Southwest Florida's Health and Wellness Magazine Health and Wellness Articles
By Dr. Doreen DeStefano, ARNP
It’s summer in Florida and it’s hot and humid. The layers are thin and few. Do you have a few wobbly bits that you would like to shed?
Losing weight can be a difficult process. “Dieting” is not the best way to lose weight. It’s more about changing your eating habits than “going on a diet”. In this segment, I would like to help prevent some common mistakes of weight loss and give you a few easy to live with tips that can help you lose weight and keep it off.
Let’s discuss weight a little bit first. Your optimal weight is a healthy weight. Some of us tend to be thinner than others. A goal weight is about being healthy and not necessarily looking like a supermodel. So be realistic when you’re setting goals for weight loss. Consider that you have to burn 3500 cal more than you take in. The standard person burns approximately 2000 cal a day. So in order to lose weight, we recommend that you eat about 1500 cal a day. You can accelerate your weight loss by increasing the amount of calories you burn or decreasing the amount of calories you intake. Be careful though. If you cut your calories too much for too long then your metabolism slows down. So it’s better to keep your calorie consumption at about 1500 and increase your activity level.
5 Painless Tips for Success
1. Cut the cocktails! Alcohol contains about 150 cal on average per cocktail. That’s not much right? . If you add soda or juice, that’s another hundred 100 to 150 cal., making one cocktail about 250 cal. Add two of those to your daily intake and that’s 500 cal. For some of us, just cutting out the evening cocktails will reduce our calorie intake by 500 cal per day, netting a 1 pound weight loss per week.
2. Learn to like your salad with less dressing. Most salad dressings are about 150 cal per serving. However, no one ever uses just one serving of salad dressing. Typically people use two or more servings of salad dressing. Using homemade vinegar and oil dressing is best. It has the least amount of calories. If you want to get really serious, vinegar and lemon juice have the least amount of calories. Even if you just cut your salad dressing in half each night that will save you 1050 cal per week, netting one third of a pound weight loss per week.
3. Sugar beverages. Soda, sweet tea, sport drinks, coffee drinks, smoothies, and fruit juices have anywhere between 150 to over 300 calories each. Many of the fancy coffee drinks have 400-500 calories each. Are you a mocha or Frappuccino drinker? These are easily 500 calories each. Foregoing your fancy coffee can net you a whole pound of weight loss in one week!
4. Move it move it move it! You gotta move it! To burn calories efficiently you need muscle and oxygen. If you can walk 30 minutes a day at a brisk pace you will build muscle in your legs and burn about 200 calories while walking. It’s not just about the calories you burn while walking, but the residual calories that burn from an increased metabolism. If you walk 30 minutes a day at a brisk pace you will burn 1750 cal a week approximately. That’s about two thirds of a pound.
5. Timing is everything! This is true with so many things in life. Eat early and don’t eat after dinner. Finish your dinner at least three hours before you go to bed. Don’t finish eating and sit on the couch until bed either. Get up and do something! Putter around the house, go outside and do something, but don’t just sit. The more time between dinner and sleep, the less dinner will end up stored as fat.
There are many things you can do to speed your weight loss. You need to balance your hormones.
Sometimes your metabolism needs to be revved up with the assistance of supplements, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, pulsed electromagnetic frequency, nutrient IV therapy, and even sometimes medications. You may need assistance controlling your appetite. We can do that naturally as well. We can help you can get your body into optimal fat burning mode, and help you lose those wobbly bits that you just don’t want!
Make an appointment to learn how we can help you optimize your metabolism and your health by reaching your optimal weight. Losing weight can help you decrease blood sugar, cholesterol, some types of pain, and can help you sleep better. Don’t delay. Call Root Causes today!
Join us on Facebook Live for: “In the Kitchen with Dr. D and Sandra!” on June 27th for some fun cooking tips and tricks for weight loss.
Root Causes Holistic Health and Medicine
12734 Kenwood Lane. Ft Myers, FL 33907
239-425-2900 | www.rtcausesmd.com
