Ways to maintain healthy weight

First of all maintaining healthy weight is not hard, its only our thinking that to maintain weight we need to do intense workouts or consume weight loss drugs. There are many ways of staying fit just by maintaining a healthy diet. Following are some ways in which you can stay fit and maintain proper body weight by proper eating habit.

1. Don't deprive yourself - Not eating enough calories in a day is a one-way ticket to overeating later in the week. You may have been on a strict diet that limited the amount of calories you consumed, but it will be next to impossible to maintain that level of commitment now that you've reached your goal weight. Never let yourself get to the point where you feel like you're starving – that feeling where your stomach seems like it could turn inside out from the lack of sustenance. Once you're that hungry, every healthy eating tip and strategy you've ever read or heard will go straight out the window as you make a beeline toward an extra-large double-cheese pizza with a milkshake chaser.

2. Treat yourself in small doses - If you love chocolate ice cream, but you've said you've sworn it off for good, at some point that self-imposed ice cream embargo is going to cause a lot of problems. The longer you go without allowing yourself a treat, the greater the risk of breaking down at some point and eating three pints of the cold stuff. Everything is OK in moderation – buy your favorite treats in individually wrapped containers or create one-serving treat packs out of the full-size container. The point is to never feel like you can't have something – because we all know that eventually we all want what we can't have.

3. Eat less food, more often - To avoid feeling deprived (and consequently inhaling that oversize pizza) you need to eat less food, more often. Small meals don't work for everyone, but if you want to feel satisfied (and not starving) all day, then spreading out your meals is a great tactic. Eating five or even six smaller meals can really make a big difference in your energy level and how you feel overall. Larger, heavy meals are harder to digest and often leave you feeling sluggish, whereas you'll feel lighter all day eating smaller meals, and be much more able to control cravings.


4. Stay hydrated - What feels like hunger can actually be thirst in disguise, so if you find yourself contemplating a stroll to the vending machine, make sure you're adequately hydrated before you give in to a snack attack. It's easy to forget about drinking water when you're busy, whether it's meeting deadlines, in meetings, or wrangling small children – but drinking enough water is a great way to avoid eating when you're not really hungry at all. Keep a pitcher on your desk filled with water and an inviting dash of berries, cucumbers and slices of orange to give yourself more incentive to sip.

5. Snack smarter - We all snack, and snacking isn't a bad thing – it's the snack choices that can get us into trouble. Anything sugary and full of white flour (cookies, cakes) will give you a burst of energy – then you will crash, staring blankly at your computer screen wondering what just happened. When you're tired or frustrated it's easy to reach for the comfort snacks but what you need is fuel, not something that offers no nutritional value. Instead of chips and cupcakes grab or pack one of the following:

Half of an apple covered in almond butter
Plain, low-fat yogurt topped with ground flax seeds and frozen raspberries
A handful (12-14) of raw almonds
Vegetables and hummus
Low-sodium vegetable juice
Celery sticks with peanut butter

6. Rethink your plate - Your plate is a good indicator of whether you're going to have trouble maintaining your ideal weight or not. If it's filled with simple carbohydrates (bread, pasta, potatoes) and meat, you might have some trouble keeping the weight off. A better-looking plate would be divided like so: half vegetables, a quarter whole grains and a quarter protein. Vegetables don't have to be boring. If you're picturing a plate overflowing with raw carrots, think again. Try filling your plate with one quarter grilled asparagus and one quarter oven-roasted cauliflower. Or one half chopped raw broccoli dressed with low-fat yogurt and dill topped with pomegranate seeds and crushed raw almonds. The possibilities are endless we can use endless combinations of various healthy stuffs in our diet.