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Exercise for Weight Loss

There are a few simple guidelines for how much exercise you need to do to lose weight. This section contains practical hints and tips for finding your healthy weight and keeping it for life.

Exercise for Weight Loss and Maintenance

There are new guidelines for the amount of exercise required for weight loss and maintenance. Please read below for a few tips

You've just lost weight and you don't want to see that number go back up on your scale. Although gaining the weight back might feel inevitable, it doesn’t have to be.

Build lean muscle. Maintain, or even increase, our metabolism by continuing to build lean muscle. "Muscle has a higher metabolism than fat does. If you don't yet train with weights, add this type of exercise to your overall program now. If you do, increase the amount of weight you're working with to keep yourself challenged.

Fight off hunger.  Keeping that feeling of fullness can be done with foods high in fibre — think fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein.

  1. Beans. All beans are good, whether baked beans, beans like kidney beans in chilli or beans in salads. Half a tin of baked beans (200g) is 7g of fibre.
  2. Wholegrain and wholemeal. Skip white bread and pasta, look out for wholegrain and wholemeal on the labels.
  3. Brown or wholegrain rice. White rice doesn't offer as much fibre.
  4. Keep your finger on the pulses. As well as beans, chickpeas and lentils are full of fibre, high in protein and low fat.
  5. Nuts. Almonds, pecans, and walnuts have more fibre than other nuts
  6. Jacket potato - the skin is the important bit. A small baked potato has 3g fibre.
  7. Dried fruit. If fresh fruit isn’t available, dried fruit offers a fibre-full snack. A 50g portion of dried figs is 4g fibre.
  8. Bran based cereal and other healthy cereal options. To count as high-fibre food, it has to contain at least 6g of fibre per 100g. A 30g bowl of bran flakes delivers 4g of fibre.
  9. Porridge. Porridge is made from oats which are a great source of fibre.
  10. Fruit and veg. At least 5-a-day portions and the crunchier the better. A medium-sized apple alone is 2g fibre.

Avoid temptation. Women who control their weight are good at resisting the temptation to binge on forbidden treats. This doesn't mean never indulging in a gooey dessert again, but rather picking — and limiting — your moments. There are many ways to avoid daily temptations, including planning ahead when eating out, eating out less, and banning your worst weaknesses from the house.

Count calories. Another successful weight maintenance is calorie counting to keep a running total throughout the day if that helps you keeps track of calorie consumption. In the weight-control survey, the women who were most successful at less than 1,800 calories a day and limited fat intake.

Plan your meals in advance. A maintenance diet has a lot of the same components as a weight-loss diet. Having a meal-by-meal plan that you can stick to. Having a plan for your meals will help you stop grabbing snacks on the go.

Consider adding minutes to your exercise plan. Experts recommend at least 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week, but emphasize that the more you exercise the better able you are to maintain a weight loss.

Measure your portions. The diet plate would help with this to get you used to correct size portions. When you can't count calories or measure portions accurately.  It works just as well for people on a maintenance plan. Simply put, when you serve yourself using this method, at least half your plate should be vegetables and the remaining space should be divided evenly between lean protein and whole grains.

Include dairy in your diet. For women in particular, this has the additional benefit of improving bone health.

Eat breakfast. They call it the most important meal of the day for a reason. Women who regularly ate breakfast were more successful with long-term weight loss than those who skipped the first meal of the day.

Finding Motivation to Exercise

Struggling to get out the door for your afternoon walk? There are many ways to find your motivation to exercise. The Flabelos machine is a great way to work out if you are short of time.