32 Weight Loss Tips That Work
In an attempt to go from flab to fab you’ve tried pounding the pavements and treading the treadmills; climbing stairs in your building and counting steps on the Stairmaster; cycling outdoors on sunny days and stationery cycling indoors on rainy days! You’ve tried the Cabbage Soup diet, the Atkins Diet, the All-Protein-No-Carbohydrate diet and the Near-Starvation Diet! You’ve invested money in exercise videos and state of the art exercise equipment; bought special foods and diet pills.
Unfortunately, despite all your attempts to lose that weight, you are stuck in weight loss hell. While you manage to keep up your exercise and diet regimen for a few days, it’s just a matter of time before it all comes unstuck. You get really bored eating bland food and so you look for another alternative and while you are looking, you reach out for some comfort food to get over the depression of yet another failed diet. Problem is most comfort food is fattening so there go all your low-calorie efforts out the window yet again! It’s the same with exercise; you have a million other things you have to do and it’s easy to relegate exercise to the back of the line.
Like it or not, the keys to long-term weight loss are persistence, determination and patience. It requires a lot of time and effort to lose excess weight and keep it off! It requires a complete overhaul not only of the way you exercise and the way you eat but also of the way you think!
Here are a few weight loss tips that will help you stay motivated and will keep you going till you’ve reached your weight loss goals.
Motivational Weight Loss Tips
Motivation plays a vital role in any weight loss endeavor. Here are a few that will help you stay on course:
1. Get a Partner
Weight loss goes much smoother when you have someone there to motivate and support you. While it is not absolutely necessary to have a partner who is also trying to lose weight, the friendly competition that comes from trying to see who can lose the most weight can be very motivational to those with a competitive streak. Another way to find support is through the many online support groups that are available on the Internet. Irrespective of how or where you find it, you need to know that there is someone out there to give you moral support.
2. Enlist your Family’s Support
Dieting on your own can make it difficult for you to even participate in family dinners. Letting your family know what your goals are and enlisting their help to keep certain bad foods out of the house can definitely help you. Your family can also be another major source of encouragement to help you achieve your weight loss goals.
3. Keep Before and After Photos
Tracking your progress visually can help. While you might not enjoy looking at the pictures from the beginning of the weight loss process, you will definitely enjoy looking at the “after” photos that show you slimming down. After you reach a certain weight, put your photos together and make a flip book and show it off to your friends and family.
4. Hang out that Little Black Dress
Do you own a designer pair of jeans or a little black dress that you used to fit in not so long ago? Hang it out where it can serve as a constant reminder of how fabulous it felt when you were a former shade of yourself!
5. Get a Better Scale
If you’ve had your scale for 10 years it is time to upgrade. Consider purchasing a digital scale. Analog scales simply don’t give very accurate results and high quality digital scales have decreased in price a lot over the years. Along with using an accurate digital scale make sure you always weigh yourself on a hard surface; weighing yourself on carpet will not give you an accurate measurement either.
6. Maintain a Schedule
Mornings are usually the best time for most people to exercise but you may find that you need to make adjustments. Once you’ve found an exercise schedule that works you need to stick to it; follow it regularly. You should exercise at least three times a week for between 30-50 minutes a session. The schedule management you need to maintain a regular exercise schedule will also help you in many aspects of life.
7. Take into Account Bad Days
It is inevitable that you will have setbacks. You will probably accept a lunch or dinner invite at a really nice restaurant with friends and get tempted to eat more or reach out for something that you shouldn’t eat. The thing to do is not to focus on the setback but move on and don’t let it become a pattern. An occasional setback is okay as long as it stays occasional.
8. Don’t compare
One mistake that some people make when they are trying to lose weight with a partner or partners is to assume that if they are the same size and follow the same plan they should lose weight at the same rate. There are way too many variables involved with weight loss to try to coordinate your weight loss with anybody else. People simply do not lose weight at the same rates; comparing yourself to others will only discourage you; don’t do it.
9. Remember That Men and Women Lose Weight Differently
Research shows that men can lose weight faster than women. If your partner is of the opposite sex don’t try to have the same weight loss goals; it simply will not work.
