So you want to lose Weight?

On the cover: Kishlay Singh/fitness and lifestyle blogger

Losing weight is not an easy task—It requires a lot of endeavor, dedication, precautions and willingness to stick to an intense work-out schedule. Choosing to reduce your body weight intentionally as a result of efforts to improve your health, and to bring about some positive changes in your physical appearance, can be a virtuous choice to make. The benefits can be countless: you’ll feel more energetic at work; you’ll look more attractive and get noticed; you’ll have an escalated self-esteem that will foster a sense of self-worth; and you’ll be able to keep yourself at bay from a plethora of diseases. (Being overweight puts you at the risk of various diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, coronary heart diseases, Dyslipedemia, high Blood pressure, hypertension, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, and even cancers of various types)

People’s obsession with losing weight has become intense in recent days, and the fitness market is booming with all sorts of fat-busters. From weird exercise machines, weight loss pills and sauna belts to e-books and CDs, the  weight loss merchandises have crammed all  mainstream advertising mediums—27X7 teleshopping channels , websites and blogs, newspapers and magazines, and even the banners on highways and streets. The sad thing is that though people buy all such products with great hopes, most of them are unable to observe any changes in terms of weight loss. All that lose weight are their wallets. I have seen peoples who exercise all day long , an use all kinds of magic machines and pills, but are unable to lose even a single pound. Reason? Lack of Discipline and motivation! Just think about a situation where you run like a horse but eat like a Buffalo, i.e, the number of calories you expend equals the number of calorie you ingest. Would you be able to loose a bit of your weight? Never !

The principle behind weight loss is simple: expend more energy  than you absorb. Scientist call this phenomena ‘negative thermodynamic reflux’—a state when the body uses stored energy reserves from fat or muscles to effect weight loss. To reach this state it’s important to curb the amount of your food intake and increase your physical activity level.

By making subtle changes in your lifestyle, you can provoke enormous changes in your body. Walking or cycling your way to the office, school, or grocery; participating in sports and other social activities that involves ‘calorie loss’(for example marathons, campaigning, volunteering etc…), drinking at least 12 glasses of water daily, and increasing the intake of citrus fruits like lemon and orange and pineapple can produce astounding results in a long run. As far as diet is concerned, it’s good to go with Low-calorie regimen diets that offers nutrients in a balanced proportion. Such diets are proven to show negligible harmful effects, and are usually recommended by most weight-loss experts and nutritionists. In addition to restricting calorie intake, such diets also regulate macronutrient consumption. From the total number of allotted daily calories, it is recommended that 55% should come from carbohydrates, 15% from proteins, and 30% from fats with no more than 10% of total fat coming from saturated forms—Wikipedia.  (There has been a recent trend of implementing a crash diet course for weight loss—a course that involves a wanton dietary restraint for more than 12 waking hours. The desired result is to have the body burn fat for energy with the goal of losing a significant amount of weight in a short time. But to be very honest, crash dieting can be very dangerous to health and should never be incorporated!)

Another important factor in weight loss is ‘Sex”. (Yes, I said Sex!) It can the best form of weight loss exercise you’ll ever come to know about , provided you are a bit creative with your partner, and can really manage to last a bit longer in bed( say for about 10 minutes while being in a non-stop action…can you?). It has been found that having sex for ten minutes gives you the same benefits as jogging for 30 minutes in terms of weight loss. (Ladies, Just imagine how much fat you can lose if you engage in 20 minutes of ‘sexersise’ at least four times a week) To make your endeavor more effective it’s really a plus point to try out some of the special positions—the ones that especially focus on your tummy, butts and thighs, because that’s where the real fat gets stored.

We talked about how different aspects like improving lifestyle, maintaining disciple and motivation, taking balance diet, and having sex can help you loose weight. I should have stopped here, but the ‘bug of psychology’ within me is provoking me to unveil another secret of weight loss with you, a psychological one; it’s called ‘the power of placebo’! This is no joke. ‘Placebo effect can really help you lose weight if you learn to exploit it to your advantage. One way of doing this is to just believe that in the coming three weeks you’ll be able to lose desired weight by doing exercises and eating proper diet. And trust me, like  magic you’ll belief will be manifested into reality! It’s because what you believe is what you become!

Have a good time losing weight. Take care.