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.

Healthy breakfast

Having breakfast is an important habit if you are dieting or watching your weight. Research shows that regular breakfast eaters are leaner and are more successful a losing weight as compared to person trying to loose weight by eating less breakfast and meals.

Here are some of my favorite breakfast:

1. Raspberries

A cup of raspberries delivers a whopping 8 grams of fiber (that's more than double what's in a cup of strawberries and about the same amount in a cup of some types of beans). What's so great about all that fiber? Recent research in the Journal of Nutrition suggests eating more fiber as a way to prevent weight gain or even encourage weight loss. Over the course of the two-year study, the researchers found that boosting fiber by 8 grams for every 1,000 calories resulted in about 4.5 pounds of weight lost.

2. Oatmeal

Oatmeal can help you lose weight in two ways. First, it's packed with fiber and it keeps you feeling fuller longer. Second, a recent study in the Journal of Nutrition reported that eating a breakfast made with "slow-release" carbohydrates—such as oatmeal or bran cereal—3 hours before you exercise may help you burn more fat. How? Eating "slow-release" carbohydrates doesn't spike blood sugar as high as eating refined carbohydrates (think: white toast). In turn, insulin levels don't spike as high. Because insulin plays a role in signaling your body to store fat, having lower blood sugar levels may help you burn fat.

3. Yogurt
A recent report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and out of Harvard revealed which foods are correlated with weight change, including the top 5 foods that promote weight loss. Yogurt was one of them!Another reason to eat yogurt: the protein in it may give you an extra edge if you're looking to get leaner. When researchers fed two groups of mice a high-fat diet for 11 weeks, the mice that got water spiked with whey protein (a type of protein found naturally in yogurt and other dairy) packed on 42 percent less weight and nearly a third less body fat than the mice who just drank plain water, despite the fact that they ate roughly the same number of calories. The whey eaters also gained 7 percent more lean body mass (e.g., muscle mass). Save calories—and unnecessary sugar—by choosing plain yogurt. If you need a little extra sweetness, try fresh fruit (maybe raspberries?).

4. Peanut Butter
Nuts were also among the top 5 foods that Harvard researchers said promote weight loss. I love to slather a tablespoon or two of peanut butter onto whole-wheat toast (ahem, a "slow-release" carbohydrate), but you could also add nuts to your oatmeal.


5. Eggs
Eggs deliver protein, which is great for dieters. Compared to carbohydrates and fat, protein keeps you satisfied longer. Plus, in one study, dieters who ate eggs for breakfast felt fuller longer and lost more than twice as much weight as those who got the same amount of calories from a bagel for breakfast.

         These are my recommended things to have in breakfast, however you can add other healthy ingredients to your morning meals by consulting a dietitian.