Rapid weight loss vs sustainable weight loss: 40 questions to predict your chances of success

In the spring when flowers bloom, many people find that their clothes are too tight and their pants are too tight because of fat expansion. Many people are beginning to become more enthusiastic about losing weight, hoping that they can also be reborn, get rid of fat, and have an impressive figure.

However, if you really dream of "losing weight fast", you may be making a directional mistake.

Because it is easy to reduce water but difficult to lose fat.

There are two ways to reduce water content.

First, eat less salt and more potassium, so that the water combined with sodium ions in the body can be excreted together with the sodium, thereby reducing weight.

Using this method, you can lose two or three pounds in three days, which can be called "rapid weight loss."

During the holidays, we ate too many rich and savory dishes. There were too many sodium ions from salt, soy sauce, oyster sauce, MSG, chicken essence, abalone sauce, etc. In the next one or two weeks, we should use less salt and savory seasonings and eat more light and original food, which will help to discharge excess water from the body. This will not only make the skin fresher, but also reduce the burden on blood vessels.

However, this method has nothing to do with losing weight, and you will stop losing a few pounds . If you eat a few heavy meals and consume a lot of sodium ions, the weight will return.

The second is to eat less staple food and fail to replenish protein food, which causes the body to lose muscle and reduce protein and water.

Using this method, you can lose more than ten pounds in a month, which is definitely considered "fast weight loss".

The main components of muscle are protein + water, of which water accounts for nearly 70%. If you lose 1 kg of protein, you will lose at least 3 kg of water, which adds up to 4 kg, so the effect of losing weight is particularly significant.

1 kg of pure protein = 4000 kcal, 1 kg of pure fat = 9000 kcal.

The calorie difference of losing 1 kg of protein can only reduce less than 0.4 kg of fat. However, losing 0.4 kg of fat is difficult to produce obvious visual effects. Therefore, those methods that claim to lose weight quickly have more or less protein loss problems. However, if you lose muscle, your body's metabolic rate will decrease, so even if you eat the same food as before, you will be more likely to gain weight in the future.

Which one would you like to choose?

If you do not intend to lose weight quickly by losing water weight, but intend to lose fat in a down-to-earth way, then you need to control your anxiety, control snacks, sweets and cooking oil, and then exercise well .

Some people may ask: Can't extremely low carbohydrate and ketogenic diets also help to lose weight quickly?

Yes, by turning fat into ketone bodies, the rate of fat consumption can be greatly increased. However, this way of eating can only be implemented in the short term, otherwise it will increase uric acid and increase the risk of osteoporosis. Once you eat a few more bites of staple food, you will rebound quickly. Many studies have shown that long-term intake of too low a proportion of carbohydrate intake (less than 40% of total energy) may shorten life. If the total energy intake is insufficient after cutting off staple food, it is also easy to cause rapid muscle loss.

From a time dimension of more than one year, a very low-carbohydrate diet is no better than eating less and exercising moderately. In addition, maintaining weight in the later stages still requires long-term diet control and exercise. There is no way around this.

If you only gain a few pounds during the holidays, there is no need to drastically change your diet. If you only need to lose a dozen or twenty pounds, rather than being overweight by dozens or hundreds of pounds, there is no need to choose a diet without staple foods.

Seeing this, some friends may ask: After all this talk, how can we lose weight?

Here are 40 daily weight loss tips for everyone. You can rate yourself and add 1 point for each item you can do. The more items you can do, the easier it will be to become slim and maintain a good figure for a long time.

Part I: Dietary Tips

1 Do not often drink sweetened beverages (including milk tea, milk drinks, fruit juice, sweetened soups, etc., excluding yogurt). Only drink plain water, light tea, herbal tea, bean soup and other natural drinks , as well as plain milk and soy milk.

2 Do not often eat baked foods such as bread, cakes, biscuits, etc., including products claiming to be sugar-free.

3 Do not eat fried foods often (including fried dishes, fried dough sticks, fried cakes, fried instant noodles and other fried staple foods, as well as snacks such as French fries, potato chips, and rice crusts).

