Don’t call someone “obese”; instead, say they’re overweight. The key to losing weight is burning more calories than you eat. Let’s dive into how to do that.
To manage your weight, you need to track the calories you consume and burn each day. You can use a calorie chart to help with this. Keep a mental tally of the calories in everything you eat and set a daily calorie goal.
There are two main things to keep in mind when trying to lose weight:
1. Understand the exercise needed to burn off the calories from what you eat. For example, eating two jalebis or a sada dosa adds 200 calories, which takes about 45 minutes of walking to burn off. A small, high-calorie snack can quickly undo your exercise efforts.
2. Know your exercise limits. Most people can’t exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time, which means they can burn less than 300 calories through exercise each day. So, it’s crucial to pay attention to both your calorie intake and how much you burn daily.
Here’s a quick guide to calorie burning:
– 30 minutes of cycling burns 150 calories.
– 30 minutes of aerobic exercise burns 250 calories.
– An hour of inactivity or sleep burns 60 calories.
Without exercise, a person typically burns about 1600 calories a day. To lose weight, you need to burn more than this.
Make exercise fun. A 45-minute morning walk is highly recommended. You can also place a stationary bike in front of the TV to keep from getting bored.
When it comes to food, fasting isn’t the best way to lose weight, but occasional fasting can help. Avoid foods like butter, ghee, cheese, cream, and minimize oil use. Stay away from deep-fried foods, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, nuts, yams, and sweet fruits like bananas, mangoes, and grapes. Also, avoid chocolates, cakes, pastries, ice creams, and jams.
Start your meal with a large bowl of soup, followed by a big salad made with green vegetables. This helps prevent overeating. Drink plenty of water and diluted buttermilk. Limit rice to half a small bowl and opt for rotis or phulkas without oil, keeping the quantity to about a quarter of your usual meal, but no more than two rotis.
Prepare vegetable dishes with green leafy vegetables, onions, cauliflower, okra, radishes, turnips, mushrooms, and sprouted pulses, using little or no oil. You can use tomato, onion, garlic, and ginger gravy for flavor instead of oil.
For snacks, choose recommended fruits, vegetables, and low-fat (skimmed) milk. Black tea without sugar has almost no calories. Use sugar substitutes like aspartame in tea, coffee, or milk.
