New Year’s Resolution? It’s February…. shoot, where did I put that piece of paper again? According to a recent poll I just made up, weight loss is usually the first on the list. Women strive for that swimsuit model body, and men attempt to look like Hercules. Each year, people write down a resolution that they work on for a few weeks and then life seems to take over again. Usually the new year resolution becomes a January resolution.
Resolution means to resolve something. But what is it that people are seeking to resolve? Weight loss is a common resolution because people want to feel more beautiful internally and externally. And in our society, the way you look to the world has emotional consequences for the way you feel. Whatever the case may be, weight loss tends to be a common goal among people.
The good news is weight loss is not very complicated from an equation point of view. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. The complication is understanding how to achieve that, and numerous books and different diets are available to tackle this. Let’s illuminate a few things in regards to how the body works.
The first thing to understand is something called Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR for short. For our purposes, we will combine this term with resting metabolic rate. BMR is the total number of calories that your body needs to perform basic, life-sustaining functions. Essentially, the amount of calories you burn at rest without exercise. You can calculate this with various methods.
Here’s an example: if you consume 1500 calories per day, and your BMR is 1300 calories per day, you need to exercise and use 200 additional calories to prevent weight gain. If you consume 1000 calories per day, then over-time you will continue to lose weight.
The next thing to understand are triglycerides. Triglycerides are a type of fat (lipid) found in your blood. Your body digests simple sugars and refined carbohydrates such as white rice, white sugar, and white flour rapidly, causing a spike in blood glucose. Increased glucose causes the pancreas to release more insulin (this occurs with diabetes when this process gets out of hand). If your body has more glucose than it needs, the increased insulin prompts the liver to convert glucose into triglycerides, which are then transported to fat cells. This is how you gain fat. Then between meals, your hormones release triglycerides for sustained energy.
This is the system the body uses to make sure you have enough energy to perform all the things you need to do during the day. It is also a way that your body stores food during a famine.
Here are some basic things you can do to keep the weight off!
- Find out what your BMR is.
- Understand your general caloric intake amount. You can use apps like myfitnesspal.
- Decrease your quick carbohydrate intake by avoiding soda, white flour products, white bread, and delicious chocolate cake.
- Increase the amount of healthy organic vegetables.
- Exercise to increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis.
As you see, weight loss does not have to be such a daunting dilemma! There are easy ways to be successful and to keep up with your new year resolutions!