Have you been physically active but still did not drop pounds? The answer may be hiding out between the random things you do over the course of a normal day. You may not find any connection between those little habits and weight loss. However, these may be the factors that are sabotaging your attempts onto reducing weight.
Given below are some of the questions which you should probably ask yourself and if you say a ‘Yes’ to it, then you may have found the answer to your personal diet defeaters. If you win over them, you will soon be back on track to a slimmer, healthy you.
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Do you always eat “healthy”?
Do you know that your brain produces more hormone ghrelin (Ghrelin is the “hunger hormone”) when you concentrate on careful diet decisions? According to a report in a study from Yale University, they found that even the thought of your meal as a light choice makes the brain produce more of the hormone called ghrelin. The study author and PhD candidate Alia Crum says that when more ghrelin is produced, it makes you feel less full.
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This, therefore, signals your metabolism to slow down its pace. You need to focus on more indulgent portions of your meal if you want to keep the level of hormone ghrelin balanced. For example, you can concentrate on the cheese and nuts on your salad, instead of the lettuce. This can also help you in finding the foods that seem like a treat and also is healthy. For example, a crusty whole-grain bread along with a warm bowl of soup.
Do you pay with plastic?
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According to a research in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who use a credit card when grocery shopping buy considerably calorie-dense and unhealthy food than those individuals who pay cash. You might feel that carrying cash along with you while shopping is not in today’s trend. However, if you want to abstain yourself from buying unhealthy food, then you may need to stop carrying card and start using cash!! Study co-author Kalpesh Desai, PhD, who is an associate professor of marketing at Binghamton University explained that the junk-food buyers were well aware of the added calories and cost of those treats, but since they didn’t feel the instant hit in the wallet, they gave in more quickly to impulse buys.
Do you think about exercise a lot?
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In a recent French study, it found that thinking a lot about exercising will make you gain weight. But how? When you think more about exercise, it can cause you to eat more than 50 percent. People believe that the upcoming workouts give them the license to snack in between. Keri Glassman, RD, who is the author of The Snack Factor Diet, advises avoiding unnecessary munching with a pre-gym snack of no more than 150 calories. You can try two slices of turkey along with whole-grain crackers.
Are you laser-focused at work?
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Researchers at the University of Missouri–Columbia found that if you sit for just a few hours, your body stops producing a fat-inhibiting enzyme called lipase. Another research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says that if you stand and stretch every hour, it will help you in boosting your metabolism by around 13 percent. Otherwise, you could just keep fidgeting all day. Tapping your feet or just bouncing in your chair will also help in increasing your calorie burn by around 54 percent.
Do you sleep too little?
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Michael Breus, PhD, who is the author of The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan says that if you do not have enough sleep, then it will put your body into a fat- and carb- craving survival mode. A research in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition observed that women who slept lesser than four hours consumed 300 more calories and 21 more grams of fat the following day.
You can now easily measure your sleep requirements just by a simple method. For a week, you need to go to bed seven and a half hours before you want to get up. If you wake up even before your alarm goes off, you can get by with limited sleep. However, if you hit snooze, you may require eight to around nine, hours of sleep a night so as to wake up refreshed and renewed. This will also help your body in preparing itself for some fat burn.
