Sunday, 12 August 2018

Nutrition Corner: 5 Useful Tips to Commence A Weight Management Plan

“I want to slim down!” 
seems to be everyone’s goal every year. 
Sadly speaking, people nowadays are overloaded with non-reliable sources or information all over the internet. 

Hence, I am writing this as an Accredited Nutritionist to share with you in regards some essential preparation prior to weight management that could determine your success rate of weight loss.

1. Differentiate slimming, fat reducing and body toning. 
Before entering the process, I suggest you to clearly define your objective, as three terms above reflects different outcomes
Slimming is to reduce overall body weight, which focuses less on the body composition (body fats, muscles, water content, bone weight and etc.). 
Reducing fat is to bring down overall body fat % (non-specific), body weight may remain the same. This is highly related with the risk of chronic disease. 
Body toning is to shape your body well, which looks fit and firm in overall. 

2. Set SMART goals, there’s no short cut. 
First and foremost, you need to accept the fact where it took you years to be at your current weight. Hence, you need TIME to reverse back
Basically, you need at least 3 months to formulate a sustainable weight management plan, and aim at 0.5-1.0 kg of healthy yet sustainable weekly weight reduction. 
At this pace, you will be able to reduce a minimum of 6-12 kg in three months’ time, provided you did not try out any strict or fad diets prior to this. 
There are no shortcuts to any place worth doing, including your health. 
No pain, no gain.

3. Get support from family and friends 
Weight management isn’t solely about diet or exercise, but it’s a lifelong lifestyle transformation. 
We can never live alone in this world, in fact, we are living in a huge community in real life. 
We need to understand that motivating powers from the community are very essential to drive us a success, especially those coming from our beloved family and friends. 
Let’s not be afraid or embarrass to tell people around us that we are currently putting on efforts to achieve healthy weights. 
Even though they might not support us, but at least get them to respect our decision and not to interfere us. 
Trust me, that level of respect and support from people around us are very crucial to determine our success rate. 

4. Find out your “WHY” behind this 
Why do you want to lose weight? For outlook sake? Or getting married? Or for health sake? 
It doesn’t matter what’s your motivating reason behind, as long as it keeps motivating you, continuously. 
Coming from a Nutritionist point of view, I definitely hope that everyone should do it for health sake, because we can’t achieve anything without a healthy body. 
Health is the basic of life. 

5. There’s significant changes in life for the next 6 months. 
Before you even decide for a weight management plan, please be assured that you are not anticipating any significant changes in your life for the next 3-6 months. Life events, such as changing job and life partner, marriage, migration, honeymoon, family planning as well as on long vacation, distract your attention from weight management, which further reduce your success rate. Trust me, life events as mentioned above are highly related to food. 
In short, accomplish one thing at a time and do it well. 

Healthy weight makes a healthier you. 
However, don’t overdo it for a better outlook which ends up being harmful to your body,
it doesn’t worth it. 

Take a look at another sharing of mine on “3 Common Mistakes in Weight Management” for better understanding. 
Check it out!

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