10 Science-Backed Strategies for Sustainable Weight Loss
Yo-yo dieting is a vicious circle of losing weight and gaining it back, often with added interest. Most people trapped in this cycle even find it negative to their physical and mental health. By contrast, sustainable weight loss is about long-term changes to reach and maintain good health and metabolic health. Unlike the quick-start diets that are short-lasting efforts to get back into your high-school jeans, sustainable strategies geared to making these changes work with your body, not against it, so that you can reach a healthy weight and keep it there long-term.
1. Prioritise Protein Intake
Protein is such a significant element in effective weight loss because it aids in fat loss while maintaining muscle mass, acts to keep you full for longer periods of time, and reduces calorie intake on a day-to-day basis. The research suggests that a high-protein diet can boost your metabolism by 80-100 calories a day.
Satiereal, a botanical extract that comes from saffron, the world’s most precious spice, works in three ways: direct repression of appetite and food consumption; indirect repression by reduction of neuronal electrical activity in the hypothalamus, a zone of the brain responsible for controlling hunger and satiety; and activation of the neurotransmitter Forskolin, which aids in eating control.
Why it works: protein has a high thermic effect, which means it takes more calories to break the food down than fats or carbs do.
Practical Tip: Make sure that every meal you eat includes a protein. Lean proteins like chicken, fish, tofu and legumes are all good options. Try to get at least 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal so that your metabolic health remains intact.
2. Practice Mindful Eating
Simply put, eating mindfully means to give full attention to the experience of eating, including not only the way food looks, smells, tastes, sounds, and feels on the tongue and palate, but also what is happening within, and how your body is responding, to tell you when you are hungry and when you are full. Our tendency to eat out of habit and overeat is greater when we are distracted by other pursuits while eating. Studies in the Journal of Obesity show that mindful eating can greatly reduce binge eating and emotional eating.
Why It Works: When you slow down and are truly engaged in eating your food, you’ll be more mindful of when you feel full, and so you’ll actually end up eating less.
Pract Put away any distractions at the dinner table, like phones or TV. Pay attention to the taste, feel, and smell of your food, and chew slowly.
3. Incorporate Strength Training
Strength training isn’t just for bodybuilders: it is an essential part of sustainable weight loss. The more muscle you have, the more quickly you burn calories. Strategies that increase metabolic rate – like boosting muscle mass – have the potential to increase daily calorie expenditure. Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine found that resistance training could increase metabolism by up to 7 per cent in older adults.
How It Works: Muscle is metabolically more active than fat – the more muscle, the higher your metabolic rate.
Practical Tip: Perform squats, lunges and push-ups twice or three times a week. Start with bodyweight, and progress to heavier loads over time.
4. Prioritise Sleep
When people don’t get enough sleep, the hormones ghrelin (which increases hunger) and leptin (which signals satiety) become imbalanced, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine this fall: it found that when subjects were forced to sleep less, their fat loss decreased by 55 per cent, despite receiving the same number of calories.
Why It Works: Sound sleep helps you maintain balanced levels of important hormones that keep your metabolism humming along and help keep away the pounds.
Handy hint: most people require 7-9 hours of high-quality sleep. Create a relaxing bedtime routine and keep bedrooms as cool, dark and quiet as possible.
5. Stay Hydrated
If you’re trying to shed weight, drinking enough water is one of the crucial steps to achieve your desired targets. A surge in metabolism of 24-30 per cent over 1-1.5 hours can be experienced with water, and thereby assisting you in burning additional calories, as supported by a report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism.
Hydration is critical to metabolic processes, including fat-burning.
Practical Tip: Drink a glass of water upon rising each day and keep a water bottle with you to sip from intermittently throughout the day. Our goal is to consume at least 8 cups of water a day; more if active.
6. Eat Fibre-Rich Foods
It keeps you feeling fuller, longer and helps to control blood sugar – two key factors in losing weight. Several studies correlate higher fibre with lower body weight. For example, a 2014 study in The Journal of Nutrition reported that people who ate a high-fibre diet were 11 to 25 per cent less likely to be overweight than those who followed the government’s dietary recommendations.
