Sleep, age, genetics, diseases, medications, and environments may also contribute to weight management. If you are concerned about your weight or have questions about your medications, talk with your health care provider.

Whether you have a family history of heart disease, want to see your kids get married, or want to feel better in your clothes, write down why you want to lose weight. Writing it down can confirm your commitment. Post these reasons where they serve as a daily reminder of why you want to make this change.

Write down everything you eat and drink for a few days in a food and beverage diary. Tracking physical activity [PDFKB] , sleep, and emotions can also help you understand current habits and stressors. This can also help identify areas where you can start making changes.

Next, examine your lifestyle. Identify things that might pose challenges to your weight loss efforts. For example, does your work or travel schedule make it hard to get enough physical activity? Do your coworkers often bring high-calorie items, such as doughnuts, to the workplace?

Think through things you can do to help overcome these challenges. If you have a chronic condition or a disability, ask your health care provider for resources to support healthy weight. This may include referral to a registered dietitian and other clinical or community programs, federally approved medications or devices, or surgery.

Ask for a follow-up appointment to monitor changes in your weight or any related health conditions. Set short-term goals and reward your efforts along the way.

Maybe your long-term goal is to lose 40 pounds and to control your high blood pressure. Short-term goals might be to drink water instead of sugary beverages, take a minute evening walk, or have a vegetable with supper. Setting unrealistic goals, such as losing 20 pounds in 2 weeks, can leave you feeling defeated and frustrated.

Being realistic also means expecting occasional setbacks. When setbacks happen, get back on track as quickly as possible. Also think about how to prevent setbacks in similar future situations. Keep in mind everyone is different—what works for someone else might not be right for you.

Try a variety of activities such as walking, swimming, tennis, or group exercise classes. See what you enjoy most and can fit into your life. These activities will be easier to stick with over the long term. Even modest weight loss [PDF This modest weight loss can decrease your risk for chronic diseases related to obesity.

Find family members or friends who will support your weight loss efforts. Coworkers or neighbors with similar goals might share healthy recipes and plan group physical activities. Joining a weight loss group or visiting a health care professional such as a registered dietitian may also help.

Revisit the goals you set in Step 3 and evaluate your progress regularly. Evaluate which parts of your plan are working well and which ones need tweaking.

Then rewrite your goals and plan accordingly. If you consistently achieve a particular goal, add a new goal to help you continue your pathway to success. Reward yourself for your successes!

Use non-food rewards, such as a bouquet of fresh flowers, a sports outing with friends, or a relaxing bath.

Rewards help keep you motivated on the path to better health. Treatment for overweight and obesity Common treatments for overweight and obesity include losing weight through healthy eating, being more physically active, and making other changes to your usual habits.

Choosing a safe and successful weight-loss program Tips on how to choose a program that may help you lose weight safely and keep it off over time. Tracking is also an effective tool for evaluating your eating habits and patterns. MyFitnessPal, Lose It, and Sparkpeople are top-ranked web-based and phone apps to help you track your daily intake and activity level.

The Healthy Eating Planner is a tool to help you assess your current eating habits, set goals and create a meal plan. Make use of your downtime to develop a basic menu for the upcoming week, go food shopping, and batch cook.

Keep healthful foods on hand so you can toss together a wholesome meal in no time. The Food Personality Quiz. Distribute your calories throughout the day rather than eating most of them after the sun goes down.

This helps to keep your metabolism fired up, prevents drastic swings in blood sugar and helps with portion control throughout the day. A good rule of thumb is to eat every hours.

While it can help to have something calorie-free to drink or distract yourself with an activity like going for a walk, these are short-term fixes.

If you struggle with stress or emotional eating, a mindful eating app called Eat Right Now can help you to improve your relationship with food and strengthen your control over cravings.

Contact beingwell yale. edu to learn more. Beverages like juice, soda, sweet teas, energy drinks, and flavored coffees can put a big dent in your daily calorie budget.

Make a habit of increasing your water intake. Count your cocktails too. Alcohol is dense in calories, even before it makes its way into a mixer. Rethink your drink! While nutrition plays the starring role in weight loss, physical activity is more than just an understudy.

INSTEAD: Focus on incorporating general categories of foods into your diet, such as vegetables, fruits, beans, seeds, nuts, and fish, rather than specific items. Choose foods within these groups based on what you like—not what you think you must eat. Foods low in energy density—meaning they contain fewer calories per bite—may be especially helpful.

Examples include salads, broth soups, beans, plain yogurt, and most fruits and veggies. Such foods, which are relatively high in water, give you more bang for your calorie buck, allowing you to fill up on fewer calories. A number of studies show that a low energy-density diet is effective for controlling weight.

Weight-loss supplements often contain a hodgepodge of ingredients such as caffeine, green tea extract, and raspberry ketone. Some products have been found to contain banned substances such as ephedra.

