Ten Things You Must Know To Lose Weight

Ten Scientific (And Simple) Ways To Help You Lose Weight

Those of us that follow fashion and celebrity magazines have been nothing but bombarded in the last few years by celebrity endorsed diets and nutrition trends. But how many of these actually have science behind them to back up their claims - unfortunately not that many. However, there was recently a very interesting program on the BBC called 10 Things You Need to Know About Losing Weight where the medical journalist Michael Mosley investigated the latest scientific breakthroughs in slimming. They uncovered ten of the simplest ways that you can shed those unwanted pounds and here are the points they covered in the program.

Don't miss meals - particularly breakfast. Using a CT scanner they showed that a volunteer who had skipped breakfast that morning and was shown high calorie food was much more inclined to want to eat food such as cakes and pastries rather than lower calorie, more healthy food later on in the morning before lunchtime. You may think you are just feeling more hungry as you have skipped breakfast, but it is actually your brain which is guiding you towards calorie laden food as it thinks it is being starved. The moral of the story is eat some breakfast even if it is only a banana or a piece of wholemeal toast otherwise you are much more likely to eat a high calorie treat later on.
Eat meals rich in protein. Eating a meal which contains healthy, low fat, protein will keep you fuller for longer, as it inhibits the release of the chemical called Ghrelin which tells the brain that you are hungry again. Also protein stays longer in the stomach than carbohydrates, again leaving you fuller for longer.
Eat low fat dairy products. Eating low fat dairy products such as cottage cheese, low fat soft cheese, skimmed milk and low fat yoghurt helps the body to get rid of more unabsorbed fats than usual - up to twice the amount. The calcium in the dairy products binds to the fat in the small intestine and these are then passed through your body without being absorbed.
Exercise lots - the "burn" will last until the next day. Although you may have to run for a good mile to burn around 100 calories which may seem a lot of effort to burn the same amount of calories that are in a bag of Quavers, the burn will carry on until the next day. This means that when your body has used its Glycogen (carbohydrate) stores for the exercise, it will continue to burn calories using stored body fat during the next day.
Just move around a little bit more. Just moving around the office or home, going up and down stairs, walking in your lunch break and generally getting up to do chores can burn up to 240 calories more a day than you would normally use. Think about that when you are at the office and it it seems an effort to get up to go to the printer or copier.
Be clever counting your calories. A good example is a fruit salad, which some people would not even count towards their calorie intake, however a large fruit salad can contain around 400 calories which is similar to eating a large cream cake so make sure you add this to your daily calorie intake. The foods may be nutritious, but they will still count towards to your total calorie count for the day.
Keep a food diary. Not only do we underestimate the amount of calories in "healthy" foods, but we also forget what we have eaten during the day by 40 to 60%. Writing down what you have eaten each day and adding up the calories may surprise you.
Do you have the fashionably large dinner plates at home? Yes, they may look great, like those from your favourite restaurant, but these bigger plates have lead us towards bigger portions. Change your dinner plate to one that is no larger than 10 inches in diameter, and your portion sizes will automatically drop.
If you want to lose weight stay away from buffet meals. Our brains are hard-wired for variety within our diet. If we are offered a lot of different foods at one time we will generally go for one of each option, and eat much more than we would normally if we had little choice of food - have you ever felt uncomfortably full after eating at a buffet meal?
Eat soups at lunch time. If one group of people eats a meal consisting of vegetables, protein and a glass of water and a second group of people eats the same meal, including the water, liquidised into a soup - which group do you think will remain fuller for longer? You might be inclined to think it would be the one eating the solid food, but it is actually the group that ate the soup. Ultrasound scans of the tummies of the two groups showed the group who had eaten the meal as a soup stayed full up to one and a half hours longer than the