Arthritis and weight gain are interrelated. Obese or overweight people are at the risk of developing arthritis. On the other hand, arthritis can affect your mobility, causing you not to get adequate exercise. Besides, certain arthritis medications can also contribute to unintended weight gain. Whether your obesity is the cause or result of arthritis, healthy weight management can help you manage your symptoms and improve your quality of life. Hence, you should seek an MD & RD-supervised medical weight loss solution in Mississauga to manage a healthy weight and reduce arthritis symptoms.
8 Sustainable Weight Loss Tips for Arthritis Patients
We can understand how difficult it is to manage a healthy weight, especially if you have arthritis. We hope the following tips can help you manage a healthy weight and arthritis symptoms effectively.
Make a plan
The methods involved in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight vary among patients, depending on the causes of their weight gain. For instance, Rheumatoid and Psoriatic arthritis are autoimmune conditions, whereas aging and gradual wear and tear of cartilage can lead to Osteoarthritis. Besides, certain medications for treating rheumatoid arthritis have water-retention properties, which can also contribute to weight gain. Therefore, the healthy weight management methods for all these patients will differ. Sustainable weight loss depends mainly on customized meal planning, portion control, and exercise plans. Based on the severity of your condition, your MD and RD can provide customized medical help to lose weight.
Set a goal
By setting a goal, we are not suggesting focusing on a number. Instead, we recommend you aim to achieve your best weight that provides optimal health and functional outcomes. This number will vary among patients. So, you can work with your medical team to identify your best weight and follow their advice in achieving and maintaining the same.
Follow a healthy diet
It implies consuming a balanced diet to meet your nutritional needs without going overboard on calories. Besides, your registered dietitian may also advise you to avoid food that might cause inflammation.
Ideally, your diet should contain –
- Foods with fewer calories
- Foot rich in protein and fibre to help you feel fuller for long
- Reduce intake of sugar and unhealthy fat
Your dietitian can help with effective meal planning to provide you with the required nutrients while also helping reduce calorie intake. Proper meal planning allows you more control over food choices, saves time in grocery shopping, removes impulsive and poor food choices, etc.
Portion Control
Besides eating healthy, you also need to control your portions. Usually, we end up eating large portions if we are served in a bigger bowl or plate. The following tips can help you control your portions effectively –
- Using smaller dinnerware
- Planning your meals in advance
- Avoid eating out from a packaging directly
- Pre-portioned leftovers for easy pickup and go
- Understanding calorie intake vs. output
Practice mindful eating
We also advise practicing mindful eating to help manage a healthy weight. The purpose is to develop a positive relationship with food. We believe the following tips might help you-
- Eat slowly
- Listen to your body and stop eating when you feel full
- Eat without any guilt attached to it
- Eat when you feel hungry, not out of boredom
- Savour your meal
Get regular joint-friendly exercises
Arthritis patients often cannot exercise like a healthy person. When exercising, they need to remember to avoid putting additional stress on their joints. Besides, continuous joint pain and fatigue may also cause them to get demotivated not to exercise.
However, you cannot ignore the significance of regular exercise when trying to achieve a healthy weight.
In this situation, selecting low-impact exercises, such as brisk walking, riding a stationary bike, swimming, and water activities, are pretty safe for arthritis patients. Besides, water aerobics in a heated pool can help relieve joint pain and stiffness. How much exercise you should get depends on the severity of your condition. Hence, follow your doctor’s advice to get exercises that are safe for your joints.
Build healthy habits
Your doctor can help identify the challengesyou experience in keeping your weight off. It will allow them to help you develop a positive mindset and build healthy habits and lifestyle to manage a healthy weight.
Review your medications
As mentioned earlier, many rheumatoid arthritis medications can lead to weight gain. The reason is that they have water-retention properties and might increase your appetite. In such cases, you can talk to your doctor and request them to prescribe alternatives with the least weight-related side effects.
How Modest Medix can help?
Modest Medix offers customized weight loss programs in Ontario, Canada, to help you manage a healthy weight and your arthritis symptoms. Regardless of the types of arthritis you have developed and their severity level, we can help develop customized weight loss solutions. Modest Medix doesn’t believe in following an extremely strict diet as that is neither healthy nor sustainable. Instead, we encourage eating everything in moderation. Further, we will help you with proper meal planning, advise you on effective portion control and suggest the right exercises. We aim to help improve the quality of life of patients and not just deal with continuous pain, discomfort and other health issues related to their weight. Therefore, if you are struggling with obesity or overweight and also dealing with different forms of arthritis, consult our team for appropriate medical help to lose weight.