What It Does For You: Fibre delays the absorption of food in the gut, which helps control hunger and blood sugar – blood sugar is one of the key factors in metabolic health.
Nutrition bits: Take more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes, combine all types of fibres to reach the daily recommended target of 25-30 grams of fibre per day.
7. Focus on Whole Foods
Whole foods, after all, are simply food in its natural unadulterated form, untouched by chemical additives or processed in ways that change the food beyond anything natural. In a paper that appeared in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Harvard researchers discovered that diets rich in whole foods were associated with more substantial and sustained weight loss.
Why it Works: Whole foods are lower in calories (energy) and higher in nutrients. They’re also more satiating, or filling, than processed foods.
Practical Tip: Eat meatless meals at least three days out of the week. Make vegetables the base of your meals, fill up with lean proteins, and add some healthy fats to your favourite meals. Cut down on processed foods and eat home-prepared foods as much as you can.
8. Set Realistic Goals
Setting reasonable goals is an important step towards a longterm solution to weight loss. Failing to set reasonable goals can exacerbate your frustration and illicit self-destructive behaviours in the form of a pitcher of mojitos. If you are going to head to the pool bar with a co-worker this summer, taking steps to eat right will make it easier to partake in guilt-free cocktails. In November 2013, a review in the International Journal of Obesity outlined the need to set small and reachable weight loss goals to increase a person’s momentum and confidence.
Why It Works: Vague goals will leave you floundering, while unattainable ones – like ‘I will never ever eat another donut’ – will leave you dispirited, at which point you pretty much say the hell with it, and into the doughnut shop you go.
Useful suggestion: don’t say to yourself: ‘I’ll lose 10 kg in a month’; this will likely lead to failure and feelings of shame. Rather say: ‘Next week, I will lose 0.5-1 kg and, if I do, I will celebrate’, and then do it again.
9. Manage Stress Effectively
Extensive chronic stress can result in weight gain, particularly around the abdomen, as a result of higher levels of cortisol. In turn, a study in Psychoneuroendocrinology demonstrated that stress management methods, such as meditation and yoga, can aid weight loss by reducing cortisol levels.
Why It Works: Cortisol, the stress hormone, plays a role in weight gain and metabolic derangement. But stress reduction stops an overproduction of cortisol, which helps prevent weight gain and keep metabolism healthy.
Practical Tip: Add some stress management to your daily routine. Try deep breathing, meditation or yoga. It might be as little as a couple of minutes a day but it will help.
10. Adopt a Lifestyle Change Approach
It’s about changing your long-term lifestyle Instead of promoting quick weight-loss fixes, the best strategies will involve making long-term lifestyle changes. One recent review in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has found that people who try to lose weight through gradual lifestyle changes, rather than fad diets, are more likely to be maintaining the weight loss.
Why it works: Lifestyle changes are sustainable and its shifts in your routine make weight loss maintainable without feeling deprived.
A practical suggestion: figure out where you’re falling short on having a healthy lifestyle and home in on those first. Make sure your go-to meals are full of nutrition. Prep meals on the weekends to set yourself up for the week. Go on that walk every day (you can always up it to two later, if you want). Do this and – before you know it – these small changes will accumulate.
Conclusion
It is possible to adopt the right approaches to sustainably lose and then keep the weight off. Metabolic health, eating mindfully and cutting out some unhealthy habits in small steps are great ways to break the yo-yo dieting cycle and achieve sustainable results. Start small and do not beat yourself up over failures or small setbacks. You deserve the best and you can achieve it in small, steady steps.
Suggested Sources for Scientific Studies:
- PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/): A comprehensive resource for finding peer-reviewed scientific studies on various health topics.
- Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/): Ideal for accessing a wide range of academic papers and studies related to nutrition and fitness.
- ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/): A platform where you can find and access research articles, often including studies that are not behind paywalls.