Tips on how to lose weight for teens!
This article deals with how to lose weight for teens in a simpler way than most. There are only a few problems that stir up teenagers, so much so that they can’t help but think about them all the time. One such problem is losing weight. It is really irritating to constantly hear from your friends and family about how you’re about to explode and how you need to shed it all off. Losing weight as adults isn’t the same thing as how to lose weight as teens, as the amount of calorie rich food available to teenagers is relatively higher. So let’s set out on our journey to losing weight.
– Set out a target for yourself!
The very first step is setting up a goal for yourself. This is so that you know where you’re headed towards. Making sure that the target is realistic is very important as being unable to achieve an insanely high target can bring morale down. Once your morale stoops low enough, your journey to losing weight ends there and then as you start believing that whatever you’re doing to shed weight isn’t really working.
– Plan out a schedule!
Planning out a work-out/diet schedule while working towards weight loss is really helpful as it allows you to work in a systematic manner instead of a haywire manner (which may mess things up).
Once the aforementioned steps have been established, you can choose the following ways to lose weight viz.
(i) Changing your food habits
(ii) Exercise and working out
How to lose weight for teens through improving food habits?
- Have your meals timely and eat healthy food: Contrary to popular belief that skipping meals allows you to lose weight faster and better, having 4-5 small meals at regular intervals daily is a must. This allows us to keep our hunger to the bare minimum and it also helps maintain the body sugar level at where it should be for a healthier lifestyle.
- Eating late night and early morning should be avoided: Going hand in hand with the aforementioned fact about regular meals is the fact that our metabolism levels are the lowest from 9 PM to 6 AM in the morning. Better digestion is another step towards a healthier food regime, leading to weight loss.
- Smaller portions of healthier food: Eating at regular intervals does not necessitate the fact that the portions need to be big as well to curb your hunger from resurfacing. Having smaller meals on smaller plates mystifies the brain into believing you’ve had a bigger meal than you actually have.
- Before every work out, have something to eat: Getting up early morning to work out is a very good thing, but doing so on an empty stomach? Not really. Before every time you exercise, even having as little as a single fruit can give you the energy you wouldn’t otherwise have, to work out. Working on lower energy levels will only head you towards muscle loss than fat loss.
- Avoiding junk food and resorting to home food: We need to say bye bye to fatty foods in order to help ourselves out. Given a choice, most of us, if not all of us would give preference to canteen food over home cooked food. This needs to be changed. Whenever at school or college, stick to home food like fruits, sandwiches etc.
- Choosing healthier snacks to munch on: Teenagers have a habit of munching things every now and then. Watching a movie? Let’s munch. Playing games? Let’s munch. Match coming up? Munch again. With so much munching going on, replacing the fatty and sweet snacks with healthy snacks like different fruits will be a really big improvement and development towards weight loss.
- Have lots and lots of water: It is recommended to have 7-8 glasses of water a day. Why? As obvious as it is, it keep you full, again curbing your hunger for unnecessary meals. It is not mandatory to have a glass at a time as long as the total amount of water intake for the day matches that of 8 glasses. All liquids that we usually consume except water, have a high calorie level, something that anyone wanting to lose weight needs to avoid.
Now that we’ve had a look at how teens can lose weight through improving their food habits, let’s move onto the alternative that they have!
How to lose weight for teens through exercise and workout?
- Walk walk walk: Yes, walking in itself is a very good exercise for the human body. It is found that walking helps us burn around 6-7 calories on an average every minute. As you multiply the number of minutes you walk, the calorie loss multiplies as well ofcourse, so it is recommended to walk as much as you possibly can. Don’t go all out at once, for starters, a brisk pace of walking will do. As you get used to it more often, pick up your speed for better results.
Choose to use the stairs instead of an elevator or an escalator. Walk to the nearby shop than going on bikes and scooties. - Exercise: Exercising is the Holy Grail for losing weight. There are various kinds of exercises you can resort to viz. Sports (like football and basketball), Yoga, Swimming, Aerobics, Zumba or the oh-so conventional way of going to the gym. The key to losing weight through exercising lies in its regularity. Doing exercise 3-4 days a week on a regular basis is something that will benefit you tremendously. Most people tend to not notice immediate results, which makes them think working out is ineffective but that’s where they’re wrong. Weight loss results take time to surface, so don’t give up already, ok?!
Now that you’ve read through all the basics of losing weight as a teenager, you can start implementing it on yourself. For even better results, use both the methods, i.e. improving your food habits and exercising, hand in hand. What are you waiting for? Start hustling!