Losing weight healthily: what you need to know

• The right diet
• Stimulate the metabolism
• Lose weight with home remedies
• Lose weight without sport
• Lose weight with medication
• Lose weight while you sleep  

First of all, Hasler recommends saying no to all sweetened soft drinks and juice. They often contain a lot of sugar or sweeteners. The same is true of smoothies, which are all the rage today.

Why? Nutrition expert Hasler explains that unprocessed fruit and vegetables are best for digestion and to help you feel fuller for longer.

So, opt for celery and spinach as a salad instead of in a smoothie. Chewing and biting are important to let the body know that it’s getting food. This reduces your appetite and is also good for your digestion.  

Fruits and vegetables should be at the top of your shopping list, because they contain a lot of natural dietary fibre. These create a feeling of fullness in the stomach and remove the sense of hunger.

And they are good for the gut. They have a complex structure, which means that they hold nutrients together in the intestine like a grid that it can absorb more slowly.

“This leads to a multi-stage digestion process, during which new nutrients are created,” says Hasler. This is the ideal way of digestion.

Anyone who wants to lose weight should avoid sugary foods such as sweet treats and simple carbohydrates (e.g. white bread, white rice, ketchup, sugary salad dressings). These quickly drive up the insulin that the body needs to break down the sugar.

The faster the rise, the more rapid the fall in insulin. This insulin rollercoaster causes us to feel hungry again more quickly – and we tend to eat more.

Science now knows that alcohol is like liquid fat for the body, which is why we have terms such as “beer belly”. Alcohol also slows down metabolic processes in the body and has been proven to be harmful to health even in very small quantities.

Experts  therefore recommend that you go teetotal – especially if you’re trying to lose weight.  

Research shows that proteins are more filling than fats or sugar. You can use this to your advantage if you’re trying to lose weight: Make sure that every meal contains protein.

Good proteins include: pulses, nuts, seeds (hemp seeds in particular contain a lot of protein), dairy products, fish, eggs, cheese, lean meat or soya products.

Stay away from simple carbohydrates, such as white bread, sugary sauces and ready meals, which contain a lot of simple sugar.

Opt instead for complex carbohydrates, such as fruit and vegetables, wholegrain pasta, long-baked sourdough bread or quinoa, which have a more complex sugar structure.

The complex structure means that the body needs longer to dissolve the sugar from the food, which ensures that insulin levels rise less strongly and more slowly. This helps you feel fuller for longer and stops cravings.

The seed husks of the Indian psyllium plant help you lose weight. They help you feel fuller faster and contain few calories. Psyllium husks also contain a lot of healthy dietary fibre, which aid digestion and help against constipation.

You should drink a mix of water and psyllium husks immediately before eating. Let the husks soak in the water for around 15 minutes before drinking. The pre-soaked psyllium husks have already absorbed a lot of liquid when you drink them. The volume helps fill your stomach.  

And the simplest way of suppressing your hunger is just a turn of the tap away: water. If you feel hungry, first drink a few glasses of water. And wait. In most cases, you’ll no longer feel hungry.

Ultimately, the stomach is a mechanical function, so the volume that fills it is important. And water is just as good as food. When the stomach fills up, it signals to the brain that it has received food. And the feeling of hunger disappears.

Chewing is another way to reduce hunger pangs. It signals to the brain that the body is getting food. And you don’t feel so hungry. Fruit and vegetables work well here.

It’s best to eat food whole and raw. And you should opt for fruit and vegetables that contain as little sugar as possible. “Every sweet treat is an invitation for more,” says Hasler. Good choices include celery, leeks, whole cumbers and whole apples.

Tea also helps to reduce hunger. But no one tea is better than another. Try them out and see which works best for you.

It is proven that caffeine suppresses the appetite. But you have to be careful, because too much coffee can cause nervousness, inner restlessness or anxiety and dehydrate the body. Drink coffee in moderation.

Weight loss injections are currently the talk of the town because of the astonishing results they produce. Initial studies with a new active ingredient that imitates the intestinal hormone GLP1 show that people can lose up to 25% of their body weight in this way.

The intestinal hormone GLP1 plays an important role in regulating the body’s metabolism. The injections optimise the metabolic processes. “From a purely medical perspective, it’s a great success,” says Hasler.

However, injections like these aren’t suitable for most people who want to lose weight. “If I were to recommend these injections, it would only be in cases where all previous weight loss measures had been unsuccessful.” This pharmaceutical is more suited to helping diabetes patients get better control of their metabolic disease. And as yet there are no indications of possible long-term side effects of the GLP1 active ingredient.  

Weight loss pills containing the active ingredient orlistat have been on the market for years. Orlistat inhibits the digestion of fat, which means that some of the fat that ends up in the intestine with food remains undigested and is excreted again. “These pills really encourage bad habits,” says Hasler.

When working with patients, he notices that they are more likely to binge eat, because they can simply pop a “fat-stopper pill” afterwards. “This creates the wrong incentives and isn’t suitable for healthy and sustainable weight loss,” says Hasler.