There are various steps that we can do to lose weight. These include:

• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle – Making small changes in the day-to-day lifestyle can help in the long run. Like drinking more water, taking the stairs instead of the lift, standing and moving around once in every hour.
• Having a balanced diet – Food plays a very important role in our health. Eating mindfully is the key. Eating more fruits and vegetables, having proteins in every meal, cutting down on processed and packaged foods, swapping water for sugary drinks, cutting down on foods high in sugar and fat etc. All these help in maintaining a good weight. Plan your meals well in advance. Please note that do not try to lose weight drastically in short period by following any fad diets.
• Exercise and work out – Exercise and diet go hand in hand when it comes to losing weight. Doing simple exercises like walking for half an hour, hitting the gym on at least every alternate day helps in losing weight.
• Stress management – Sometimes inspite of doing everything, it is difficult to lose weight like expected. Having mental strain might hamper the body’s capacity to lose weight. So, avoid taking stress, get a good night’s sleep.
• In some individuals with morbid obesity or obesity leading to disease, there are options of taking weight loss medications and surgery. But these are not recommended in every individual.
• Company of a friend or group of individuals with similar goals can make this journey easy. Motivate each other and stick to the weight loss program to be consistent.

          Losing weight in a healthier way is more important than losing weight suddenly or drastically following some fad diet. It is equally important to maintain the weight loss rather than just losing weight. Set up realistic goals and reward your efforts along the way. Once in a while having a cheat meal or a dessert is ok but it should only be if you are on a strict weight loss program for the rest of the days. Weight loss can be done with the home-cooked food that we routinely consume. Doing portion control and eliminating ‘empty- calories’ can help in our journey here. Weight loss shouldn’t be seen as a punishment, rather that it is a new way of lifestyle which provides us relief from our diseases and aches. Remember that weight is not the only indicator of health. There are other factors also which should be taken into account like body fat percentage, muscle mass etc. Reward yourselves for your success with non-food rewards. These help in keeping you motivated on the path to better health.