We live in a world of social media influence and peer pressure. Ours is a world where ‘Thin’ means you are ‘In’. Everyone wants to achieve that Instagrammable body shape where they can flaunt their abs and somehow magically there is no sign of loosened muscles whatsoever. To achieve that so-called Perfect body type; people will do anything, believe anyone and try absolutely everything. But when it comes to loosing excess weight; one thing that mankind has failed to comprehend is that nature has already got all the answers. So how do we lose weight?
You don’t need to starve yourself, or eat a bowl of dull salad three times a day or break the bank to pay for that fancy Gym around the block just to lose some extra pounds. In fact, for weight loss there are plenty of things that are delicious on the palate as well as light on the budget.
Piqued your interest yet! Then hold on tight, keep on reading and find the perfect diet to lose weight.
What is Ideal body Weight:
No! your ideal weight is not the one when you could fit into your 10 yr. old wedding dress, and no it wasn’t the one when you didn’t have a double chin. Your ideal weight is what will keep you healthy and active, Period.
Health professionals judge the weight of a person based on certain specifics I-e. their gender, age, height, and muscle mass. More often than never when we consider ourselves obese or fat; we actually are NOT. This is because every aspect plays an important role in calculating the ideal weight.
| Gender | IBW formula |
| Male | 50kg + 2.3kg for every inch over 5ft |
| Female | 45.5kg + 2.3kg for every inch over 5ft |
What is Healthy weight loss:
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that healthy weight loss is losing upto 1 to 2 pounds in a week. If you aim to lose more; beware that it comes with multiple health issues in long term span. Healthy weight loss is never an overnight change.
Magic foods to lose excess weight:
Ok now that you have calculated your IBW and know how many kgs you need to lose; let’s get to talking about the perfect diet. So, our ideal and complete diet should include Carbohydrates, Proteins, good fats, micro and macro nutrients.
Spice up your Diet:
Your diet should not only be healthy but should also taste good. This is the one thing that promotes long term adherence to any diet. Spices help benefit both. One key ingredient in this regard is Capsaicin. Capsaicin will benefit in losing weight by:
- It stimulates digestion and subsequent metabolism thus helps burn calories
- It helps desorption of fat from stubborn parts such as abdominal and pelvic.
- It helps suppress and hunger imparting a feeling of fullness
- Capsaicin inhibits adipogenesis which is the synthesis of adipose fat.
Capsaicin is found in following foods:
- Cayenne peppers
- Green chili
- Red chili
- Capsicum
Chug down the coconuts:
Its amazing how a little coconut shaving on our deserts add just the right amount of crisp and flavor. But the good news is you can eat this pearly white ball to lose weight too. While considering a stressful diet that constitutes of fasting and starving; instead consider a diet that lets you eat coconut. It will help lose weight by following ways:
- Coconut is composed of fat (almost upto 13g). this fat is primarily of the class medium chain fatty acids also called as medium chain triglycerides (MCT). These FAs are the kind that not only promote fat digestion and metabolism but also help in dissolving previously stored fats.
- The digestion and end products of MCT from coconut oil/fruit is via liver and the end product is ketone bodies as opposed to lipid deposits in the case of other fatty foods.
- It implies a feeling of satiety and fullness thereby reducing appetite and hunger.
- Increase in the metabolism and fat digestion leads to release in energy. This explains the beneficial effect of coconut for athletes.
Brew your way to weight loss:
Its not always about what we eat; sometime it’s about what we drink (pun intended). Jokes apart; liquids such as teas and coffee with low to zero sugar content have multiple health benefits in terms of losing unwanted weight. Green tea, black coffee, black tea etc. are usually recommended by dieticians. However, there are other weight reducing teas such as:
- It imparts feeling of fullness and satiety
- Helps prevent anxiety and induce relaxation
- Helps keep body dehydrated esp. during specified diets.
Example of such weight reducing tea is:
Hibiscus tea:
Research shows that taking hibiscus tea once a day will help fight off low density lipoprotein. This means it substantially reduces the risk for heart diseases. Although the use of hibiscus tea warrants for more research. However; its consumption helps by following ways:
- Acts as a diuretic and reduce puffiness
- Helps lower abdominal fat deposition
- Helps improve HDL and lower LDL value
Cinnamon tea:
Tea made by brewing cinnamon bark in boiling water is famous for providing relief from cold and flu. It is also a potent gas reliever for infants and toddlers. However, another unpopular but extremely effective use is the weight loss. Drinking cinnamon helps lose weight, burn excess fat by improving metabolism and also suppresses over all appetite.
Green is Good:
Ofcourse anybody on weight loss journey knows about the benefits of eating greens for meal. They give you fiber that help in digestion and excretion, low caloric intake, feeling of fulness and satiety. However, there are certain vegetables that are potent weight reducers. Two important vegetables in this regard are:
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
Their benefits for weight loss are based on the facts that:
- They are rich source for vitamin A, E, B, C and K. in addition they are plenty of micro nutrients such as Iodine, potassium and Sulphur. All these nutrients make for the idea metabolic pathway. Thus, digestion is enhanced too.
- The antioxidant supply makes them strong protectants against the toxic free radicals.
- The detoxifying properties of both cauliflower and cabbage helps clean the metabolic waste products of unhealthy fat-based diet
- The overall calorie count of cabbage is only 33 and of cauliflower is merely 25 to 27. This means even after drinking a soup bowl of cabbage you don’t need to rush to a gym to burn off excess calories.
Grapefruit is a Great fruit:
Remember the good old TV where a super skinny lean middle-aged mother of 3 would be having a half-cut grapefruit for breakfast. And you’d think who is that skinny after 3 kids and 40yrs of life. Well, the answer is that those who have grapefruit for breakfast. Because it is that dark horse of weight loss diet that no one will tell you about.
Benefits of grapefruit is due to the presence of following constituents:
- Rich source of vitamin C upto 75 to 79 mg in one glass serving of the fruit juice. This vitamin C not only acts as antioxidant but also serves the purpose of metabolism enhancer.
- It helps low overall blood glucose thus very beneficial for diabetics. This leads to balance blood glucose and less appetite.
- It helps lower lipid and fat absorption in the body
Equipment
- Boil Pot
Ingredients
- 1 cup pineapple juice
- 1 cup dried hibiscus
- 2 cups water
- 1 small pineapple
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 inch ginger
- 1 tsp Brown Sugar
Instructions
- Wash the pineapple and ginger in white vinegar
- Rinse off the pineapple skin thoroughly
- Cut the pineapple skin off and place into pot
- Add all of the other ingredients
- Boil for 10 minutes
- Let cool, and ice and enjoy
Nutrition
Take away:
There are hundreds of fad-diets on the internet. the more you look for them the more you will keep on finding. However, human body is not that complicated when it comes to managing weight. You just need to find the right body type you are and ten take it from there. Don’t let insta-models fool you into diets that will only hurt your body.
