Managing Ideal Weight

Maintaining ideal weight and BMI:

Weight management is one of the most important part of a healthy lifestyle. It includes a balance between of healthy eating and physical exercise to equate energy expenditure and energy intake to maintain an ideal weight.

Obesity is a modern-day nutrition epidemic. Obesity is excessive body fatness. Not only does it affect how our body looks and functions but also increases the risk of numerous diseases including heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.

Ideal weight

Maintaining optimal energy balance and ideal weight, which includes both physical activity and healthy eating, is the basis for life style diseases prevention strategy. It is imperative that a person who is obese or overweight to have a plan and follow it to lose weight and keep an ideal weight. Once the ideal weight is attained it is even more important to strive hard to maintain it. It is an uphill task but can be made easy by taking a few strategic steps.

Self-monitoring strategies are very important for successful weight maintenance.

1. Weighing oneself
2. Planning meals
3. Keeping a track of fat and calories
4. Exercising 30 or more minutes daily and/or adding physical activity to daily routine

In recent times it is not just the obese and overweight people who are paying attention to what they eat and their physical activity. There is a growing segment of population who are health conscious, physically fit and are interested in sporting a body that is lean with an ideal weight. Though they are not serious athletes they may take up a sport not to compete but to stay healthy and fit. These people lookout for food that will keep them healthy while maintaining an ideal weight, and help them sustain their moderate exercise routine.

Advantages of regular physical activity

Apart from burning calories there are additional benefits from increased regular exercise:

1. Obese people with a heavier body to move, use more energy than people who are not over weight for the same activity. Therefore, it will help in losing weight and maintain ideal weight.
2. Exercise can be valuable as a distraction from being at home and getting tempted to snack.
3. Exercise is more likely to reduce than increase appetite.
4. After exercise, the resting metabolic rate may increase for some hours though the increase may be minor.
5. When exercise is taken up after meals the thermic effect of the meal may be increased

Keep an eye on energy balance and an ideal weight

Although there may be several factors contributing to excess weight such as hormonal, genetic and metabolic issues the fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories burnt. Even to maintain ideal weight and be physically fit one has to choose foods intelligently. Foods chosen should not provide more calories which add fat to the body but should be foods which make their bodies lean.

Protein in ideal weight management

A sensible diet with sufficient protein would obviously contribute to ideal weight and thereby a healthy lifestyle. When people eat different meals containing equal number of calories but with different nutrient compositions in some cases, they burn more calories in the next couple of hours.

Especially foods that contribute more calories from protein and unsaturated fat will probably increase calorie burning more than if those same calories came from carbohydrate or saturated fat. This will lead to less calories to be stored in the body as fat. Protein is not easily converted to fat and is an ideal choice to substitute for saturated fat and simple sugars.