Maintaining an optimal weight is necessary if you want to stay healthy and free from diseases and infections. When you are overweight, your chances of suffering from Type 2 diabetes, heart ailments, high blood glucose and high blood pressure levels, breathing problems, gallstones and cancers increase significantly. This is why you need to achieve and maintain a healthy medium body weight to live longer. There are many factors that are responsible for abnormal weight like genetics and environment, family history and metabolic rates, lifestyle and eating habits.
What is an energy balance?
An energy balance is needed for a healthy weight. The calories you consume every day from drinks and foods have to be balanced with the calories you are using to perform regular bodily functions like digesting, breathing or doing physical activities. When these calorie amounts remain the same, your body weight does not change. However, when the energy in is more than the energy out, you tend to put on weight. To maintain a healthy weight, this energy in and energy out does not have to be identical every day; rather it is the balance over time which helps one to maintain a healthy weight.
How to have a healthy body weight:
- You can maintain a healthy medium body weight when you follow a healthy and well balanced diet and stay physically active. While you may be able to lose the extra pounds successfully, the trick is to maintain that weight. If you resume your earlier faulty eating habits or give up on exercises, you will find the pounds coming back soon.
- You need to work out on a regular basis to control weight gain. When you exercise, your body burns calories and tones muscle groups. Exercises speed up resting metabolism which indicates that the body will burn more calories even when you are resting. You can choose to do activities which you enjoy doing to stick to a regular workout regimen.
- You should make an effort to eat well balanced meals and avoid skipping meals. The meals you eat must be portion controlled but nutritious and filling. Dieting does not mean giving up on your favorite foods for good. You can continue to indulge in your treats once in a while in moderation. You should make a conscious attempt to avoid fatty and sugary foods, unhealthy snacks and fast foods that only contribute to empty calories and poor nutrition.
- You need to stay hydrated to maintain a healthy body weight. At times, hunger pangs may be actually feelings of thirst in disguise. So, instead of resorting to binging on unhealthy snacks from the nearest vending machine, you should drink enough water to understand whether you are actually hungry or not. Choosing healthy snacks like fruits and low-fat yogurts and staying away from sugar-rich comfort snacks is a great way of maintain a healthy weight.
- Learning to control your meal portions can help you maintain an optimal weight. When you indulge in simple carbs and meats, it may hard keeping a check on your weight. Meals should ideally be rich in lean proteins, whole grains and fibers to help you lose weight. Planning your meals in advance can help you eat and portion controlled meals.
What is necessary for a healthy body weight is advance planning for meals and exercises and permanent positive lifestyle changes. You can take the help of weight loss tools like weight calculators or diet charts and expert counseling to find out effective ways of maintaining a healthy weight.