When You Lose Weight the Healthy Way, Is it Easier for Your Body to Keep the Weight Off?

Although it’s likely to take longer to reach your goals, making the extra effort to lose weight the healthy way will pay off. While you may be tempted to go for more quick weight-loss techniques, such as diet pills or severely limiting your calorie intake, doing so not only is dangerous but it will more than likely provide temporary results.

Losing Weight

• To lose weight, you’ve got to create a caloric deficit in your body by burning more calories than you take in. When you create a caloric deficit, your body has to figure out where to get the fuel it needs. It does so by breaking down the fat you have stored on your body and converting it into useable fuel. Every 3,500-calorie deficit you create equates to a pound of fat loss.

Healthy Way

• A caloric deficit of 3,500 for each pound of weight loss may seem like a daunting task, but you don’t create this deficit in one day. MayoClinic.com recommends that you work to lose 1 to 2 pounds every week. This means you want to create a 3,500- to 7,000-calorie deficit every week, or a daily deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories. You increase the number of calories you burn by performing regular bouts of exercise and decrease the calories you consume by making adjustments to your eating and drinking decisions such as reducing your portion sizes.

Significance

• When you lose weight by making healthy eating decisions and exercising regularly, you’ve had to incorporate these healthy habits into your lifestyle. As a result, you should be used to fitting exercise into your schedule and have learned to incorporate healthy foods into your nutritional habits. Therefore, you are more likely to keep the weight off because you’re going to maintain these healthy living habits. The American Council on Exercise notes that 89 percent of the members of the National Weight Control Registry, who are people who lost weight and kept it off for at least a year, did so by using both exercise and healthy eating.

Losing Weight Fast

• When you lose weight at a faster rate than 1 to 2 pounds per week, it’s likely you’re losing something other than fat, notes MayoClinic.com. Instead, you could be losing water or lean tissue. In addition, most diet pills and other methods work by acting as laxatives or suppressing your appetite. You’ll be unable to maintain these types of methods and as a result, you’ll quickly put the weight back on.