Each year, we promise to work out, lose weight, and look much healthier after all the junk foods we ate and the lost chances we missed for exercise. However, we break those promises each year and promise ourselves we will really take losing weight seriously next year. The cycle happens, and it never lasts. While it is perfectly understandable why it happens, it can also be tiring to promise and never deliver it in the end.
Weight loss is not only for aesthetic purposes. You do not lose weight because you want to fit into some dresses that no longer suit you now. You lose weight because you love yourself and you want to live much longer. We only have one body, and we must take care of it to live much longer. We know that the current lifestyles we have make it hard, but we must do it to enjoy a healthier life without any hassles on our end.
You might have tried countless diets, enrolled in so many classes, and even bought a lot of supplements that help you lose weight. Still, you must tackle this goal with a clear path on where you are going instead of doing several things all at once. Once you have a clear way, losing weight will be much easier for you. Soon enough, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor, and isn’t that the sweetest?
Here are nine successful tips on how to lose weight. Of course, you do not have to try all of them. You can only try some of them or even adjust them to your needs.
Start Your Day With Coffee or Tea
Before you get excited and hop on to the nearest Starbucks with your favorite iced coffee order in mind, you must remember that this tip means black coffee and pure green tea. No sugars, no milk, no added sweetness, and calories.
Coffee has been seen as a sour drink for most people, but they drink bad coffee. High-quality coffee is jam-packed with many antioxidants, which are essential elements for boosting your immune system and burning calories. Studies have shown that it can boost your metabolism by up to 11% and burn your fats by up to 29%.
If you are not a coffee person, then green tea works the same for you. Tea, in particular, is packed with a lot of catechins, powerful antioxidants that work in sync with caffeine for more efficient and enhanced fat burning. Always remember to drink them in their purest and without any sugars or sweeteners.
Keep a Food and Drink Diary
One of the most helpful things to do when losing weight is to monitor yourself regularly. There are many ways to do it: you can write in your journal or diary, type them on your mobile app, or use a website dedicated to recording every food item or drink that you consume every single day.
It would also be extra helpful if you have your weighing scale with you and check your weight weekly to see any changes. Seeing that you are losing weight in small numbers can help you be more motivated to stick to a weight-loss routine.
Never skip any desserts or junk food in your food diary, as it would defeat the purpose. It would also force you to cut those foods in your diet to not feel guilty about eating those and jotting them down in your food diary.
Give Intermittent Fasting a Try
Suppose you want to lose weight but not feel like you are dieting because of your minimized food intake. In that case, you can consider intermittent fasting as a practical weight loss tip for your body.
Intermittent fasting is when you stop eating for a set number of hours each day. When it is finished, you can basically eat whatever you want during the eating window or the hours when you can consume whatever you want to eat and drink.
Intermittent fasting is supported by short-term studies as a practical weight loss tip. It also helps in continuous calorie restriction and reduces the loss of muscle mass that is always associated with taking low-calorie diets. You can basically eat anything without having to cut sizes and portions with intermittent fasting, which works for many people.
Cutting Back on Your Refined Carbs
For those unfamiliar, refined carbohydrates are grains and sugar that have no nutritious or fibrous parts. Examples of these refined carbs include pasta and white bread. It is because refined carbs can spike your blood sugar levels as rapidly as they can.
When your blood sugar levels are up, it makes you crave more food and get hungry. It is also closely linked to obesity. Nutritionists and dietitians have suggested that eating fibrous carbohydrates will help you with your carbohydrate needs without sending your blood levels through the roof. Examples of carbs with natural fiber include whole-wheat bread and brown rice.
Start Using Smaller Plates
This is a straightforward weight loss tip that a lot of people swear into its effectiveness. It is highly advisable to use smaller plates when eating because it tricks your mind through your eyes into thinking that once you finish a full plate of food using a smaller plate, you would feel fuller. You would also think that going for seconds can be too much when you use smaller plates.
Include Simple Exercises in Your Routine
Watching what you eat is one thing, but regularly exercising is the one that completes the equation for weight loss. Regular exercise is helpful not only for your physical health but also for your mental health. It is essential to incorporate any form of exercise into your routines and do them as regularly as possible.
It is ideal to dedicate an hour of moderate-intensity activity every day or a minimum of 150 minutes in a week devoted to moderate-intensity training. It is also advisable for people who are not into exercise to slowly increase the increments towards exercising and its intensity. This is the most sustainable method to ensure that it becomes an integral part of your lifestyle.
Get Rid of Empty Calories
Empty calories are called because these only offer extra amounts of energy without any nutrition in them. These include drinking sweet sodas, teas, alcoholic drinks, or sweetened fruit juices. It would be best to get rid of these as it will only make you gain more weight. Instead of drinking these calorie-packed beverages, stick to drinking water or fresh fruit juices without any sweets in them.
If you cannot live without coffee or tea, cut the sweets and the whole fat milk in it. You should drink it unsweetened or use natural sweeteners such as honey. You can also include fruits in your drinking water, such as lemons, oranges, and cucumbers, to give it a punchy taste that you will surely enjoy.
Just make sure to replace the fruits after two days because lemons get bitter when left in the water for too long. Lastly, the hunger you feel is only a form of dehydration. Thus, drink lots of water in between meals to ensure you always feel full.
Sleep For 8 Hours or More
Little did people know that sleeping for the correct number of hours each day can also help weight loss. Many people sleep late and wake up early, which means they do not hit the required number of hours for sleep each day. Adults are expected to sleep for a minimum of seven hours up to nine hours a day.
Lack of sleep or poor sleeping habits is known as one of the main factors for obesity. Studies show that about 89% of obesity in children and 55% of obesity rates in adults are pointed towards an apparent lack of sleep for both age groups.
Always sleep for a minimum of seven hours a day to ensure you get enough rest for your body. Sleeping also helps you lose weight because you do not eat while you are sleeping.
Chew Much Slower
Lastly, this tip has more to do with tricking our brains concerning losing weight. Many studies have shown that chewing your food more slowly helps you eat fewer amounts of calories, and it also increases the levels of hormones you produce in your body.
This is because your brain takes a while to realize that you have eaten enough. If you chew slower than usual, the brain would think that you are nearly done since you have eaten a lot already. Chewing slower also helps in reducing the calorie intake in every meal, which is also beneficial for weight loss.
Final Thoughts
Weight loss can indeed be hard to achieve, and it truly is. Not a lot of dieting tips apply to all people since we are made and built differently. What’s effective in weight loss for you might not be the same for other people, so it can be challenging, especially for overweight and obese people.
Thankfully, we have a lot of tips we can follow to ensure weight loss in every step. If you are still unsure of what to do, you can consult a doctor to help you with a suitable weight loss plan for your needs. Always remember to eat healthy, exercise, and avoid fatty foods that can give you more calories.
Integrated Med Spa wants to help you in your weight loss journey in every way they can. Thus, they offer many weight loss solutions that will help you shed more fat, burn more calories, and shrink to smaller sizes than ever before. Not only that, but they also offer different med spa and spa services to ensure that you are beautiful from the inside out. With Integrated Med Spa, losing weight is now within reach.
