Weight Management: 5 Lifestyle Tips to Help Prevent or Control Obesity

Whether you're at your perfect weight or have some you'd like to lose, weight management may be part of a healthy lifestyle. Often, obesity prevention or control is presented as a simple matter of "eating less" and "exercising more." For many people, however, it's not that simple! I'm not suggesting diet and exercise aren't important in preventing obesity. Of course they are. But let's not stop (or get hung up) there. Take a broader, comprehensive view of weight management strategies, such as incorporating some or all of these anti-weight gain tips into your lifestyle.

Eat a big breakfast

Mama always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day and scientists say, "Yep. Mama was right." In a study on teens and obesity prevention, researchers checked on the teens after five years. They found the teens who had been daily breakfast eaters had "tended to gain less weight and have lower body mass index levels -- an indicator of obesity risk -- compared with those who had skipped breakfast as adolescents." Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., put it this way: "Although adolescents may think that skipping breakfast seems like a good way to save on calories, findings suggest the opposite."

Not just for teens, a substantial breakfast, with healthy carbohydrates, protein and fats, helps keep the munchie monster away throughout the day. In fact, Science Daily reports that "a possible way to overcome the common problem of dieters eventually abandoning their diet and regaining the weight they lost" is to "eat a big breakfast packed with carbohydrates ("carbs") and protein, then follow a low-carb, low-calorie diet the rest of the day."

Clean your house, work in the yard

The headlines blare "Housework Can Help You Burn 50,000 Calories A Year"--- and, in this case, the headlines are true! According to the Mayo Clinic, "lifestyle activities, such as gardening, washing your car and even housework, burn calories and contribute to weight loss."

I don't know about you, but there have been plenty of times that, while gazing at the Himalayas of beach towels to be washed, the cupboard empty of cups (again), and the branches hanging over the fence just begging to be lopped, I've said to myself: "there's so much to do around here." Well . . . Yeah! There is a lot of work to do around the average home and, in one of nature's nicest two-fers, you can help manage your weight and manage the dust bunnies at the same time.

The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports: "Keeping the house tidy annually burns the same number of calories found in 603 glasses of wine, 192 bars of chocolate, 369 cans of fizzy drink, 146 cheeseburgers, or 394 packs of crisps." And: "The study of 3,000 Britons found that housework gives us more of a workout than spending an hour a week at the gym. Domestic chores were found to provide the same amount of exercise as spending 57 hours running at 8.5 miles an hour, or cycling 477 miles." But, before you go grab a mop, keep reading ---

Stand up for yourself

In Avoiding Weight Gain: Stand Up for Yourself, I wrote: "Did you know that simply sitting for long periods of time helps pile on fat---and can even make you sick? Standing up on a regular basis may seem like a small thing, but it's something simple that can really improve your health."

Believe it or not, no amount of strenuous exercise can overcome the deleterious effect on a person's metabolism of too much sitting. So, to help avoid weight gain, build in to your life regular times to stand up for yourself!

Five minutes, daily, devoted to stress management

Stress plays a role in how a person's metabolism operates and in how the body stores and utilizes adipose tissue (fat). Weight management, obesity prevention or control, is about getting or staying healthier. Training yourself to adjust your stress response to appropriate levels can make you healthier in so many ways, including weight management.

To adjust stress levels, you may find it helpful to use your MP3 player as a portable relaxation coach. Simply download a short guided meditation piece that you like and listen to it once daily. It's also helpful to get plenty of Vitamin G --- even five minutes in the great outdoors can be very refreshing and surprisingly health-giving. Finally, taking five minutes to "count your blessings" can greatly increase your emotional resiliency and lower stress.

Kiss off nighttime eating

Nighttime eating often is the flip side of skipping breakfast. Continued research into the "waking cycle" and our circadian rhythms shows that eating at night (during the "sleep cycle") leads to weight gain. Fred Turek, a scientist from Northwestern's Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, states "how or why a person gains weight is very complicated, but it is clearly not just calories in and calories out."

In the study, reported by the BBC, mice fed during the sleep cycle gained twice as much weight as mice fed the exact same diet during the waking cycle. Yikes! Personally, though I absolutely love late dinners, I don't think nighttime eating --- eating during the time our metabolism is in "sleep mode" --- is anything to mess around with, at least not on a regular basis.

Weight management, obesity prevention and control

Strategies for weight management and obesity prevention and control can, and should, incorporate so much more than a narrow focus on diet and exercise. Build some weight management strategies into your lifestyle with these tips --- and enjoy yourself!

More B. A. Rogers: Top Five Uncomplicated Foods to Raise HDL "Good" Cholesterol and The Surprising Health Benefits of Picnicking.

Sources:

"Teens Who Eat Breakfast Daily Eat Healthier Diets Than Those Who Skip Breakfast," Science Daily.

"New Weight Loss Diet Recommends High-carb And Protein Big Breakfast," Science Daily.

"Housework Can Help You Burn 50000 Calories A Year," Mail Online.

"Metabolism and weight loss: How you burn calories," Mayo Clinic.

B. A. Rogers, "Avoiding Weight Gain: Stand Up for Yourself," Associated Content.

B. A. Rogers, "Meditation and MP3s: the Portable Relaxation Coach that Contributes to Wellness, Stress Relief and Pain Management," Associated Content.

B. A. Rogers, "Stress Relief Tip: Get Plenty of Vitamin G," Associated Content.

B. A. Rogers, "Got Happiness? How to Increase Your Emotional Resiliency," Associated Content.

Sudeep Chand, "Eating late at night adds weight," BBC News.