6 Surprising Weight Loss Tips for the 2022 New Year
According to Statista, three of this year’s top five resolutions involve health and weight management. Unfortunately, almost 90% of these ambitions will be abandoned by month’s end, in part because changing eating and exercise habits is time consuming and challenging mentally, emotionally, and physically. While improving diet and fitness are essential to better health, there are some surprisingly simple concepts that can support your weight loss goals with less effort. Which methods can help you beat the bulge in the New Year?
1. Sleep to Shed
One of the most underrated tools available for priming the body for weight loss is a good night’s sleep. According to Dr. Matthew Walker, Ph.D, professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at UC Berkeley and author of Why We Sleep, the less we sleep, the more likely we are to eat. Adequate shut-eye regulates hormones that manage hunger, cravings, satiety, and mood, but also offers fat-shedding benefits; dieters with a full night’s sleep will lose more pounds from body fat and less from valuable muscle mass.
2. Add to Subtract
If your aim is to lose excess weight, adding to your plate may be an easier solution than restriction to subtract those pounds. Most popular plans involve eliminating food options or drastically reducing portions, but feeling dissatisfied with meals can lead to cravings and snacking, which quickly derail diets. Instead, start by adding additional healthy items like steamed or roasted veggies or hearty salads, and eat them first; you’ll naturally have less room for items with more calories and fewer nutrients.
3. Regulate to Reduce
Because the body and mind are designed to respond to rhythms, it makes perfect sense that regulating meal times results in mental and biological support for your New Year’s weight loss resolutions. Eating at the same time daily will help your body prepare for optimum signaling, digestion, and absorption of supportive nutrients, and you’ll learn to recognize if your hunger is an actual cue to eat or drink, or a sign of boredom or distraction.
4. Lift to Lower
While most of us consider a long, heated cardio session as the best way to burn fat, it turns out that weightlifting is an even more effective option for slimming down. Although a good cardio workout will torch more calories than a weightlifting session, resistance training will continue to burn more than aerobics in the hour after. Also, the increased muscle mass developed takes up less space than fat tissue for a smaller waistline, and burns more calories at rest which is key to improving resting metabolism.
5. Keep Fat to Lose Fat
Many people think that diets need to be low fat to lose fat, and consequently cut most sources from their meal plans. While the elimination of unhealthy fats like the trans and saturated fats in fried and processed foods will help with calorie control and overall wellness, healthy fats like those in nuts, avocados, fish, and ghee (clarified butter) are vital to weight loss because they provide important sources of energy, are a vehicle for absorbing essential vitamins like A, D, E and K, and are the building blocks of metabolism-supporting hormones in the body.
6. ‘D’ is for Drop
One of the most powerful elements for regulating metabolism and weight loss is adequate levels of Vitamin D. This compound is not actually a vitamin, but a hormone produced naturally in the skin through exposure to sunlight. Seasonal changes and busy schedules can keep us from soaking up enough sun for our body’s needs, and deficiencies are reportedly connected to metabolic conditions that include weight gain. Additional studies indicate that healthy levels of Vitamin D can improve glucose sensitivity and naturally decrease food intake, and both will support your new year’s weight loss resolutions.
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