Losing weight can be difficult, especially when it means changing the momentum of your everyday habits that you spent years creating unknowingly. It certainly isn’t a simple process, but getting started can be easy if you do it right. Below we will go over some ways to ensure a stress-free start to your weight loss journey.
Get Moving
There is no question that exercise is going to be an important part of the equation. The human body was made to move but the modern lifestyle lends itself to many hours of little to no movement while hunched over a computer. To restore the missing cog that your physiology is begging for, make it a priority to move at least a few days a week. It’s been shown that aerobic exercise alone is enough to lose a significant amount of weight as long as you aren’t shoveling ice cream down your gullet at every opportunity.
Consider adding a walk, run, or jog to your weekly routine three or four times a week. It doesn’t matter which you choose, as your metabolism will speed up regardless of what speed you are going. The important thing is that you get moving. Getting the right shoes are also an absolute necessity for aerobic activity. Brands like Nike or Adidas are quite popular in the running and Crossfit community, and for good reason.
Importance of Sleep
Many people today like to brag about how little sleep they get as though it’s some kind of signifier that they are doing lots of important things. The contradiction is that less sleep makes you less effective in your waking life. It might also come as a surprise that proper and adequate sleep helps you lose weight. Humans spend roughly one-third of their life sleeping, which necessarily means it’s an evolutionary requirement for us as a species. The fact that we spend a large chunk of the day in a vulnerable slumber means it has been preserved over hundreds of thousands of years for a very important reason.
There are also several other known benefits to getting sufficient sleep. On top of its fat-burning properties, sleep will also lower your daytime fatigue and improve your stamina, which will help you keep up the pace at the gym. As if that weren’t enough, insufficient sleep has been shown to raise cortisol levels, a hormone related to stress.
Eating Right
Etching out an effective diet for yourself can be tricky work, especially with the many different opinions and voices on the internet steering you in all different directions. To add insult to injury, everyone’s body is different, so foods that work for one person may not work so well for another. That being said, taking the time to plan some pre-workout meals can help fuel your body to lose weight.
Studies show that refined carbs potentially cause more metabolic damage than common knowledge had previously dictated. Over the last five decades, dogma stated that fat was to blame for widespread ailments like coronary disease. This is at odds with what humans have eaten throughout most of our existence. After all, the fat from a healthy animal would be easily recognizable to our digestive and metabolic systems due to familiarity over many years.
The main reason why blame was wrongfully placed on dietary fat instead of the true culprit, sugar, is because the sugar industry paid scientists to downplay the dangers of sugar in the 1960’s. For decades thereafter, people were unaware of the dangers of sugar. This perfectly illustrates the ulterior motives behind the conflicting messages you may hear.
Craft A Workout Plan
To ensure you are off to a good start with a solid foundation to your regimen, do a little searching online to try and find a workout schedule that breaks up the exercises into muscle groups. Try to workout 5 days a week if you can manage, with each day dedicated to one or two muscle groups. This will ensure that by the end of the week, you have worked out your entire body.
Compound movements should form the center of your weight training. Movements like the bench press, deadlift, and squat employ a variety of muscles into one exercise. This guarantees your time working out is well spent.
Don’t Let Self Consciousness Hold You Back
If you are in the gym trying to improve yourself, that’s a heroic act in and of itself. Every time you enter the gym, remove any thoughts regarding what other people think of you. This will end up paralyzing you and halting your efforts if it gets bad enough. This is a perfect example of how facing your fears head-on allows you to grow. Nobody ever regrets the time they spend getting into shape.
