If you are a guy who is overweight you’re probably not only worried about your looks but also your health. Carrying excess weight as a man can increase your chances of heart disease as well as the risk of certain types of cancer. Whatever your age it is time to slim down and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Below are several tips that will help you eat properly to lose weight without feeling over deprived, and also for enhanced performance in all areas of your life.
Weight Loss Foods
Men tend to prefer foods that are more likely to lead to weight gain over healthful foods. These include fast food meals such as burger and chips, hotdogs, pizza and fried chicken. Rather than trying to eliminate these friends from your diet entirely, you will probably be more successful if you allow yourself a treat every now and then – for example on a Friday night or while watching the football on a Saturday.
However, if you do want to lose weight and are serious about improving your health, you will need to stop eating these foods on a daily basis. Burgers should be replaced with a lean protein food such as grilled chicken breast or fish.
Instead of pizza, try eating a crust less alternative. Baked zucchini topped with tinned or natural tomatoes and low-fat grated cheese with diced onions or tuna is a great low-calorie alternative, that is easy to prepare and you will barely notice the difference. In fact you will likely become accustomed and will probably prefer it! If you want to know more about foods that will help you lose weight then read the list of fat burning foods provided by The Slim Donkey. Instead of eating deep-fried foods such as potato chips or chicken nuggets, swap them for baked potatoes and grilled chicken. Adding a salad to your meals will also help to keep you feeling full and increase your vitamin and mineral intake.
Exercise
Like many women, these days a large percentage of men have jobs that do not require excessive movement. Working at a desk or on the computer for many hours every day is a surefire way to end up putting on weight.
At the weekends, instead of just sitting in front of the TV watching soccer, try participating instead. Go to the park with the kids for a game of football, or buddy up with a friend and take up tennis or squash. If you have the room, you could try installing a tennis table game in your spare bedroom or basement. This is a great way to lose weight as well is providing hours of fun and quality family time.
Home gyms are also great for building muscle and speeding up metabolism without requiring that you make the trip to the local gym, when you may be short on time and not in the mood for travelling.
Choose Your Meals Wisely
If you are a single guy you probably do not like to spend much time in the kitchen and prefer to eat ready meals and takeaways rather than preparing healthy meals.
When ordering out, be aware that some foods are far more likely to cause weight gain than others. Takeaway Chinese meals are one of the worst culprits, and many of the dishes served at a Chinese restaurant or takeaway can contain more calories than you require for a whole day.
“Chinese food is also extremely high in sodium which increases weight gain by stimulating your body to retain fluids.”
Therefore, when deciding where to go for a takeaway meal, try to stick to outlets that have salad bar buffets and healthy vegetable choices. A baked potato with tuna and a large green salad contains only around 400 calories compared to 1060 calories in a McDonald’s Big Mac meal.
Cut Down on Alcohol
Drinking too many alcoholic drinks is one of the primary reasons men gain weight. Alcohol has only empty calories; this means that the calories you consume have no nutrients at all. When you drink alcohol your body uses it as the first source of energy, so until all the calories from the alcohol are used, you will not burn any stored calories or fat. Considering that most alcoholic drinks are drunk in the evening it is little wonder that drinking alcohol leads to weight gain.
If you do have an alcoholic drink, try to stick to white wine and soda instead of beer or mixed drinks, as it has fewer carbohydrates and calories.
Drink More Water
Many different studies have found that drinking lots of water helps increase weight loss. A recent study spread over a period of three months discovered that older people who drank two glasses of water before each meal lost on average five pounds more than a control group of dieters. The water drinkers also managed to maintain their weight loss a year later.
The study was based on middle-aged and elderly obese people, but there is no reason to think that drinking more water will not have the same effect on younger people.
There are several ways why drinking water helps weight loss. During the study participants who drank the water at breakfast ate about 75 calories less than the control group. They were not told to restrict how much food they ate, and all participants ate as much as they wanted.
Another group of adults were put on a restricted calorie diet of between 1200 and 1500 calories a day. Half the group were told to drink 16 ounces of water before their meals, while the other half were also given water but without instructions on how much to drink. The group who drank the water lost an average of 15.5lbs in 12 weeks compared to 11lbs lost by the group who did not have instructions to drink the water.
It is believed that drinking water leads the body to produce more heat which also boosts metabolism and therefore burns more calories. It is probably also beneficial because if you drink plenty of water you are less likely to reach for sugary drinks like coke and fruit juice.
Become Informed
Women are generally fairly well-informed about how many calories each type of food contains and what constitutes a balanced meal, even if they do not always eat foods that conform to a healthy standard. This is because women’s magazine and TV programs targeted at women often focus on nutrition and diets, and women are used to ingesting this information from a young age. Therefore, The Slim Donkey recommends to all men on the globe to start reading more about weight loss issue as well as many myths connected to healthy fat loss.
Men however, are more likely to read newspapers or publications about sports and other topics that interest them, and usually have little idea about which foods contain a lot of calories, or are considered healthy.
Reading up on nutrition can go a long way in helping you make healthy diet choices, or if you do not like the getting stuck into diet and weight loss information, try using an app for your android phone or iPhone. There are literally hundreds of apps that will help you with your weight loss efforts by informing you which foods are best for shedding pounds. You will also find numerous apps that help you maintain a regular exercise routine, which is just as important as diet when it comes to dropping excess weight.
Yours,
The Slim Donkey – “Hee-Haw”
Article resources:
American Chemical Society. (2010). “Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method”. Published by Virginia Tech News. (Online). Available at: http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2010/08/082310-cals-davy.html
Sifferlin, A. (2012). “For More Weight Loss, Exercise Less?”. Published by Time.com. (Online). Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/21/health/weight-exercise-loss/index.html