Basic Principles of Effective Weight Loss and Maintenance

 

The season of exposure is summer.  The summer season, along with the beginning of the year, is the time when weight management needs are the greatest.  Many people start dieting, but on the other hand, there are also many people who are frustrated by failures and yo-yos.

How can I effectively lose weight and maintain it?  It is easy to fall into the temptation of 'easy diet' amid the flood of diet information, but there is no 'royal road' or 'easy shortcut'.  Let's take a look at the diet principles that are commonly known but must be remembered.

Basic Principles of Effective Weight Loss and Maintenance:

1. Set realistic goals

Setting a diet goal is important.  However, it must be an achievable goal.  In some cases, failure occurs due to setting goals that are not realistically achievable, and in some cases, future attempts are abandoned due to loss of self-confidence.

The 'standard of beauty' is extremely subjective.  However, there are cases of people who are not medically obese or overweight due to a distorted body image, but compulsively excessive starvation or abuse of anti-obesity drugs.

Even with the same weight, skeletal muscle mass/body fat mass and constitutional characteristics are different for each individual, so the goals and methods of weight loss will also be different.

It is recommended that you seek medical advice from a professional about your physical condition before starting a diet.

For young adults, it is a desirable way to maintain health and reduce yo-yos by aiming to lose 5-10% of the initial weight over 3-6 months, and then setting a new goal again and approaching it step-by-step.

Medically, a successful diet is defined as a state in which 10% or more of the initial weight has been lost and the weight has been maintained for more than one year.  It is not a medically recommended diet to lose a lot of weight in a short period of time.

Meanwhile, customised management that reflects individual characteristics such as childbirth, age, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, diabetes, anaemia, osteoporosis, and arthritis is also important.

2 . Diet: If I eat less, will I lose weight?

 

An ultra-low calorie diet of less than 800 kcal per day has the effect of fast weight loss in a short period of time, but it can cause various medical problems and is not as effective as a low calorie diet in the long run.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the United States does not recommend limiting calories to less than 1200 kcal per day.

It is helpful to keep a daily food/calorie diary.  A diet that reduces 500-1000 kcal of daily intake does not harm health, and it is known as a method that is not unreasonable to the general public and is highly recommended.

Reducing high-calorie foods, snacks, fast foods, and late-night meals is key.

It is recommended to eat three regular meals a day, mainly Korean food.  Korean food is well-balanced in nutrients and is a well-being meal with a high content of unsaturated fatty acids.

Rich in vegetables, high in dietary fibre and high in phytochemicals, it helps to prevent adult diseases and metabolic diseases.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) has introduced Korean food as a nutritionally balanced model of food.

3. Exercise

Many people wonder what their basal metabolic rate is.  The reason you are curious about your basal metabolic rate is probably from the thought that if you eat less than your basal metabolic rate, you can easily lose weight.

However, if you reduce your caloric intake without movement, your muscle mass will decrease, and the remaining calories will be stored as fat again, eventually increasing the ratio of fat to muscle, which makes it easy to increase your body fat percentage.

Food management is essential in dieting, but it is recommended to combine aerobic exercise and strength exercise that can be practised in daily life as part of daily life.  Aerobic exercise helps you lose weight, and strength training helps increase muscle and basal metabolic rate.

Rather than starting an exercise that will not last long, look for an exercise you can do in your daily life, such as ‘climbing the stairs’ or ‘walking down the subway one or two stops before commuting’.

The desire to have a slim and beautiful body is a common desire of all men and women.  But beauty without health is not true beauty.  We hope that this summer will be a successful and effective diet based on realistic goals that fit individual health and physical condition.