Fad diets that promise you to help lose 10 kg show just temporary results and the moment you step out of those diets, you tend to pile back on all the weight that you lost. The mantra with weight loss is that you should put your body into calorie deficit and push your body to make use of stored body fat for use as fuel to run its daily activities. It is essential to go into a calorie deficit to actually lose weight and all the diet programs on Rati Beauty put you through calorie deficit without compromising on nutrition or health. But what does “calorie deficit” mean and how can one achieve weight loss using this technique. In this post, we are sharing 18 Awesome Tips to Create Calorie Deficit to Lose Weight.
What is a Calorie?
A calorie is a unit of energy and considered the amount of heat that is needed to elevate the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. Calories that come through food provide energy in the form of heat, so that our body gets the fuel to function and sustain itself.
When Does Calorie Deficit Happen?
Calories are consumed through exercise and through NEAT activities. When people take in more calories than they require, the surplus calories are stored as fat in the body. Calorie deficit happens when you eat less than the necessary calories so that your body reaches out to fat stores to run all functions smoothly. If the body doesn’t get the calories it needs to perform its necessary functions from the food you consume on a daily basis, you create a calorie deficit. Putting it simply, calorie deficit occurs when someone takes in lesser calories than those burnt during exercise, resting, and to perform daily bodily functions. To have a calorie deficit, a person must cut down daily calorie intake by 500 calories. When the calories drop down by 500, weight loss starts to happen. A word of caution here, it is extremely unhealthy for women to drop calories beyond 1200 calories per day, and in men, calories should not go low beyond 1500 calories per day.
What Happens when Calorie Deficit Happens?
When a calorie deficit is created, our body starts sourcing energy from stored fat. Most usually, it’s the fat that is stored around hips, belly, thighs, and arms. When calories fall short from the food we consume, gradually the fat deposits get used up and that’s how you lose weight. For example, when you consume 1500 calories in a day and burn 2000 calories through exercise and being active for most part of the day, you are in calorie deficit.
18 Awesome Tips to Create Calorie Deficit to Lose Weight:
1. Combination of Diet and Exercise: When you follow the 80% dieting and 20% exercise formula, you will create considerable calorie deficit, drop weight and get fit too over the months.
2. Follow Rati Beauty Weight Loss Programs: Eating the right kind of nutritious food and engaging in optimum physical activity, you would feel sufficiently full without starving or crash dieting, and lose weight consistently on these programs, without depriving your body of essential nutrients.
2. Reduce liquid calories: Without us even noticing, packaged juices and liquid beverages with artificial flavours and loads of sugar content, transport hundreds of extra calories into the body, and keeping a track of these calories and burning them off would become difficult. So, to get into calorie deficit easily, reduce liquid calories that packaged juices and beverages add to the body.
3. Portion control: Portion control is an essential aspect, not only to lose weight but also to maintain optimum health and to prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.
4. Switch to Low-Energy Density Food: Food rich in healthy fat and protein keep you fuller for longer, help create calorie deficit to effective weight loss.
5. Consume more Whole Grains and Vegetables: They help in slow release of energy and keep you fuller for longer, and help you create calorie deficit to lose weight.
6. Include zero-calorie foods in your diet: Every food item has some amount of calories,, but the idea behind “zero calories” is that the body burns more calories to digest a food item with negligible calories. For example, mushrooms, celery, cucumber, etc. have extremely low amount of calories and the body burns more calories to burn them out, sometimes leading to a negative deficit. Take this into account, if a cucumber has 15 calories in it, the body may use up to 20 calories to burn it off, and mathematically, it means the total calorie count fell beyond zero. So, is that good news, absolutely! But the truth is that you cannot make a diet comprising of only zero calorie food items and expect to lose weight because the body also needs nutrition, vitamins, and energy to run, and a lack of nutrients will kill your metabolism, so keep a healthy balance of everything in your diet“zero calories” because every food item has some of calories to it, even though negligible. In this post, we have a list of list of 32 Zero Calorie Foods For Weight Loss.
7. Find healthy low-calorie alternatives to high-calorie food: Low-carb food is often recommended by dieticians when you ask them about weight loss. For people who are confused about various low-carb options to include in their diet, we have come up with 10 delicious low carb food items that you can add as replacement to high-carb food stuff in your diet. Here’s the list of 8 low-carb food.
8. Reduce Snacking: Every time you eat food, the insulin levels get raised in the body and apart from regulating blood sugar, the hormone insulin has another function – it tells the body to store fat and also prevents breakdown of fat. Frequent snacking, even on healthy peanuts or walnuts, would raise insulin levels in the body and too many insulin spikes through the day will result in creation of new fat cells. Restrict snacking to just twice a day, without indulging in high-calorie food and that too on healthy options like apple and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and even peanuts.
9. Switch to lean protein: Lean protein sources of food have high protein content and less in cholesterol and fat content. Unflavored Greek yogurt, skinless chicken, low fat paneer, peanut butter are all examples of lean protein.
10. Cut down on amount of oil for cooking: Cooking oil adds a lot of calories to the body and it would be prudent to cut down on cooking oil, even if it’s coconut oil or olive oil. That’s why Rati Beauty diet recipes use minimal oil to make tasty dishes.
11. Take at least 10,000 steps: If you want to create calorie deficit effectively and burn more calories, you need to be on your feet for most part of the day and take at least 10,000 steps.
12. Increase NEAT activities: NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) stands for the energy we use for activities that we do in our day-to-day life except for when we are sleeping or exercising. Using the stairs instead of the lift, squatting on the floor to lift something up, walking while talking on the phone, every activity we do while being on our feet, comes under NEAT. All these activities help to burn some amount of calories and these bits of calories spent here and there, add up to a considerable amount when you are trying to lose weight.
13. Cut out sauces and dips: Yes, no sauces or dips to spice things up because they add a whole lot of calories than you think.
14. Drink more water: Drinking adequate water will help you control appetite, help you feel fuller for longer, and thereby you would consume fewer calories than you would normally consume.
15. HIIT Training: HIIT refers to high-intensity interval training exercises which helps to burn fat in minimum time. It is a combination of high and medium intensity exercises where your body picks up more calories to burn without burning muscle. You can do HIIT exercises anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes. HIIT puts your body into calorie deficit and will give you the maximum weight loss benefits along with following a good diet. It puts your body into an “afterburn” process where it continues to burn calories long after you have finished exercising, isn’t that awesome news! Also, no equipment is required to do HIIT exercise and you can do it in the convenience and comfort of your home.
16. Pick up the Dumbbells: Weight training is an amazing way to create calorie deficit because when you lift weights, you continue to burn calories post workout. Lifting weights helps to build muscle and more muscle burns more fat through the day.
17. No Processed Food: The first thing you need to create a calorie deficit is to give up on processed food that is loaded with sugar, salt, and transfat which have huge amount of empty calories in them.
18. Eat Homecooked Meals: This ensures least processing, minimal intake of salt, greater uptake of essential vitamins and minerals, and ingestion of fewer calories. Plus, one can control the ingredients and the portion size based on their needs. Home cooked meals also prevent illnesses such as diabetes and heart disorders.
List of 32 Zero Calorie Foods For Weight Loss
How To Burn Calories with Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis