Maintaining a Healthy Weight

Staying healthy is a really important thing to do, although when you look around you and see so many people not enjoying good health, you may begin to wonder what it is that so many people are doing wrong! A growing number of people are gaining weight and even becoming obese, which is counterproductive when it comes to maintaining good health and so unnecessary when you consider al the very good wight loss tips that are available to read online. So what should you do to maintain a healthy body weight and avoid slipping onto that downward spiral that leads to obesity?
The first thing that anyone who is worried they might gain weight should do is stop worrying about it! Allowing such a destroying mindset to become predominant in your thoughts is highly likely to bring about the very thing that you do not want to happen.

Positive Thinking

It's true that positive thought brings with it a positive nature and that is conducive to good health and a stable body weight. By making some effort to only think about the things that make you happy and feel secure, relaxed and healthy, you will attract those good qualities into your life more and more, while banishing the worrisome thoughts to a place where they can't bother you.

You may notice that many people who spend the majority of their time talking about ill health, whether it is their own or someone else's and thereby predominantly thinking about ill health, they tend to attract ill health to them if they haven't already got it. The trick is to think and talk good health and you will attract that to you.

Diet and Exercise

No article on health and weight would be complete without a few paragraphs on the benefits of eating a healthy diet and getting plenty of exercise as often as possible and every day if that can be done. While it may seem like listening to a well worn record, there is no getting away from the fact that a poor diet and lack of exercise will lead to weight gain and poor health, so it stands to reason that a good diet and lots of exercise will produce better weight control and good health.

What to Eat and What Not to Eat

It almost seems like so much duplication to harp on about the foods that you should not eat and those that you should to make up a healthy diet, yet the statistics yell that too few people are taking any notice! It seems that far too many people believe they can live on a diet of hamburgers, pizza and fries followed by all manner of high calorie puddings and washed down with copious volumes of carbonated, flavoured drinks and retain their health and natural weight. Of course, this way of eating and drinking will catch up with anybody, no matter how fit and healthy they are to begin with.

While it may seem impossible to give up eating all the things that you like to eat, no matter how unhealthy they may be, you really do have to try if you want to . If you can't cut them all out, at least make an effort to cut down drastically and replace them with some good, healthy home cooked meals made from fresh ingredients and not things you buy in packets at the supermarket.

If you are drinking a lot of fizzy drinks, then for heaven's sake, switch to plain water! Yes, I know it's boring and tasteless but it is the best thing to hydrate your body with. And believe it or not, drinking lots of water can really help you lose weight. Unlike carbonated drinks, plain water contains no harmful additives, flavourings or artificial sweeteners and is calorie free. It boosts the efficiency of your digestive system so that less of what you eat gets stored as fat, while it improves your brain to stomach communication system so your stomach can tell your brain that it full quicker, to help you avoid overeating!

Activity Boosts Metabolism

The other side of the health equation when it comes to maintaining a decent physical weight and body shape is to exercise regularly. Keeping your body weight in balance is all down to ensuring that the amount of calories going in equals the amount of calories being burned through physical activity. There are other aspects to this equation, such as ensuring those calories are coming from the right foods and that those foods are nutritionally balanced and not mostly comprised of carbohydrates, saturated fats, sodium and refined sugar.

But when the fuel is of the right quality, the exercise will be more effective.

Exercise means keeping your body active enough for long enough so that its muscles use up all the energy that the body has consumed through its diet each day. You can do that by working all day at a manual job that forces you to work hard, such as certain areas of the building trade, gardening or farming, lifting and stacking or anything that makes you feel at the end of the working day that you have worked pretty hard.

However, if your job entails remaining fairly motionless all day, such as a desk or driving job, then you will need to spend some time in the evenings (or early mornings before going to work) getting some exercise in. You can try running, swimming, or even going for long, brisk walks with your dog if you have one. Really anything that gets you out of the house, into the fresh air and being active for a prolonged period of time will be beneficial to you.

The end result of following these easy weight loss tips, should be that you feel good every day, you feel that you have plenty of energy and zest without feeling tired and that your weight and body shape is where you want it to be. If you can achieve that and maintain it in the long term, then you will naturally enjoy better health than you would have done had you not taken those steps to improve it.