According to an American Medical Association survey, nearly three-quarters of American men over the age of 20 were overweight, and that one-third of these men are considered obese. These statistics are a call to change, particularly in light of the fact that obesity can lead to---among other things---diabetes, heart disease, stroke, joint conditions and depression. Genetics play somewhat of a role in your weight, but for most, the cause of weight gain is a combination of poor diet choices, excessive eating and lack of exercise. Take steps to battle your weight.
Portion Control
Men tend to love their super-sized portions, and many have the stomachs to prove it. As the human stomach becomes accustomed to being overstuffed, it enlarges to adapt to the amount of food being regularly dumped into it. The end result---besides a larger belly---is an increasingly voracious appetite caused by an increased capacity for food, and an increased tendency to feel hungry and unsatisfied when the enlarged stomach is not completely filled. This is one reason why crash diets can make people so miserable; the stretched-out stomach has gotten used to being gorged and filled to bursting.
For most overweight people, the answer is gradual portion control. This does not involve going from gorging to fasting in 24 hours. Rather, take an honest look at the amount of food you eat on a daily basis, and gradually begin reducing the portions of what you eat, to let your stomach gradually contract back to a degree that will eventually make the old tendency to overeat physically uncomfortable.
To help with moving towards smaller portions, use smaller plates, so that you aren't tempted to finish off everything on a large dinner plate. When cooking for yourself, alter ingredient measurements in recipes so that you're cooking for one, as cooking for two or more might tempt you to eat everything all at once. When hunger pangs occur, reach for reasonable portions of low-calorie and healthy snacks, like fresh vegetables, fruit, pickles or rice cakes.
Limiting Meat and Beer Intake
To suggest that you limit your meat intake would seem to fly in the face of high-protein diets, which are built around evidence that the extra energy needed to digest protein actually causes a person to lose weight. This is true, if you are eating limited amounts of meat once a day. For those who eat it with every meal, be aware that you're loading more meat into your digestive system than it can handle, which overwhelms and taxes your system in a harmful way, causing weight problems fairly quickly.
The recommended daily allowance of meat for men who are moderately active is a 6 oz. serving, once a day. For those who aren't willing to go the ovo-lacto vegetarian route by eliminating meat entirely, try eating one 6 oz. serving of lean meat, poultry or fish at dinner, with large side portions of fresh vegetables and a small portion of whole wheat bread. For even better weight results, try having that 6 oz. serving of meat with dinner on alternate days, with healthy vegetarian meals in between. Also remember to stay away from fat-saturated, processed fast-food meats.
As for beer, consider that the average serving of beer contains upwards of 300 calories. Now consider how many men drink two or three of these a day, every day. What these men are doing is drinking a meal's worth of calories, on top of what they're actually eating. As with meat, for men who steadfastly refuse to give up their beer, limitation is the name of the game. Try having one beer every other day, or make a resolution not to have any during the workweek, rewarding yourself with two or three over the course of a weekend.
Boosting Metabolism
Diet/portion control is an extremely important component of any weight-loss program, but it should be half of the focus, rather than all of it. Your metabolism is the other side of the coin, and any effective weight-loss program must take it into account. At the risk of oversimplifying, weight gain will most assuredly occur if you are consuming more calories than you're burning off through physical activity.
Most people understand that cardio workouts are a great way to work up a sweat and burn off extra calories. These workouts can take the form of the ever-popular jogging, though those with knee or joint issues can experience stellar results from other cardio exercises such as lap swimming, cycling and cross-country skiing. What many don't realize is that the calories burned off during cardio work are not only burned during the exercise; calories are burned for hours after completion of the exercise. The end result of regular exercise is a metabolism that has been uniformly and consistently sped up to uniformly and consistently burn off what you're eating, even when you're at rest.
A strenuous weightlifting session, usually solely considered a muscle-building endeavor, will also jump-start your metabolism, and burn calories for as long as 48 hours. Try doing alternate days of cardio and weight-training so you don't overtax your body, and remember that your exercise sessions will need to be 30 minutes long or more to see visible improvement.
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