The combined effect of a healthy diet and regular exercise is a staple in most health plans, whether your goal is to lose weight, treat an illness or just want to feel well everyday. With so many diet tips, exercise trends and nutritional information flooding the internet these days, it is difficult to stick to a health plan for long before the next food and exercise idea comes along.
Basic food and exercise tips
The key to losing weight and keeping the kilos off permanently lies in doing things gradually and consistently. Making adjustments to your diet and exercise routine one step at a time will all add up to big results after a reasonable period of time. While there are many approaches to losing weight and keeping fit, most diets and exercise routines share the following tips:
Keep a food journal
Writing down the things that you eat each day helps you stay on track with your diet. If your diet plan does not seem to have any effect on your weight, your journal will give you clues about where you may have strayed in the past. Moreover, your food journal will help you compute your daily kilojoule intake, an essential tool in weight loss plans. Start today by keeping a small notebook nearby or by taking digital photos of your meals and uploading them in a personal blog.
Take a good multivitamin
A restricted diet may deprive you of other vitamins and nutrients that are not always found in fruits and vegetables. Taking a multivitamin with at least a hundred percent of your body’s daily recommended allowance not only supports your health but may also help you lose weight. Studies show that people who take a multivitamin daily tend to weigh less and have lower Body Mass Index (or BMI), an accepted measure of body fat.
Circuit training
Most exercise routines involve strength training or resistance training. If you work out with weights, you can burn more calories by doing your sets continuously with no rest in between. This is also known as circuit training. You can extend the concept to other types of exercise that use props to gain resistance like elastic bands, by doing 15 repetitions of each exercise without stopping and by taking 20-second breaks in between circuits. The idea is that using more muscles during exercise burns more fat.
Vitamin-C
Research shows that taking at least 500 milligrams of Vitamin-C everyday may help you burn fat while you exercise. The easiest way to add Vitamin-C to your diet is to eat more citrus fruits and whole vegetables like broccoli and leafy greens. A Vitamin-C supplement also helps.
Add more colour to your meals
Fruits and vegetables in different colours of red, orange, green and yellow contain high amounts of phytonutrients that nourish and protect your body from free radical damage. The deeper the colour of these natural foods, the more vitamins and nutrients they are said to contain. Fill your dinner plate with a rainbow of colours coming from blue and red berries, red bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes, oranges and many others.
Originally published on Nov 30, -0001
