Overweight
Overweight
Being overweight carries with it increased strain on your body. It can cause or aggravate joint problems, asthma, heart disease and even affect fertility. We all know this already, but it doesn’t make it any easier to lose the excess weight. If you have tried unsuccessfully for some time it is worth paying your GP a visit. Make a food and exercise diary for a week beforehand. They will be able to see what is going on with your body and offer any advice or investigations as necessary. There may be a medical reason behind your weight gain, particularly if you have any other symptoms to speak of (eg unexplained tiredness).
Diet It is very easy to cut down what you eat quickly, however it is hard to stick to sharp changes for long periods of time. Try to make small changes and keep them going – remember you don’t need or want a quick fix, you want to get a healthy body for the rest of your life! It is actually more harmful to your body to dramatically lose a lot of weight then put it back on again than to stay the same. Try maybe changing brands to lower fat varieties of yoghurts for example, or moving from sugar to sweetener in your morning cuppa.
If you write a food diary for a week and see that you are eating well, it may be your portion sizes that are the problem… try slowing your eating down, chewing for longer. It takes around 15 minutes for your stomach to realise its full so the slower you eat the less stuffed you will feel and the less food will reach your stomach before you feel full. It is a quick and easy way to lose weight without realising or feeling like you are missing out.
Exercise If you have a sedentary job it is always a good idea to try and get out for a walk in your lunch hour, it will help blow out the cobwebs as well as stopping you feeling sleepy in the afternoon! There are many small and simple ways to increase your ‘exercise’ levels without having to go to the gym or to a class. Try walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift or escalator, park your car slightly further away from where you need to be or get off the bus a stop sooner. A pedometer may be a good buy if you don’t walk much – we should all be aiming for a minimum of 10,000 steps in a day which isn’t as hard as it sounds, once you have done a few coffee runs in the office and chased your toddler round the house for bath time.
Comfort Eating
It happens to the best of us at some point when there is something stressful going on in our lives. You either can’t face eating or you eat junk unconsciously. If you feel it happening try and reach for a glass of water instead of the biscuit tin, if you do feel you need to eat something – do it consciously, this will help stop you eat more than you need to. If you find yourself comfort eating regularly it is time to think about why, do you have things on your mind which a good girlie cuppa and a chat will help with, or do you have deeper issues which it might be worth discussing with your GP or a counsellor?
NLP NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is newly popular method; it uses a combination of hypnosis, visualisation techniques and imagery. It can be very helpful at assisting with long term weight loss / maintenance, whilst at the same time aiding good eating habits and overcoming and food issues.
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