By: Sophia Powell 

    People of all ages are always looking for a new and easy way to lose weight. Most people’s reasoning behind losing weight is appearance, to some people appearance is everything. If you don’t think highly of yourself and think that you don’t look good then your self-esteem is going to go down. If you don’t like yourself then that can lead to depression, anxiety, and self-hatred. Appearance is not the only reason people want to lose weight. Some people physically need to lose weight to be healthy and not get serious health problems. Here are five steps to losing weight.

1. Set (realistic) Goals: Setting goals is definitely important because without setting goals how are you going to remember how much weight you want to lose, where you want to lose it, and where you want to gain weight or muscle? A good place to start setting goals is learning your Body Mass Index (BMI) which is what percent of your body is fat and what percent is muscle and go from there to figuring out what percent of that fat you want to lose. Also, be sure to not only create long-term goals but also short-term goals, because these short term goals can make it easier to obtain that long-term goal. 

2. Understand How Much You Eat and Why: Eating too much or not enough are some major problems people face while trying to lose weight. A lot of people skip meals, which is fine, to a certain extent. Skipping too many meals causes you to be more hungry and then when you eat you just want to eat more and more. Eating too much of the wrong foods is also a big problem because foods that contain carbs cause the most fat in a person’s body, but are also the hardest to give up. Some good foods to eat when trying to lose weight are beans, soup, dark chocolate, vegetables, and yogurt.

3.  Manage Portion Size: Like understanding the right foods to eat and why managing the amount you eat is also important. It is very easy to overeat by being served too much, being stressed, or sad. Some ways to manage portion size is using a smaller plate, checking food labels, using measuring cups, and not picking at leftovers. Managing portion sizes can be challenging because of the eating habits already established in people’s lives.Just like every other habit, it can be broken and changed into a newer and healthier habit.
4. Make Smart Choices: Making smart choices can mean a bunch of different things like deciding to cut out certain foods, learning how to properly lose weight, and making sure to keep up with your healthy habits. Some smart choices to make while trying to lose weight are to eat high protein, stay hydrated, eat more fiber, eat less carbs, and to limit sugary drinks. Some of the worst choices people make when losing weight are focusing on what’s on the scale, not lifting weights, not eating enough protein, and eating too many or too few calories.  

5. Be Physically Active: This is what most people start doing, their problems are that they aren’t setting goals, eating the right foods and making smart choices about how to actually lose weight. When being physically active you shouldn’t workout too much or too little, make sure you have a good schedule for working out, and don’t overdo yourself. Working out/ being physically active not only helps lose weight but also helps get your heart rate up, strengthen your bones/muscles, and can even increase your chance of living longer!

Losing weight can be very challenging for certain people and very easy for others. Just because it is possibly hard for you don’t give up so quickly. There’s a lot of factors to losing weight so don’t think that you can just start working out and it’ll all disappear, you have to do your own research and learn how to do it and what you really want to do.