Previous articles have highlighted the importance of combining a healthy diet and exercise program with healthy lifestyle habits. The questions then are: What exactly are these lifestyle habits that must be adopted for life and what are their effects on weight loss? This article will answer both of these questions.
But first, we must emphasize that the discussion will focus on three aspects of lifestyle: smoking, stress, and sleep. Other aspects such as patterns of sexual and social behavior are not discussed.
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If there is an advantage to smoking cigarettes, it is that the activity stimulates the metabolism. In smokers with a pack-a-day habit, 250 calories are burned from activity alone. So, when you quit smoking, you’ll likely gain up to 2 pounds of weight within 2 weeks of quitting, as your body has to deal with an extra 250 calories.
Then you will return to the habit of smoking because of your fear of gaining weight, as illogical as it seems. But you should stick to kicking the cigarette habit because your metabolism will level off in about 2 months. Therefore, the extra pounds gained can be lost with the right diet and exercise soon enough.
In addition, the benefits of quitting smoking in relation to exercise and, therefore, weight loss must be considered. Your heart, arteries, and lungs become healthier, which means you have the physical ability to perform more intense, frequent, and prolonged cardio than ever before.
Stress
Yes, stress can lead to weight gain, which is possible both physiologically and psychologically. First of all, the neuroendocrine system activates the fight or flight hormones present when we face stressful situations, these hormones are adrenaline, CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone) and cortisol. High levels of adrenaline and CRH decrease appetite, but the effect is temporary, while cortisol increases appetite: Combine the impact of these three hormones and you are likely to binge.
Second, stress can lead to emotional eating even when the stressors have been absent for a long time. For example, the death of loved ones in a tragic accident puts an extreme strain on the emotions of the bereaved with food as their main source of earthly comfort. We have heard so many stories of people getting bigger as they grieve.
asleep
When it comes to sleep, its relationship to weight loss can be traced back to two hormones: leptin and ghrelin. These two hormones function in a check-and-balance system that controls feelings of hunger (ghrelin) and satiety (leptin).
When you don’t get enough sleep in a day, your leptin levels go down while your ghrelin levels go up. The result is that you don’t feel full even after a heavy meal and you always seem hungry. This is the beginning of overeating and therefore weight gain.
So, if you want to lose weight, we suggest you kick your smoking habit, manage your stress levels, and get enough sleep – the hallmarks of a healthy lifestyle, indeed. There are many ways to achieve these goals, including exercising, eating a healthy diet, and applying relaxation techniques, among others. But the most important thing is to start now.