Lack of time and motivation, an injury, tight schedule, and low energy and stamina are all excuses that prevent us from getting proper workout regularly. When your sole motive is to lose weight, sticking to a healthy diet will get much of the work done; however, if you want a fit and toned body, then you got to exercise religiously. So, if you have not been able to exercise for a few days for whatever reason, don’t panic and steer towards the “all or nothing” attitude where if you cannot be active, you let go of all other factors that help you shake off the extra pounds. In this post, we have listed out some ways on how to avoid weight gain when you cannot exercise.

Benefits of Doing Regular Exercise:

1. Improves bone density.
2. Burns calories, helps in weight loss.
3. Shapes up body.
4. Improves circulation.
5. Reduces the risk of insulin resistance.
6. Reduces risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
7. Boosts metabolism.
8. Improves energy levels.

How Exercise Helps to Tone the Body and Build Muscle?

As we have mentioned above, though we can lose weight with dieting alone, working out regularly helps to shape the body and add tone to it. During the exercise, microscopic tears are created in the muscle fibers and the body tends to form new and stronger fibers to repair these tears. As a result, when more and more of such strong fibers come into place, muscles get formed. But for this process to happen, along with exercise, adequate protein needs to be present in the body. This whole process is called “muscle protein synthesis.” For this entire process to happen, one needs to take rest from workout. So, if you are getting a few days of rest, be happy about it! The muscles are created and body is toned when you rest, not during exercise. However, during a few days of not working out, the one thing you should be very careful about – not gaining weight. A few days of break is good for the muscles to tone and the body to shape up.

How to Avoid Weight Gain When You Cannot Exercise:

1. Lower Down the Calorie Deficit a Bit Further: As we all know, a calorie deficit of 500 calories is just about enough to safely lose weight if there is moderate physical activity also involved; however, with lack of significant exercise, lowering down the calorie deficit by 100 or 200 calories further will help prevent weight gain.

2. Practice Stretching in Bed: Come to think of it, you can relieve muscle tension and get the blood circulation pumping, right there, lying in the supine position on the bed, without any intense movement. One can easily perform child’s pose (balasana), seated forward bend, frog pumps, neck stretches,  and some isometric stretches – all while staying in the bed, without any equipment.

3. Get 7 hours of Shut Eye: Major studies have shown a direct link between weight gain and sleep deprivation. Less amount of sleep can shoot up the levels of fat-storing hormones and impair the functioning of fat-burning hormones. Needless to say, hormones have the final say in determining whether your body should be storing fat or burning fat!

4. Stick to Rati Beauty Weight Loss Diet: There’s nothing that can beat clean eating when it comes to weight loss. All the weekly diet programs on the Rati Beauty app are not only are they low in calories, they are extremely healthy, delicious, and full of vital nutrients. Instead of depriving body of food and nutrients, Rati Beauty weight loss diets helps to nourish the body with the right amount of food – all while helping to drop the pounds with dieting.

5. Try these Ways to Boost Metabolism:  Eat whole grains, eat iron-rich food, sip on green tea, eat healthy greens, whole eggs to boost metabolism and keep those extra calories burning.

6. Fill Half of your Plate with Veggies: Eat more veggies with your every meal to feel full with fewer calories.

7. Stick to Meal and Snack Timings: Eating food on schedule and at fixed timings will help to avoid frequent hunger pangs and unnecessary snacking. Check out the Rati Beauty app for proper meal and snack timings for weight loss.

8. NEAT activities: Abbreviated as NEAT, Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, is the energy we use for everything we do in our day-to-day life. Using the stairs instead of the lift, squatting on the floor to lift something up, walking while talking on the phone, every activity we do while being on our feet, comes under NEAT activity, and these activities help to burn certain calories which all add up and make a significant difference. We all know that for weight loss to happen, there should a calorie deficit and also high resting metabolic rate, which means we should be using up more calories than the amount we are consuming each day. Since most of us lead sedentary lifestyle and our jobs require us to stay scrunched up in the sitting position for long hours, the levels that lead up to NEAT decrease considerably – that’s the reason why instead of burning calories, our body tends to pile up calories and there’s buildup of fat in the body. In this post, we have mentioned in detail on “How To Burn Calories with Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.”

9. Include a Good Amount of Soluble Fiber in Daily Diet: Soluble fiber helps to keep you full and keeps the appetite under control. Soluble fiber is important in melting away of belly fat. Here’s a list of 32 Fiber-Rich Food that you can include in your diet.

10. Increase Protein Intake: Protein helps to build muscle and repair cellular damage. It also suppresses appetite and keeps you full for longer, along with boosting metabolism. A high protein diet is essential for burning fat, exercise or no exercise.

11. Avoid Sitting for Long Hours: When you sit at one place for long hours, an essential enzyme called “lipoprotein lipase” that is required for burning of fat switches off. It’s essential to get up from a sitting position every few minutes and be active throughout the day to keep the fat-burning process in the body active.

12. Avoid Frequent Snacking: As mentioned above, frequent snacking is one of the reasons people pile on weight. Avoid frequent snacking stick to fixed meal and snack timings.

13. Drink Loads of Water: Water is essential to run every process in the body, and it prevents weight gain without doing anything by making you full, flushing out toxins from the body, boosting metabolism, and also by suppressing hunger signals.

14. Stop Sipping Soft Drinks/Diet Soda: These have loads of empty calories that do not provide the body any kind of nutrition and cause weight gain at a rapid rate. Totally cut out empty calories in the form of aerated drinks and packaged fruit juices, also soft drinks and diet soda.

Hope you spring back on your feet and get back to your exercise routine pretty soon!

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