Four Principles of Losing Weight

There are many reasons to lose weight.  Common reasons are such as: to look better, get healthier, to look more attractive, or to be more active.

A more important reason can be just to be healthier.  It’s good to get rid of excess fat and build more muscle so that you would have a good level of muscle definition that would get you impressive physique.

On the contrary, if your body has a lot more fat than it should, then we should look into the cause.  It can be one or a combination of these causes: genetics, bad eating habits or an unhealthy lifestyle.  Each of these cause can bring excess fat to your body.

If you want to get rid of the excessive fat to become leaner, there are some basic principles to learn about fat loss. 

Losing weight takes time, effort and discipline. You must determine to follow a good plan or program that works for you and stick to it.  

Some basic facts of losing fat are briefed below.

How Excess Fat Is Stored In The Body

Before learning how to lose fat, it is good to know first why you get excess fat in the first place.

Simply put, you get fatter when you consume more calories than your body burns  Calories are stored in different quantities in all types of foods that we eat and drink.  The food and drive we take provide energy for our body.  But different food has a very different amount of calories.

For example, a small serving of cake or pie contains a lot more calories than a bunch of vegetables.  As a result, eating too much cake or pie can have too many calories accumulating in your body quickly.  Any time your total daily calorie intake is more than your total daily energy expenditure, you’ll gain weight.  It is simple math.

In general, a calorie surplus leads to weight gain.  As your body does not get to use up all the calories, it will store the calories in the body.  And unless you build muscle using the extra calories, naturally the excessive calories become fat.

A simplified formula can be described as:  Calories intake - Calories spent - Calories used to build muscle = Calories stored to become fat.

Losing Fat Needs The Right Diet And Exercise Plan To Achieve A Calorie Deficit

When you consume fewer calories than your body burns, you have a calorie deficit.  It is exactly what you need to lose weight.  The more you have a healthy calorie deficit, the more likely you can lose weight.

Have A Healthy Calorie Deficit

Calorie deficit is achieved by consuming fewer calories in your diet plus doing more exercise to burn extra calories.  The goal is to have your caloric intake less than your caloric expenditure. 

While it may seem simple to create a calorie deficit and lose weight, many people struggle in the process.  It's not as easy as it seems.  You need to create a specific energy deficit for weight loss to happen. 

The first thing is to calculate your calorie maintenance level to understand the total daily energy expenditure in order to create a deficit.

The theory is that when your body is not getting enough calories intake to use for energy requirement, it’ll start to burn body fat.  

However, although the calorie deficit is the key reason for fat loss, there are a lot more elements that are very important as well.

Some people may try to eat as little as possible to achieve calorie deficit.  It may sound right on the surface, but this approach is not sustainable in the long run, and it is not healthy either.  You need a good and healthy plan that fits you personally to make it successful.

So how do you do it? You don't have to starve yourself.  There are four essential elements to create a calorie deficit for weight loss.​

• 1. Eat less

• Cut down portion sizes in a reasonable way:  Reduce your snacks and select low-calorie food at the same time.

• That way you consume fewer calories each day but not that much to make you crave for food.  The fewer calories accumulate every day.  To a certain point, it can create a calorie deficit large enough for weight loss.

• 2.  Eat the Right Food

• You should eat more vegetables.  Vegetables offer so much more advantages over other food.  Vegetables can fill you up for many fewer calories, and they flood your body with the nutrients it needs to stay healthy.

• You should eat less sugar.  In general,  sugar makes food taste good.  So food manufacturers add more sugar to almost everything from salad dressings to cereals, yogurts and more.  All the sugar adds up in the processed food and becomes too much for our body.

• You should eat more whole foods.  Processed foods have been widely connected to weight gain, mostly because many unhealthy packaged foods (such as potato chips, ice cream, frozen pizza, cookies etc.) lack the fiber found in many whole foods.

• 3.  Exercise more

• The number of calories your body needs each day depends on your activity level. That includes the exercise you do every day and also your non-exercise physical movement. If you increase the number of calories your body needs, but still consume the same number of calories from food, you'll reach a calorie deficit. 

• 4.  Combine diet and exercise

• Most successful calories deficit stories include both eating less and exercising more to lose weight.  

• Let’s say you eat 200 fewer calories each day and then go for a 30-minute fast walk to burn an additional 200 calories.  That is 400 calories difference a day.

• To do it every day consistently, you can get reach the calorie deficit mode needed for weight loss at some point of time.

Implement A Good Healthy Plan To Lose Fat Correctly

Everyone has different circumstances and goals.  There is no one plan fits everyone.  You will have to figure out a plan that fits you the best, and then stick to it.

A fat loss plan can be as simple as eating less food and taking a walk more every day, or it can be very complicated to involve keeping track of every bit of food in your diet and getting engaged in well-planned cardio exercises and weight lifting.

Stanford University researchers in a new study had more than 600 overweight adults on either a healthy low-fat or low-carb diet.  The results showed that the many participants had similar levels of weight loss success on each plan. 

Researchers tried to find the reasons if there any particular factor is more important than other factors in helping lose weight.  But after analyzing all the data, the researchers were not able to make strong conclusions. 

As a result, there is no absolute the best way or plan to lose weight.  It just should be right for you individually.

So the right thing to do when you want to start losing weight is to take the time to figure out which fat loss plan is the best for you.  You should consider the important factors such as maintaining good health, maintaining muscle strength, your body shape, your likelihood to stick to the plan, etc.

Choosing the right plan from the beginning will make your efforts more likely to produce the desired results.  As there are many different ways to create calories deficit, the right ways make it easier and less effort to burn calories.

Losing weight is generally accomplished by creating a calorie deficit and anyone can do it, but adopting the right diet and exercise program makes the best to meet your individual goal to reach success.

Dr. Oz’s Four Principles to Help You Lose Weight

Having said all the above, Dr. Oz said that there are four principles that can help you lost weight.  Those principles are easy to remember and make lots of sense.  The four principles are:

1.  Have a high fiber breakfast.

2.  Eat snack less than the size of your fist.

3.  Don’t eat within three hours before you go to bed.

4.  Take a 30 minutes exercise daily.

By following the four principles, you will experience gradually but steadily of losing weight. We want to recommend a few products you can try for having high fiber breakfast.  It is the first thing you can do on the way to being fit.