7 Best Ways to Lose Weight and Live a Healthier Life

Keeping a trim midriff might extend your life in addition to improving your appearance. A higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and possibly cancer is associated with larger waistlines. Both blood vessel performance and sleep quality are enhanced by losing weight, especially belly fat.

Man of middle age eating a piece of watermelon in the middle of a field.

When you diet, you cannot directly target belly fat. In addition to helping you lose weight overall, Kerry Stewart, Ed.D., director of Clinical and Research Physiology at Johns Hopkins, notes that doing so will also help you get rid of the dangerous layer of visceral fat, a type of fat that is located inside the abdominal cavity but cannot be seen but increases the risk of health problems.

1. Instead of reducing fats, try reducing carbohydrates.

While both diets contained the same number of calories, Johns Hopkins researchers compared the effects on the heart of losing weight through a low-carbohydrate diet versus a low-fat diet for six months. They found that those on a low-carb diet lost an average of 10 pounds more than those on a low-fat diet—28.9 pounds versus 18.7 pounds. According to Stewart, a further advantage of the low-carb diet is that it resulted in better-quality weight reduction. Fat is reduced with weight reduction, but lean tissue (muscle) is frequently lost as well, which is undesirable. Both diets resulted in a loss of 2 to 3 pounds of healthy lean tissue in addition to fat, therefore the low-carb diet's fat loss % was significantly greater.

2. Don't think about diet; think eating plan.

Finally, Stewart advises choosing a dietary strategy you can follow. A low-carb strategy has the advantage that it doesn't need calorie tracking and just requires learning better eating choices. In general, a low-carb diet encourages the use of high-fiber or high-protein meals, such as vegetables, legumes, and lean meats, rather than problem foods, such as bread, bagels, and sodas, which are rich in carbohydrates, sugar, and little to no fiber.

3. Move forward.

Abdominal fat may be burned off by exercise. According to Stewart, one of the main advantages of exercise is that it has a significant impact on body composition. According to him, exercise appears to burn off belly fat in particular because it lowers insulin levels in the blood, which would normally tell the body to store fat, and activates the liver to use up fatty acids, especially those from surrounding visceral fat deposits.

Depending on your objectives, you may need to exercise a certain amount to lose weight. For the majority of people, this might include engaging in 30 to 60 minutes of moderate to intense activity almost every day.

4. Use weights.

Even little strength training combined with aerobic exercise helps develop lean muscle mass, which increases your daily caloric expenditure during rest and activity.

5. Take up label reading.

Comparison of several brands In spite of their claims to be low in fat, certain yogurts, according to Stewart, are higher in carbohydrates and added sugars. Gravy, mayonnaise, sauces, and salad dressings are a few examples of foods that frequently have high fat and calorie content.

6. Avoid processed foods at all costs.

Trans fats, added sugar, and salt or sodium are three components that make it challenging to lose weight and are frequently found in high concentrations in packaged products and snack meals.

7. Rather than reading a scale, pay attention to how your clothes fit.

Your jeans will be tighter as you gain muscle and reduce fat, even though the number on the bathroom scale may not move much. That represents advancement better. To lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes, your waistline should be less than 35 inches around for women and 40 inches around for men.

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