The same goes for safety. Even if an ingredient has few or no side effects when used alone, it may interact with other ingredients to cause harm. In short, taking a supplement for weight loss is a leap in the dark. However, the drugs come with potential side effects and can be expensive.

Another effective option for people in this category is weight-loss or bariatric surgery. In addition, it can produce dramatic improvements in health, including reversing diabetes and lowering the odds of developing it.

Surgery is also associated with reduced risks of cancer and premature death, and improves high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, sleep apnea, and other conditions.

Though the safety of bariatric surgery has improved greatly in recent years, it nevertheless does have risks and possible side effects.

Working with a health professional such as a therapist, nurse practitioner, or registered dietitian, people receive guidance and support for issues like devising eating and exercise plans, setting goals, self-monitoring, identifying challenges, and developing strategies to deal with them.

Contact us at letters time. Enis Aksoy—Getty Images. By Robert J. January 20, PM EST. Robert J. Davis is the author of Fitter Faster , Coffee Is Good for You and The Healthy Skeptic.

By being aware of what may trigger the desire to snack on empty calories, people can think of ways to adjust their routine to limit these triggers.

Stocking a kitchen with diet-friendly foods and creating structured meal plans will result in more significant weight loss. People looking to lose weight or keep it off should clear their kitchen of processed or junk foods and ensure that they have the ingredients on hand to make simple, healthful meals.

Doing this can prevent quick, unplanned, and careless eating. Planning food choices before getting to social events or restaurants might also make the process easier. Some people may wish to invite friends or family members to join them, while others might prefer to use social media to share their progress.

Weight loss is a gradual process, and a person may feel discouraged if the pounds do not drop off at quite the rate that they had anticipated. Some days will be harder than others when sticking to a weight loss or maintenance program.

A successful weight-loss program requires the individual to persevere and not give up when self-change seems too difficult. Some people might need to reset their goals, potentially by adjusting the total number of calories they are aiming to eat or changing their exercise patterns.

The important thing is to keep a positive outlook and be persistent in working toward overcoming the barriers to successful weight loss. Successful weight loss does not require people to follow a specific diet plan, such as Slimming World or Atkins.

Instead, they should focus on eating fewer calories and moving more to achieve a negative energy balance. Weight loss is primarily dependent on reducing the total intake of calories, not adjusting the proportions of carbohydrate , fat, and protein in the diet.

A reasonable weight loss goal to start seeing health benefits is a 5—10 percent reduction in body weight over a 6-month time frame. Most people can achieve this goal by reducing their total calorie intake to somewhere in the range of 1,—1, calories per day.

A diet of fewer than 1, calories per day will not provide sufficient daily nutrition. After 6 months of dieting, the rate of weight loss usually declines, and body weight tends to plateau because people use less energy at a lower body weight. Following a weight maintenance program of healthful eating habits and regular physical activity is the best way to avoid regaining lost weight.

People who have a BMI equal to or higher than 30 with no obesity-related health problems may benefit from taking prescription weight-loss medications. These might also be suitable for people with a BMI equal to or higher than 27 with obesity-related diseases.

However, a person should only use medications to support the above lifestyle modifications. Achieving and maintaining weight loss is possible when people adopt lifestyle changes in the long term.

Regardless of any specific methods that help a person lose weight, individuals who are conscious of how and what they eat and engage in daily physical activity or regular exercise will be successful both in losing and keeping off excess weight.

I have an injury that is keeping me from physical exercise. Is there any way to continue keeping the weight off? If your injury allows, you can do some simple exercises while sitting in a chair, such as lifting light weights. You can also use resistance bands while sitting or lying down.

Some other ways to keep the weight off include counting calories and sticking to a healthful diet that includes fruits, vegetables, lean meat and fish, and whole grains. Ensure that you include plenty of nutrient-dense foods in your diet, take the time to plan meals, use portion control, drink plenty of water, and maintain a positive attitude.

Gerhard Whitworth, RN Answers represent the opinions of our medical experts. All content is strictly informational and should not be considered medical advice.

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There are lots of ways you can lose weight, from making small changes to what you eat and drink to finding more support. If you're overweight, losing weight will give you more energy and help to reduce the risk of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Body mass index BMI is a measurement that works out if you're a healthy weight for your height. Use the BMI healthy weight calculator.

You do not have to do everything at once, try one thing at a time and find what works for you. get active for minutes a week — you can break this up into shorter sessions. aim to get your 5 A Day — 80g of fresh, canned or frozen fruit or vegetables count as 1 portion.

swap sugary drinks for water — if you do not like the taste, add slices of lemon or lime for flavour. cut down on food that's high in sugar and fat — start by swapping sugary cereal for wholegrain alternatives.