Healthy Dieting

Losing weight is easy. A lot of people do it every day. What’s tough is keeping it off. Restrictive diets may work in the short term. So may some diet aids. But soonthe weight returns.

There is only one proven way to lose weight and keep it off: make basic, simple changes in what you eat, how much you eat and how much you exercise. These changes should become part of your everyday life, so think ahead: Could you take a walk and eat an apple daily for the next year? Yes?

Now, what about downing diet pills and eating nothing but cabbage soup?

Some people can lose weight the right way on their own; others benefit from organized programmes. However you achieve your goals, you’ll want to learn the principles of sustainable weight loss and skip programmes and products that don’t work or are unsafe.

Are you really overweight?

Your body-mass index (BMI) indicates the approximate amount of body fat you have, amore accurate gauge of health risk than the bathroom scale. To find your BMI, divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared.

If your BMI falls between 20 and 25, you’re at a healthy weight. If it’s above 25, you’re overweight and should strive at least not to gain any more. A BMI over 27 qualifies you at an increased risk to develop health problems such as diabetes, stroke and heart attack. If your weight is concentrated in your middle (belly fat) or you have at least two health risk factors, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, you ought to lose weight.

How to lose weight and keep it off

If you consume more kilojoules than you burn, your body stores the excess as fat, causing you to gain weight. If you take in only as A dreaded sight? Stepping on the scale too often can hinder dieting efforts by provoking anxietymuch as you use, your weight stays the same. But to lose body fat and weight, you’ll needle burn more kilojoules than you consume.

If you want to slim down, a reasonable goal is to reduce your weight by 10 per cent over six months. Most healthy individuals should aim to lose up to about 500 grams a week. To lose weight at this rate, you’ll have to burn about 840 to 1260 more kilojoules each day than you take in. The best way to do that is to limit kilojoule intake while increasing exercise.

It’s easy to overconsume kilojoules. While fruits and vegetables, which contain plenty of water and fibre, are naturally filling and low in kilojoules, many processed foods, fast foods and desserts cram loads of kilojoules into small packages. Fat is particularly kilojoule-dense and portion sizes in restaurants are often huge. By choosing more lower-kilojoule, high-fibre foods and limiting portion sizes, you can cut out several hundred kilojoules from your daily diet. But do leave room for your favourite foods—even chocolate—as long as you enjoy them in small amounts.

Equally crucial is the role that exercise plays, not only in losing weight but in keeping it off. Start with 30 minutes of walking three times a week, work up to 45 minutes five days a week, and you’ll burn an additional 420 to 840 kilojoules daily.

Once you’ve lost that first 10 per cent of your weight, strive to maintain your weight for several months before contemplating further weight loss. Here is where exercise really helps—it’s been proven effective in preventing weight regain. One reason is that it revs up your metabolism, so you burn body fat more efficiently. By developing muscle, which burns more kilojoules than body fat does, you’ll also increase the number of kilojoules you burn, even at rest. Of course, regular exercise offers other health benefits, too.

How many kilojoules do you need?

How many kilojoules do you need each day? To maintain your current weight, you need enough to sustain such basic bodily functions as heart rate, breathing and metabolism at rest, plus the kilojoules needed for activity.

Although each of us is different, the Recommended Dietary Allowance for energy for women between 19-50 years is 9200 kilo- joules. This energy intake is the basic daily energy requirement of a woman who weighs 62 kilograms.

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