4 Do not often eat staple foods with added oil (including sesame seed cakes, thousand-layer cakes, pastry cakes, fried rice, etc.), as well as sweet staple foods (such as sugar-added buns, steamed buns, steamed cakes, rice cakes, etc.).

5. Do not often eat meat-filled foods such as white flour meat buns, meat dumplings, meat pies, and meat rice dumplings. Meat fillings usually contain a high proportion of fat.

6 Do not eat high-fat foods such as fat meat, pork belly, fat beef, fat lamb, lamb chops, marbled steak, bacon, and cured meat.

7 If your digestive capacity allows, eat original staple foods with whole grains and beans regularly (such as whole wheat steamed bread, brown rice, oatmeal rice, unsweetened red bean porridge and eight-treasure porridge, etc.).

8 Eat vegetables cooked with less oil at every meal, and the total amount of vegetables per day should reach 500 grams (raw weight).

9 Eat a bowl of green leafy vegetables cooked with less oil at least once a day, preferably twice.

10 Eat some vegetables and meat cooked with less oil first, and then eat the staple food.

11. Eat nuts only for breakfast or as a snack in a certain amount, rather than eating them casually as a snack.

12. Don’t eat too much fruit , no more than the equivalent of 1 medium apple + 1 small orange per day.

13. Eat fruit before meals, with meals, or as a snack, rather than after meals.

14 Give priority to dishes cooked with less oil (no obvious oil spots on the surface of the soup and no obvious oil sticking on the plate).

15. Avoid eating sweet and salty dishes often, as they contain too much sugar and salt.

16 Don’t often eat dishes that are coated in batter, breadcrumbs or fried and then topped with sweet and sour sauce (such as chrysanthemum fish, squirrel fish, sweet and sour pork, Western-style fried shrimp, etc.).

17 Try to drink less alcohol , and strictly limit the amount of beer, rice wine, rice wine, sparkling wine, etc.

18. When choosing meat , give priority to skinless chicken, tenderloin, lean beef and fish. When choosing soy products, choose those that are not fried. When choosing yogurt, choose those with less added sugar.

19 Try to eat eggs as whole boiled eggs, steamed eggs, poached eggs, or in egg drop soup instead of scrambled eggs or fried eggs.

20. Remove processed snacks from your home, leaving only yogurt, fruit, dried fruit, and plain nuts without added oil or sugar.

Note: Eating less than once a week is called "infrequently"; eating less than once a month is called "not eating at all."

Part II: Life Patterns and Exercise Tips

21 On the basis of complying with the requirements of the first part, you can eat until you are comfortably full at each meal without feeling hungry, and the amount should be enough to maintain a good spirit before the next meal without feeling hungry.

22 Every meal should include vegetables, protein foods and starchy staple foods.

23. Make sure to eat enough breakfast , which must contain protein-rich foods such as eggs, milk, soy milk, meat, etc. If you go to bed early at night, you can reduce the amount of dinner; if you are easily sleepy after lunch, you can reduce the amount of lunch.

24 Foods high in fat, such as nuts, roasted seeds and nuts, and foods with added sugar should be eaten for breakfast as much as possible; dinner should be lighter, cooked with less oil, eat more vegetables, and include whole grains in the staple food.

25 Try to eat strictly on time and in the proper amount . Do not postpone your meals. It will be difficult to control your appetite when you are very hungry.

26 If you know that your next meal may be delayed, prepare a bottle of plain soy milk or milk in advance and drink it before your usual meal time to delay the onset of hunger.

27 Eat a small amount of fruit half an hour before meals , or eat half a bowl of vegetables, drink half a bowl of oat bran, wheat bran and other foods rich in resistant starch and dietary fiber, and then start eating.

28 Eat within 20 to 30 minutes. Avoid eating too fast and try to avoid marathon meals of one or two hours.

29 If you do not have any digestive system disease, do some light housework or go for a walk within half an hour after a meal .