Weight Loss Tips for Assessing Yourself & Determining Your Goals
These few tips will help you make an accurate assessment of how much weight you need to lose and what is the realistic time-frame within which to do it:
10. Figure out Your Ideal Weight
Having a definite number goal can provide you with motivation. It is a good idea to consult with your doctor in determining your ideal weight. Your doctor can take into consideration any medical conditions that you may have that may require you adjust your goal weight. It is good to keep a doctor in the loop about your weight loss so that they can monitor your progress and make suggestions to help you succeed.
11. Set Realistic Goals
You’re not going to lose 50 pounds in a week or a month; probably not in an entire year, so don’t set losing 50 pounds in a month as a goal. Setting unrealistic goals is a sure recipe for failure. Goals such as limiting your calorie intake to less than 2,000 calories every day for a week or exercising an extra day during the week are realistic goals. Realistic weekly goals will help you to focus on your positive gains from each week. Unrealistic goals will discourage you; realistic goals will motivate you.
12. Know when it’s Time to Make Adjustments
Once you are no longer losing at least a pound a week it means that you have either plateaued or finished losing the amount of weight you need to lose. Try pushing yourself a little harder to see if it results in more weight loss and if it doesn’t you should be at the weight you desire.
Lifestyle Weight Loss Tips
Making a few changes in your lifestyle can reap rich rewards:
13. Stay Balanced
Goals are good but they need to be balanced goals. If you try to overdo either the exercise plan or the dietary changes you will be more prone to quit the program all together. Setting weekly goals for what you want to accomplish will help you to avoid the panic that sometimes sets in when you look at your overall goals. Reward yourself as you achieve your goals to encourage you to persevere.
14. Commit to Lifestyle Changes
Unless you are willing to make certain permanent lifestyle changes, you can expect your weight loss to be temporary. If you want to lose the weight and keep off long term, you will have to change your dietary lifestyle. Fad diets work temporarily. As you decide on changes you want to make, consider if you will be able to implement those changes permanently.
15. Get Some Sleep
To efficiently burn fat you need to get at least eight hours of sleep a day. Sleeping less is not going to help your weight loss problem in any way. Sleep gives the body a chance to recover from the day’s activities and energizes you for the next day. If you are regularly feeling tired it is your body’s way of telling you that you need some rest.
Exercise Weight Loss Tips
In addition to helping you lose weight, exercise also gives your overall health a tremendous boost
16. Create an Exercise Schedule
Recognize that all exercises are not created equal. You need to spend some time determining what areas you want to focus on and then determine which exercises best target those areas. Once you have decided on which exercises are best for you, then set up a reasonable exercise schedule and start following it. Give your support partner a copy of the schedule so that you can motivate one another on those days when you don’t feel like exercising.
17. Zone out
When you are exercising it is important to have something to help the time pass more quickly. Listening to your favorite music while you’re exercising can help you to not focus on what your body is doing. If you don’t have a good external stimulus while you are exercising, you can be sure time will seem to drag on and on. An MP3 player or some other portable music device is a good investment for your weight loss lifestyle change.
18. Watch that Muscle Weight
Muscle is heavier than fat but during your weight loss you definitely don’t want to lose muscle even though it will make you weight more. If you burn up all your muscle weight, your weight will be more unbalanced than before you started you weight loss program. A regular exercise schedule will prevent you burning through your muscle mass. Exercising will allow you to burn fat as you lose weight.
19. Walk More Often
Walking burns a lot of calories. Granted not as much as jogging, running or aerobic exercises but there are many unexpected opportunities where you can walk instead of taking your car. Take the stairs instead of an elevator. Get a pedometer to find how many steps you average a day and then look for ways to increase that number. Walking with your weight loss partner or a friend can up the fun quotient.
20. Dance Away Your Blues
Most individuals who want to lose weight make the cardinal mistake of focusing solely on conventional forms of exercise- jogging, aerobics, weights, etc. Dancing is certainly more fun. What’s more, when you lose weight through dancing, you will be able to show off some cool moves along with that well-toned body.
