendline to your graph. To do this in Google Sheets, highlight the chart and click the drop-down arrow in the top right corner. Select “Advanced edit’, then select a linear trendline at the bottom of the “Customize” tab. This way, even if you “gain weight” one week, you can see that the process works.
Be Kind to Yourself
You wouldn’t be mean to your best friend because she was retaining water and the scale did not reflect quick weight loss for the week. You wouldn’t belittle her if the scale reflected an “increase” one week. Treat yourself with the same kindness, love, and respect. This is particularly important at the beginning of your weight loss journey.
Even if you are losing three to 12 pounds a week, it can take two to three months to see an improvement in the mirror. Whether you see a change in the mirror or not, be as kind to yourself as you would be to your partner, sibling, or best friend. If you are down on yourself, you may feel so discouraged that you engage in self-destructive behaviors.
Don’t Just Track Your Weight
The number on the scale is just one data set you should track on your weight loss journey. While it is the most commonly tracked data set, it should by no means be the only metric you track. We strongly encourage our clients to measure the circumference of certain body parts, such as the thighs, waist, hips, chest, neck, wrists, and upper arms.
There are online calculators that allow you to use such measurements to help you calculate your body fat percentage. Your body fat percentage is a much more useful indicator of health than your BMI once you fall into a healthy weight range for your height. It can also be a great motivator.
Log Your Workouts
There will be Mondays that you weigh yourself and the scale won’t reflect any weight loss. That same week, you may find that the circumference measurements you’re taking aren’t budging. You may not feel motivated to stay the course by visualizing your weight loss with graphs. To get you out of your funk, review your fitness progress.
We strongly encourage our clients to keep a log of their workouts. If you walk, track how far you walked and how many minutes you walked so you can see an improvement in speed or overall distance. If you lift weights, track your weights for each lift, as well as the number of reps and sets you complete at a given weight for a particular exercise.
Log Your Feelings
Make time to log your feelings regularly. Some people do this right before bed. Others do it throughout the day. Regardless of when you can make time to do it, experience has shown us that it is an effective part of the weight loss process.
Journaling about your struggles allows you to look back when you’re feeling down and see how far you’ve come. You may even remember that a previous struggle was worse than the one you are currently facing and you will feel more confident facing this particular challenge. Revisiting your accomplishments may even help you remember your bottom line.
Remember Your Bottom Line
Even with line graphs and trend lines providing proof of progress, your motivation will wane occasionally. The brain, just like any other muscle, gets tired. You will want to indulge in wine and cheese or bourbon and chocolate. However, until you achieve your ideal weight, you need to stay the course. If it doesn’t fit your macros, don’t consume it.
To keep yourself on track, remember your bottom line. Maybe your bottom line is to lose 20 pounds to mitigate your risk of type 2 diabetes. Maybe you want to lose 2 inches from your waist to fit into your favorite Charlotte Russe or Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Whatever your bottom line, we strongly encourage you to write it down and read your words when you feel like giving up.
Discover How to Boost Your Self-Esteem and Improve Your Health Today
Are you ready to improve your health and boost your self-esteem for good? If so, please contact James B DeStephens in Gainesville, FL today to schedule your initial consultation. Dr. James B DeStephens, MD will tailor a weight loss plan to your unique dietary restrictions and physical limitations so you can lose excess weight and keep it off for life.
