Healthy Weight Loss: The Three Most Important Elements

Oftentimes, people who want to lose weight want to lose it FAST. They may have an event coming up, like a wedding, a high school reunion, or a beach vacation. Healthy weight loss is thus not as important as the speed of weight loss. These folks do not realize that it is possible to lose weight quickly but in a healthy way.

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Another reason why people are drawn to unhealthy ways to lose weight is because there is much confusion about what practices promote healthy weight loss. Sometimes people do things that they think are healthy but actually promote weight gain rather than weight loss. For example, the food pyramid tells us to eat 6-11 servings of carbohydrates. That is WAY too many servings of carbohydrates for weight loss, and it's no wonder that Americans have gotten more and more overweight since the pyramid was introduced 1992.

Other times people are so frustrated with the conflicting information about what is "healthy" that they just through their hands up in the air and go for the unhealthy ways. For example, it may seem easier to pop a pill than to figure out what is the appropriate amount of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fibers, vitamins and minerals your body should be getting.

It's enough to make a person want to give up your quest for healthy weight loss.

However, all is not lost. You can achieve healthy weight loss if you follow these three simple but very important steps:

Make sure you eat. Do not starve yourself. You must feed your body in order for it to be comfortable shedding excess weight. If you starve yourself, your body will hold on to your fat because it doesn't know when you are going to feed it again. Ideally, you will feed your body 100-200 calories every 2-3 hours to keep the metabolism high and blood sugar balanced. Make sure you drink water. Many people walk around dehydrated and they don't even know it. Water is the healthiest beverage because it is calorie- and caffeine- free. Make sure to drink 64oz water in order to allow your metabolism to function properly and to flush dangerous toxins from your body as you are losing weight (toxins are stored in body fat). Make sure you sleep. Some people take stimulants to stay awake and burn more calories. This is not at all healthy, and the body will at some point rebel and want to crash. Sleep is essential for weight loss. Staying up all the time may seem like a good way to keep the metabolism going, but it's really a recipe for burn-out. Allow your body to rest and recover and it will be much happier to shed weight.

You might wonder where exercise factors into healthy weight loss? It plays a small role, but the bigger role is what you are putting into your body. Exercise is very important to maintain weight once the weight is lost, but it can be very unhealthy if people exercise too much to the point of over-exertion and injury.

Implement the 3 simple steps before you change anything else and you will be on your way to healthy weight loss.