How Does Salt Affect Weight Loss?
If your goal is weight loss, then cut back on the extra salt. It can help you reach your goals and benefit your weight loss. Salt does add water weight, which occurs because of the excess sodium. Water helps regulate the amount of sodium in your body. If you have too much sodium, the body retains water to dilute the amount of sodium. That causes water weight gain. The easiest way to reduce that gain is by drinking more water or other drinks like tea to flush out the sodium and eliminating added salt from your diet. Salt also plays a more injurious role in your body that leads to weight gain.
Recent studies identify one reason salt increases blood pressure.
Most people realize that a diet high in salt will increase blood pressure over time. Scientists decided to research exactly why that happens. One consideration was that people who have a diet high in salt drink more fluid, which may add calories or add more water weight. That didn’t prove to be true. The study found that people whose diet was higher in salt actually drank less water or other drink. It also found that those people ate more and had an increased appetite.
The study was conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
Unlike most studies that have factors that can’t be controlled, the research into salt and weight gain was conducted under strict lab conditions. It was part of the Russian space program preparing the cosmonauts for travel to Mars. The scientists conducted several experiments, one of which was how salt affected the body. The diet was unchanging, except for the amount of salt. At the onset, those in training were given food with twice the daily amount of salt, 12 grams. The diet was switched after several weeks and the amount of salt was reduced to 9 grams, and eventually lowered to 6 grams a day.
The experiment was clear.
When the cosmonauts were given the same diet higher in salt, most were constantly hungry. As the amount of salt in the diet was lowered, their appetite also diminished. The scientists concluded that the amount of salt made the difference, since it was the only variable. Other studies have backed up that hypothesis. One Australian study surmised that a diet higher in salt led to obesity in schoolchildren.
- If you’ve ever craved something to eat that was juicy, like watermelon, your body may have tricked you into thinking you were hungry, but instead were thirsty. Salt may cause increased thirst that is mistaken for hunger.
- When salt makes people thirsty, the extra weight extra salt can cause may come from drinking sugary drinks that add calories. It may be the reason that a third study found that a diet higher in salt increased caloric intake by 11%.
- One explanation for the increased hunger after eating food with more salt or eating more food, is the fact that the food simply tasted better when it had more seasoning.
- Whether salt is the biggest enemy to your weight loss program or not, cutting back on salt and using herbs and other spices will not only increase the flavor, but provide more benefits for your body.
For more information, contact us today at UpFit Training Academy
In order to achieve your goals, you have to know where you’re at right now and find a way to measure your progress. BMI is a tool that helps you do both. At UpFit Academy in New York, NY, we do use BMI to help calculate both things, but it’s just one way to both identify your present fitness level and track your progress. It’s not necessarily the best way, either. BMI stands for body mass index and it uses both your height and weight to create a ratio that identifies whether you’re underweight, normal, overweight or obese.
Eating fresh fruits and vegetables is important, but having only the freshest of meats, vegetables, fruit and grain products can leave you short if you can’t get to the store, have unexpected company or find the grocery shelves empty. During the pandemic, many people were afraid to leave their homes, particularly elderly people. For those reasons, it’s important to have healthy staples available. These are staples with a long shelf life that you can have on hand for these emergencies.
There’s a good reason we provide nutritional information to clients at UpFit Academy in New York, NY. You need both and a healthy diet is just as important, if not more important than a program of regular exercise. Combining both brings the best results, but if you had to use just one, it would be to eat healthily. The reason is simple, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. You need to eat healthy to be healthy and also to lose weight. No matter how many hours at the gym you spend exercising, if you’re eating a junk that’s loaded with calories, you won’t be healthy and you won’t lose weight.
There’s nothing wrong with having the occasional drink that contains alcohol. Some types of alcoholic beverages, such as red wine, may actually make you healthier when consumed in moderation. What is moderation? For women, it’s drinking one 5 ounce glass of 12% wine a day and for men it’s drinking two glasses. Anything beyond those parameters may lead to premature aging, weight gain—particularly around the midsection—and other health issues.
We have a wide variety of clients at UpFit Academy in New York, NY, which includes many parents. Our parents often ask how to ensure their kids grow into fit adults. The answer is simple. You have to inspire kids to move at an early age. Fitness is all about eating healthy and being active. We often suggest games to play with toddlers that provide mommy/daddy interaction but keep those toddlers moving. Fit children do better in school and often have more self-control.
When you’re in pain, the last thing you want to do is exercise. However, there are exercises that not only can manage pain, but relieve it. That doesn’t mean that if you have a pulled arm muscle you lift weights, but going for a walk can boost circulation and help improve healing. Active recovery is one way exercise can help reduce pain, boost healing and help prevent pain in the future.
Stress can affect your health negatively. Stress doesn’t have to be something awful. It can occur with wonderful surprises in life. Getting married or going on a vacation can be just as stressful as losing a job. The worse type of stress is chronic stress. Chronic stress affects your fitness even if the stress seems minor. That’s why working out is so important. Exercise helps burn off the flight-or-fight hormones of stress that causes changes to your body and affect your health and fitness.
If you workout at UpFit Academy in New York, NY, you’ll have a personalized program at group rates. We use science backed workouts that help you get fit fast. Just because we’re using the latest information, it doesn’t mean we throw out traditional workouts. In fact, many traditional exercises, like planks, are even more valued thanks to scientific investigation. What are some of the benefits of this simple, but not so easy, exercise?
There are all types of yoga. Hatha, Iyengar, Kundalini, Ashtanga Vinyasa, Bikram, Yin and restorative are just a few. When you think of hot yoga, you’re often referring to Bikram yoga that was one of the first to be done in a room that’s sometimes 105 degrees. However, doing any style of yoga can be hot yoga. Most people often refer to Hatha yoga as regular yoga, since it’s one that’s often practiced throughout the US. Is there a benefit from adding heat to any style of yoga or is it simply smoke and mirrors?