New science says that your bedtime, your work agenda & even the temperature of your house may be blame.
Habits that you have never even thought of may be unwittingly sabotaging your efforts. If you are trying to slim down, pay attention to these sneaky weight loss saboteurs:
Staying up Late
According to new research staying up late may pack on up to 1 kg a month. The study found that people who go to bed late eat more food (on average 248 extra calories per day), have worse diets & are more likely to have a higher body mass index than people who tuck in earlier. Eating at night, when you are supposed to be sleeping, may cause you to process calories differently. Plus, the foods we often crave at night tend to be high in calories & fat. To ease into a new routine, inch your bedtime back by 15 minutes a night until you are snagging seven to eight hours of sleep.
Travelling
The more time you spend away from home, the worse off your waistline. After reviewing the medical records of more than 13000 employees researchers found that those who traveled the most for work were more likely to have higher BMIs & a greater risk of obesity. Long stints of inactivity behind the wheel & unhealthy on-the road food choices are probably to blame. Fill a portable cooler with fresh-cut fruits & vegetables, sandwiches, yogurt & bottles of water in your glove compartment as a go-to healthy snack.
Airconditioning
A study theorizes that modern technologies (such as air conditioning) help keep our bodies in a thermo neutral zone, a temperature range in which we don’t have to work to stay comfortable, which decreases the amount of calories we burn. Also, when you are hotter you tend to eat less, so keeping your house cool may make you eat more. Set your air conditioner to the highest temperature you can tolerate, or turn it off altogether of you can stand it, though this specific approach has not yet been scientifically shown to cause weight loss.
Eating plenty of fruits & vegetables can help you stay trim, but if your fridge is so full that you don’t even know what’s in your produce drawers, your healthy intentions may be falling short, wash & cut up fruits & veggies as soon as you get home from market, then store them in airtight containers on eye-level shelves. Keep a fruit bowl with apples, peers, bananas or mangoes on the counter. And don’t buy more than a week’s worth of produce at a time.
According to a study people who downed drinks made with artificial sweeteners had a 47 percent bigger increase in body mass index (BMI) than those who didn’t drink them. While artificially sweetened drinks certainly pack fewer calories than full sugar beverages, over-relying on them as a weight-loss tool may backfire. Researchers theorize that artificial sweeteners stoke your sweet tooth & set off cravings that lead you to binge on high calorie food later. Craving something sweet to sip? Make ice cubes out of 100 percent fruit juice & plop them into a glass of iced tea. As the ice melt it will sweeten the drink & add healthy vitamins & antioxidants.
Your rapid-fire, doing five-things-at-once lifestyle has a surprisingly negative effect on you diet. Of course when you are busy it’s harder to carve out time for exercise or cook healthy meals, but new research suggests that serially switching tasks actually wears out you resolve & makes you more apt to give in to temptation. Researchers conducted five different experiments on about 300 people & found that frequently toggling between different tasks can exhaust the executive function of the brain, which help us regulate self control. Minimizing distractions may help you avoid a snack binge.
No comments:
Post a Comment