Controlling Your Weight Without Starving Yourself

Many of us aren’t where we want to be, weight wise, and we’re ready to do whatever it takes to hit our goals. One thing we shouldn’t be willing to do, however, is to starve ourselves. The risk of dehydration, nausea, malnutrition, and other serious issues is too great. As such, here are some ways to maintain a healthier path.

Schedule your meals
Cutting down your portions is all well and good, but you shouldn’t cut out meals entirely. Not only are hunger pangs going to make it all the harder to avoid raiding the fridge, but it can disrupt your metabolism, making it harder to convert fat and carb stores into energy. Timing your meals for optimal weight loss is much healthier, ensuring that you’re feeling full throughout the day without having to stuff yourself with snacks.

Look for low-mass high-volume foods

While it is important to reduce how much you eat, if you are overeating, for some people, it’s one of the hardest habits to get over. As such, one trick that can help is finding low calorie foods that you can safely eat a lot of. Celery, popsicles, and even popcorn can all be good for keeping your mind and your mouth busy, but without adding too much to your calorie count. It can help you manage the urge to go snacking between meals, but you do still need to count those calories.

Ensure you get the vitamins and minerals you need

The biggest risk of starving yourself for the sake of weight loss is malnutrition. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies can cause a plague of symptoms, including nausea, dehydration, migraines, and muscle weakness. Even if you’re on a calorie controlled diet, getting the recommended amount of your nutrition is crucial. One way to make it a little easier is to take supplements or use IV vitamin therapy to ensure that your stores are up. If you start feeling any untoward symptoms after starting your diet, it’s essential to talk to your doctor to see if there are any deficiencies at the root of them.

Know the difference between the carbs

One of the reasons that people cut all carbs out of their life is that they misunderstand their relationship with their body. Refined carbs are often cited as being one thing that you should avoid having too much of in your meal, and there's a good reason for that. The refining process tends to remove a lot of the nutritional value, and products with refined carbs also tend to have added sugars. Whole Grains are not only more nutritionally valuable, but they’re also easier for the body to convert into energy. Combined with the lack of sugar, it means it’’s easier to control your weight with them.

It’s important to make sure you get both enough calories and nutrients to sustain a healthy body, no matter what your weight loss goals. Starving yourself or “fasting” isn’t just unhealthy, it’s also ineffective. When you eat too little, your body holds on to its fat stores more carefully, so keeping your weight loss managed and controlled is the most effective solution.