You must have seen all around you people dieting religiously, exercising feverishly, and watching over their weight nervously. In fact, social media, the internet, and the TV shows are flooded with weight loss tips. But have you ever wondered if all of this is worth it?
Of course, getting into your old jeans is relaxing. The dress you just bought online also suits a toned body. But is weight loss all about getting in shape? No, it is beyond that. Losing weight can bring you more benefits than just looking good.
How losing weight can benefit you?
You should note here that it is not about rejecting the importance of looking good. You look good; you feel good, that dictum is universally agreeable. However, there are many important health benefits that losing weight can give you. These benefits are the main reason you should start thinking about shedding some pounds.
Here are a few ways losing weight can benefit you.
1. Alleviates Pressure on Joints
Having more weight than normal can exert pressure on your knees and other lower body joints. Although the joints tend to wear out over time, extra pressure causes them to cave in way earlier than they are supposed to be.
Moreover, the extra fat brings inflammation that causes chemicals to damage your tissues and joints, especially the smaller ones like that in your hands.
That is the reason an anti-inflammatory diet is known to help improve the arthritis symptoms.
Therefore, losing weight can reduce the pressure on your joints. It also means lesser chances for you to develop arthritis in the future.
2. Reduces Risk of Cancer
Losing weight can lower your chances of having cancer. In a study, researchers found that older women who had shed at least 5 percent of their body weight reduced their chances of developing breast cancer by 12 percent.
Although there is not any straightforward evidence that losing weight can protect against other types, there is still some inclination that shedding some pounds can reduce the risk of other types of cancer too.
The inclination comes from the changes resulting out of weight loss. These changes include lower levels of hormones after weight loss by an obese person. Notably, the reduced hormones include insulin, androgens, estrogen, and others that are linked with cancer.
3. Elevates the Levels of ‘Good Cholesterol’
There are many ways to control/lower your ‘bad cholesterol,’ i.e., Low-Density Lipoproteins (LDL) like proper medication and a healthy diet. However, raising the levels of good cholesterol or High-Density Lipoproteins (HDL) is not an easy task.
Notably, HDL is very crucial for your body, as it removes bad cholesterol from your blood. Therefore, the more you have HDL, less you have the bad cholesterol in your body.
And you must know that shedding your body fat can give you the ideal required HDL range, i.e., more than 60mg/dl. This HDL range helps keep you away from developing heart diseases.
4. Helps with High Blood Pressure
Extra weight exerts pressure and renders your blood push harder against your artery walls. Naturally, it ultimately increases work for the heart as well. You can improve your high blood pressure through losing some pounds.
Moreover, cutting on salt consumption and eating a lot of vegetables, low-fat dairy, and fruits can also help reduce weight. That can be a reason why experts stress upon losing weight if a person has high blood pressure, as it aggravates the condition.
5. Helps with Sleep Apnea
People who are overweight tend to accumulate extra tissue in the back of their throat. When their body relaxes while sleeping, that tissue drops down and block the airway.
It causes them to stop breathing over and over throughout the night. Not only that it results in a troubled sleep, but also it creates a number of health issues, particularly pertaining to the heart.
Moreover, this very tissue around the neck is one of the culprits behind your snoring. You must be tired of it, or your roommate definitely will be.
The remedy for both conditions is losing weight. Even 5 percent weight loss can get you rid of these monsters that come between you and your nice, peaceful sleep.
6. Alleviates Stress
You must have heard that chronic stress increases weight. However, the scenario also goes the other way round. More weight can also increase your stress levels. Therefore, shedding some pounds can relieve you from the stress regardless of how happening your day goes.
7. Lowers Triglycerides
Along with blood pressure and cholesterol, you need to keep an eye on triglycerides too. These are a kind of fat (lipid) present in your body.
When you eat, your body converts the extra calories into triglycerides. They, in turn, get stored in your fat cells and are released later for energy between meals.
However, when you consume more calories than you do burn, especially from the high-carbohydrate things, you can have high triglycerides.
High triglycerides result in hardened arteries or thickening of the artery walls (arteriosclerosis). It increases the risk of heart attack, heart disease, and stroke.
One of the best ways to lower or modernize the levels of triglycerides is to lose weight, as extra calories are the primary cause of hypertriglyceridemia. Therefore, shedding these extra calories are going to be among the most efficient ways bring triglycerides down to 150mg/dl.
8. Prevents Type 2 Diabetes
If you have the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, weight loss is one of the two most effective ways to avoid it. The other one is exercise, which does not need to be strenuous.
As for weight loss, you are supposed to lose weight only if you weigh 160 pounds or above. In this case, losing just 8-12 pounds can lower your risk of diabetes.
Not only that losing weight can help you escape type 2 diabetes but also it helps you if you already have this condition. Losing weight helps you keep check on your blood sugar. It also prevents the condition from causing other health problems.