30 The daily eating window should be limited to 10 hours, such as 8 am to 6 pm, and no more than 12 hours.

31 Sleep at least 7 hours a day, preferably 8 hours.

32 Go to bed before 11pm to avoid staying up late and feeling hungry, and having a midnight snack.

33 Don’t look at your phone before going to bed or after getting up to reduce the time you’re awake in bed; also try to reduce the time you spend sitting and looking at your phone.

34 Women should weigh themselves once a month just after their menstruation ends, and men should weigh themselves once a week. Use the same body fat scale to measure changes in body composition and waist circumference every month.

35 Maintain a good mood , reduce the time spent alone indoors, and try to go out and move around when you are unhappy; if you are under a lot of mental stress, actively seek psychological support.

36 At least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity or vigorous-intensity exercise per day (moderate intensity is 40%-60% of maximum heart rate, and high intensity is 60%-80% of maximum heart rate), and at least 250 minutes of moderate-intensity or vigorous-intensity exercise per week.

37 Do 10-15 minute high-intensity interval training twice a week and 2 muscle-building resistance exercises twice a week.

38 If you are young and do not have any medical problems that affect your exercise safety, you should strive to achieve and maintain an aerobic exercise capacity that allows you to walk or jog continuously for 3 kilometers.

39 Avoid sitting for long periods of time in daily life. Get up and move around for at least 5 minutes every hour.

40 If there is no doctor's advice to avoid excessive walking, the average number of steps per day exceeds 10,000, including steps for daily work, commuting, housework, and leisure activities.

Take a look at these 40 ways to help you lose weight. How many of them can you do? If you can't do them all at once, start with some of them and then gradually increase them one by one!

Netizen "Cooking Wine and Talking about Cucumbers" said:

In order to get into the college of his choice, a relative's child lost 70 kilograms in his second year of high school and has kept it off ever since. Without any professional guidance, he just changed his staple food to oatmeal rice, stopped eating greasy food, and insisted on running 5 kilometers or playing basketball every day. The 1.8-meter-tall fat boy lost more than 200 kilograms to more than 140 kilograms, and he has completely changed.

This boy is a successful example of self-help weight loss. The method sounds simple, but it meets the key points of healthy weight loss. Many people know that they should eat whole grains, and many people know that exercise is needed to increase muscle and reduce fat, but most people's attitude is "I can't do it", while this boy can "stick to it every day", which is the key to successful weight loss.

However, just becoming thin is not enough. If you want to have the ideal body shape of "looking thin when dressed and having muscles when undressed" and create perfect body lines, you need to seek guidance from professionals and do fitness exercises in a targeted manner. Especially after you are no longer young,

Ultimately, measures to prevent obesity must be integrated into life and persisted for a long time. It is not about speed, but sustainability. Only by eliminating the root cause of obesity can we stay away from fat for a long time. Only sustainable weight loss and obesity prevention methods can minimize the vicious circle of weight loss and rebound . Large fluctuations in weight will promote skin aging, is not conducive to disease prevention, and may also cause a serious blow to mental health, causing problems such as binge eating and depression.

In short, if you have to work and live a normal life in addition to losing weight, then using the above measures in a healthy and sustainable way to lose only two or three pounds per month is the best long-term weight management plan .

Don't compare your weight loss speed with Jia Ling. For her, losing weight is the most important task in the past one or two years, and it is a career that she devotes all her efforts to. For most of us, we need to make weight loss and work, life, and career coexist harmoniously. It is already very good to be able to take at least 40 minutes to exercise every day.

However, the benefits of this slow fat loss are: increased vitality, improved curves, firmer skin, and greater self-confidence. It improves health and is sustainable for life.

As long as you start taking action, in just two or three months, your body will feel very different, and your body lines will become tighter and smoother. Put on beautiful summer clothes, and the feeling of lightness will return to us. What a wonderful feeling! What are you waiting for? Start working hard now!

References: Zhang Jianduan, Gou Bo, Wei Wei, Peng Wen, Feng Xue, Li Daxu, Tian Xiangyang, Wang Youfa, et al. 20 weight loss actions for healthy weight management of Chinese residents: expert consensus based on scientific evidence. Chinese Journal of Diabetes, 2023(12): 881-888.