Good nutrition and weight loss go hand in hand. Adopting a healthy, nutritious diet helps us to lose weight and then keep our weight stable. It also gives us energy, helps us sleep better, prevents many diseases and protects our mental health. Add activity to the mix and you have a winning formula for getting the most out of life.
My life as a Nutrition and Weight Consultancy Practitioner was born of my early interest in nutrition and its importance in health and wellbeing, both physiologically and mentally. The more I studied the subject, the more my interest turned into a passion. I realised early on that helping people to understand how different foods affect our bodies, and helping to change our attitude to food, also helps enormously in the battle to lose weight. And so my method for helping people to adopt a nutritious diet and to lose weight includes passing on knowledge and information.
But where to start?
I could sit someone in a chair and spend all day quoting facts and figures to try to help them to ‘see the light’ but I realise this is not the best way to pique someone’s interest!
Telling someone that refined, sugary carbohydrates are not good for you means nothing when faced with a jam doughnut and a deep craving. But if you are aware of the metabolic processes the doughnut triggers and how the body reacts, then it is more likely to prompt a pause for thought, which could result in walking away from temptation.
Knowledge
Knowledge is key to successful weight loss and long term weight maintenance. There are no quick weight loss fixes, at least not if you want to avoid the repeated process, aptly named yo-yo dieting. Understanding how and why a nutrition and weight loss plan works makes it far easier to follow, and allows us to make informed choices when planning meals etc.
Getting to know your body
In order to develop an instinct as to what is best for our body, we first need to get to know it, and hopefully nurture a love for it. A little knowledge of how our body works will also help us to become more in tune with it.
After all, our body is the most important thing in our lives and yet is often what we neglect the most. We may say “my family/child/mother etc. is the most important thing in my life”. But why do airline safety demonstrations tell us to put on our own oxygen mask first, when our natural instinct is to give it first to our child? Because we need to be around to take care of that child, to ensure our child survives. Well the same goes for taking care of our own health in order to be around to look after our loved ones. Realising how important it is to take care of ourselves is the first step on the road to a healthy, happy life.
Photos by Priscilla Du Preez, Juliane Liebermann and Austin Schmid on Unsplash
