Articles on Weight Loss | Topic: weight
by Manjula Horton
Weight loss is, more than anything else in our society, a huge numbers game. You have to lose this many pounds in this many weeks. Your waist has to be this many inches. Your percentage of body fat should only be this much. Don't forget to count those calories each day. How many grams of fat are in that cookie? What was your carbohydrate level today? Did you get the right number of vitamins today to help your body lose the weight you need to? Was that eight or nine glasses of water you had before you went to bed? How many grams of fiber should you consume to stay healthy? As you try to keep up with all of these numbers, you may find yourself carrying a large calculator and notebook everywhere you go. Your biggest concern in this numbers game, though, may be the number you see on the scale each morning. If your number seems to have stalled out, you may be wondering why it won't change.
There are many possible reasons that your weight loss may have stopped. One of the most common reasons weight loss stops at a given number is that your body is simply done losing weight. The human body is, in reality, a marvelous machine. If the body sense that it is beginning to starve, or it thinks it will not have enough resources to survive for a long period of time, it begins to hoard resources, including calories. This means that while you may be eating the same number of calories you were to begin with or you are exercising the same amount of time your were, you may not be losing any more weight because your body is storing all of the calories you put in instead of burning them off as extra energy as it once was. Essentially, your body has said, "I think I might be in trouble. I better save these calories for a later time." Another pretty common reason that your body may have stopped losing weight is that you have started adding muscle mass through a new workout program. While this may be a bit frustrating to you, it is actually better for your body in the long run, as more muscle mass will help you to burn more calories in your body.
| Historical Quote |
Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
| —Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) |
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Once you understand why your body is hoarding calories, there are several ways to restart your weight loss so you can find your ideal number of the scale. One of the first ways to jump-start your weight loss program is to increase your levels of exercise. If you are currently only working out for thirty minutes each day, you can try increasing that by fifteen minutes. If that doesn't work, tack on an extra fifteen minutes. Be sure your workout is a hard, heart pumping experience. You want to, literally, sweat and feel your heart beating as much as possible during your workout, because it is only then that you will truly be able to burn the calories your body has been taking in. Another way to get your weight loss program back on track is to be sure your body is getting enough water each day. As with a lack of calories, if your body senses that it is beginning to lack the water resources needed for typical daily processes, it will begin to add extra water weight pounds. This can cause you to gain up to ten pounds on any given day. To keep these extra ten pounds from happening to you, be sure that you consume at least eight to twelve glasses of water each day. To make this a bit easier, be sure that the water you take in is ice cold. This will not only help to signal your body that it is getting enough water, and it can stop retaining so much, this will also signal your liver to help speed up the metabolism of fat in your body, helping you to burn the necessary calories for weight loss.
Hitting a weight loss plateau is not uncommon. These tips, though, should help you overcome the problem and jump-start your weight loss program. Talk to your doctor if you are concerned about your weight loss.
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