Don’t Lose Your Mind Lose Your Weight- This book about nutrition and health changed my life in invariable ways. The author writes in a manner as if she is talking to you with simple tips which we tend to overlook. However, if we adhere to them all we can see great changes in our body, skin and life in general. A deeply encouraging and motivating book for all health conscious people. This book teaches you to treat food with respect and make the most of it. It should be read every time you lose track with your body.
Four Principles of Eating Right:
- Never wake up to tea or coffee in the morning. Instead eat real food within 10 to 15 minutes of waking up. When we sleep, our blood sugar levels drop in the night. In the morning our liver stores are almost empty. So our blood sugar is low and it’s our responsibility to bring this up to an optimum level. Low blood sugar is also a reason why we feel ‘low’ in the morning. Eat real food. This kicks in the action of insulin, which is secreted by the body as a response to an increase in blood sugar levels. The stimulants provided through tea and coffee increase blood sugar levels but provide zero nutrition to the cells that have been starving for the last 9-10 hrs.
- Eat every 2 hours. Eating every 2 hrs will lead to a conducive environment in the body to burn fat and thus fewer calories get converted to fat and we get a flatter stomach and no need to hold on to fat stores.
- Eat more when you are more active and less when you are less active. We need to up our eating during high demand periods and cut down when relaxing. No food is fattening. You have to be just smart enough to choose the right time to eat it. Eating more when you are more active will make your body an effective calorie burner which will increase the metabolic rate of your body and helps you to lose weight more effectively.
- Finish your last meal at least 2 hrs prior to sleeping. In the night, cells are naturally not very sensitive to energy or nutrients as they don’t really need much so if you overload your stomach most of it will get wasted or converted to fat. If you want no stretch marks or want to reduce the ones you already have, eat 2 hrs before bedtime.
Some other important points from the book:
Our body weight is made up of 2 parts – the fat weight and the lean body weight. The former is the fat while the latter is the weight of our bones and muscles. A weighing scale measures the weight of the body and not the fat.
Don’t try someone else’s regime. Exercise is non-negotiable. Unless you exercise, you will never see good results.
If you want to lose weight, savour every bit of what you eat, slowly and mindfully, and you will naturally find your threshold. All you need to do is be attentive to your stomach.
A homemade parantha is always better than a burger. When it comes to food, think of nutrients and not calories.
To sum up I would like to say that a healthy lifestyle demands serious and sincere efforts. Once you get in the habit of living life consciously, you don’t have to be bothered about weight/fat loss. It will happen naturally. Losing weight is just an added bonus you get along with fulfilling the main goal of improving physical and mental health by following two steps- eating healthy and working out regularly.