21. Enjoy the Great Big Outdoors
Outdoor opportunities abound! You can choose from trekking, mountain biking, swimming… the list is endless.
Nutritional Weight Loss Tips
Good nutrition is an integral part of any weight loss plan.
22. Watch those calories
Consuming too many calories a day can be very detrimental to your weight loss endeavor. Following the recommended caloric intake of 2,000 calories a day during your weight loss program will help you to see results sooner rather than later; that too, without sending your body into starvation mode.
21. Drink more water
Water is really good for you; if you are not properly hydrated then your body is not operating at its peak level and you will not be burning as many calories as you can which is essential to losing weight. Carrying along a bottle of water with you as you go about your daily activities will encourage you to drink more water.
23. Cut Down on the Fast Food
All fast food is not inherently evil but most fast food choices are definitely not your friend if you are looking to lose weight. Fast food unfortunately introduces a lot of unhealthy substances into your system. Most people go to fast food restaurants because they are convenient but there are lots of convenient food options that are healthy. Consider packing a lunch; it requires a little extra effort but it can prevent you from picking up some fast food and ruining your diet. If you have to eat at a fast food restaurant read the nutrition facts about the items on the menu so you can make the best choice.
24. Stay Away From High Fructose Corn Syrup and Trans Fats
These chemicals are in many of the foods we eat everyday and they are not good for you especially if you are trying to lose weight. Removing things from your diet that include these ingredients will eliminate a lot of bad foods. Looking out for these ingredients will also force you to pay more attention to nutritional facts which may in turn help you to eat healthier foods.
25. Start Taking Vitamins
If you are not currently taking any vitamins you may want to consult with a nutritionist to see what natural supplements may help you in your weight loss endeavors. Be careful not to overdo it with the vitamins though because too much, even of a good thing, can be bad. Be sure to check the ingredients list to make sure that the specific minerals that make the vitamin useful are present. Some generic vitamins on the market don’t have enough of the useful minerals in them to make them effective.
26. Try Substitutes
Not all substitutes are created equal but there are a variety of well-known food products that have healthier substitutes that still taste great. Several restaurants also have healthier version of menu favorites that taste very similar to the original. If the substitutes don’t taste good by all means look for a better substitute or just consider eating less of the original products.
27. Snack Smarter
There isn’t anything wrong with snacks as long as you choose the right kind of snacks. Small meals throughout the day, which is what snacks are, help to keep you full and satisfied until you eat your bigger meals. Starving yourself between meals will only make you eat more than you should during your big meals.
28. Eat More Fiber
Losing fat causes constipation, this is something you need to be aware of as you start your weight loss plan. Adding fiber to your diet will help you to cope with this problem. Talk to your doctor about what amount of fiber you should add to your diet to coincide with your weight loss plan. Several over the counter fiber supplements are available and they are good to keep on hand.
29. Choose Oils Wisely
There are several different types of cooking oils out there and choosing the right one will allow you to cook healthy, good-tasting food. Some oils are good for you and some are really bad for you if you are trying to lose weight; stay away from the bad ones. Olive oil is a really good choice; it is 100% natural and it tastes great with most foods.
30. Balanced Eating is the Key
You can’t eat the same thing everyday; you will get tired of it and you will not stick to your dietary changes. Investing in a low-calorie cookbook may give you ideas on how to add some new things to your menu that are still healthy and will help you with your weight loss goals. Trading recipes with your weight loss partner can be a good way to keep the ideas flowing.
31. Sugar is bad and so is White Bread
The more refined the food, the worse it is for your body. White bread as well as sugar are both refined products and don’t really give your body what it needs by way of actual nutrients. Whole grain bread is a healthier option; refined sugar is best avoided altogether. Your body gets all the sugar you need from the fruits you should be consuming.
32. Stock up on Fruits and Vegetables
The best way to stave off hunger pangs and yet keep those excess pounds at bay is to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables. Reaching out for a fruit will help you feel sated without feeling guilty.
If you want to lose weight, don’t give up yet! These simple and immensely doable weight loss tips will help you stay the course and achieve your weight loss goals even if you have tried and failed before!