9. Turns Around Insulin Resistance
Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas that keeps a check over the level of blood sugar in your body. In insulin resistance, the cells resist the insulin and become unable to use it effectively.
It leads to high blood sugar, despite the fact that your pancreas is working harder to make more insulin.
Among others, body fat is the cause of insulin resistance. It generates chemicals that make your cells immune to the effects of insulin.
Losing a little bit of weight can reverse the effect of this condition, as your body fat will not create trouble anymore.
10. Helps with Insomnia
While there are some studies indicating not getting enough sleep leads to obesity, many also point out that excess weight can lead to troubled or less sleep as well.
You must have heard that your diet affects the way you fall asleep and how well asleep you feel after waking up. Same is the case with how much you weigh and from which food you put on that weight.
Studies have shown every now and then that fatty and sugary foods negatively impact your sleep quality. Cutting out these foods along with shedding some pounds can help a lot with your sleep.
11. Keeps you in good humor
Weight loss can get you out of your blues. It seems unbelievable, but scientists have found that it does help improve your mood.
Although they cannot find a reason yet, they assume that the better body image and improved sleep can be a reason for that.
In one study, depressed people who were also overweight, felt a lot better after they lost eight percent of their body weight.
Other studies have also indicated that a person will continue to feel better as a result of weight loss, even after two years, unless he or she puts on some weight again.
12. Improves Inflammation
Extra fat, particularly around the belly, can produce chemicals that inflame irritate the tissues all over the body. It is associated with health problems like heart disease, arthritis, heart attack, and stroke.
If you shed 10 percent of your pounds, you can lessen the amount of these substances and reduce your chances of having these severe conditions.
Moreover, as mentioned earlier, this inflammation can also create trouble in your joints. If you do not want to grow old earlier, think about making some lifestyle changes.
Five Tips to Burn Fat
Having said enough about why you should lose weight, here are a few ways to shed some pounds.
1. Strength Training
Strength training is also a kind of exercise that demands you to contract your muscles against resistance. It creates muscle mass and enhances strength.
It includes lifting weights to build muscle mass over time. According to research, strength training also has many health benefits, which include burning fat.
In another study, strength training cuts on visceral fat in 78 people having metabolic syndrome. This fat is a dangerous one surrounding the belly organs.
One more study has shown that 12 weeks of strength training combined with aerobic exercise proved to be more effective regarding reducing weight loss.
2. Observe a High-Protein Diet
Include protein-rich foods in your diet. It will reduce your appetite and burn more fat. Many studies have shown that consuming more high-quality protein is linked with a lower risk of belly fat.
In fact, one study has found that a high-protein diet keeps the muscle mass and metabolism while you are on to losing your weight.
There is also evidence that increasing your protein intake enhances satiety, reduce appetite, and lower calorie intake to help in weight loss.
3. Add Vinegar to Your Diet
Vinegar has a lot of health benefits. Not only that it improves your heart health and blood sugar control but also speeds up fat burning.
One study has indicated that taking 1-2 tablespoons (15-30 ml) of vinegar daily cuts on people’s weight, average weight circumference, and belly fat over a period of 12 weeks.
According to another study, vinegar increases satiety and reduces appetite. One more study of 11 people found that adding vinegar to your diet tends to reduce the daily calorie intake by up to 275 calories.
It needs to be noted here that adding vinegar to your diet is quite an easy task. You can dilute apple cider vinegar with water and take a few times every day with meals.
If you do not like drinking vinegar directly, you can also make sauces, marinades, and dressings from it.
4. Consume Healthy Fats
You may deem consuming fats a contributor towards weight gain, but not all fats have this effect. Some fats, i.e., healthy fats can actually help you lose weight and give you feeling of fullness.
Fat takes some time to digest and thus, slows down the emptying of the stomach. Therefore, it reduces your appetite and hunger.
According to one study, a Mediterranean diet filled with healthy fats from olive oil and nuts can lower the risk of weight gain as compared to a low-fat diet.
One more study has shown that taking two tablespoons of coconut oil along with the weight-loss diet can result in more reduced belly fat than consuming soybean oil causes.
Healthy types of fats include olive oil, avocados, coconut oil, nuts, and seeds that can prove to be very effective in fat burning.
Conclusion
Excess weight can create many problems relating to health. Therefore, losing weight is essential to keep a person up and about. However, a person should not develop an obsession with weight loss. Not everybody needs to lose weight, and not everyone has to shed the same amount of pounds.
A certain amount of fats is necessary to keep a person healthy. If one goes below that amount, it will disrupt their day to day life. You should not forget that everything looks good in moderation So, eat clean, exercise, and sleep well. That will lead you to the ideal body weight.
