Have you ever tried to figure out the most effective ways to lose weight? While there are plenty of strategies to dropping a few pounds, it’s not easy to lose weight healthily. Here are a few questions you want to ask to finding the right strategy for you:

What is the best diet to lose weight?

There are many different types of diets that are good for weight loss. One of the most effective diets being the Keto diet, which cuts all carbs and sugars out, using healthy fats as your energy source and allowing your body to eat off of body fat. Keto is most recommended to those of older ages that no longer need to grow. Health experts recommend children should avoid Keto diets because they need certain carbs and sugars to grow that adults don’t need. It’s not dangerous for them but still isn’t the healthiest.

Children looking to lose weight healthily should consider a Paleo diet, which is a better fit for them. It allows them to get all the nutrients they need, and it cuts out unnecessary sugars. It is a strictly organic diet.

What foods should be avoided when you want to lose weight? 

Most nutritionists recommend a balanced diet of fruits, grains, vegetables, and protein. However, the sugar in fruits, also known as fructose, combines with carbohydrates to create fat in the body. Avoiding eating sugar and carbs together  is highly recommended by most nutritionists. Sugary fruits, starches, and grains should be limited. That doesn’t mean you can’t eat fruit, just be careful what you pair it with.

What kind of fitness training/lifestyles is best and most effective for burning fat?

It might seem simple, but little workouts like going on a walk everyday, a bike ride, jogging, and swimming actually have the most effect on weight loss long term if you make it a habit daily. To promote weight loss, avoid eating anything with sugar or high concentrated protein before or after a workout as “They will raise your insulin, which will stunt fat burning in the body” according to weight-loss expert Dr. Eric Berg.

Going to bed on an empty stomach also boosts fat burning. When you’re asleep, your body is still feeding itself off of something, but if there’s no food in your stomach it turns to using your body’s fat. Your body is constantly attempting to digest food, but when there’s no food there, it will begin to feast off of your body fat.

Intermittent fasting can have the same effect as when you’re sleeping. When you fast for 3 days or a week, your body goes into “starvation” mode where fat burning is at its highest. OMAD, or “One Meal a Day”, is a strategy that combines breakfast, lunch, and dinner into one big meal everyday. This is helpful for weight loss because it limits the amount of time it takes for your body to digest all the food you’ve consumed, allowing all the nutrients to process in the liver, and gives your body a break from all the snacking throughout the day.

To simplify, what does a healthy, fat burning lifestyle look like?

Someone who works out everyday, avoids fat-producing foods, and takes care of their diet will develop a healthy lifestyle. It’s important for us to stay active everyday, avoid carbs and sugars—and everything else that spikes insulin— don’t eat before bed, and stay hydrated for energy!