Looking to lose weight and want to find the best solution? Have you tried every trick in the book and still struggled to lose those unwanted pounds?I have been in your shoes. I know how it is to exercise regularly, eat right and lose most of the weight, but it’s hard to lose those last few stubborn pounds. It’s possible to break past this barrier, and I will teach you how.
For starters, I don’t want you to make dramatic changes in your lifestyle. Instead, I want to to improve on some of the things that you are doing already. It’s hard to introduce new habits, and a a lot easier to change or modify existing ones.
That’s exactly what my 12 step solution is all about. Try these simple and effective tactics to supercharge your weight loss efforts. Do the best you can and don’t try and do it all at one time.
1. Become more positive and receptive to new weight-loss ideas. Because permanent weight-loss success begins not with the measuring cup but the mind, take a minute to explore your reasons for wanting to lose weight. Just fitting into a smaller dress size is not enough. What then? That’s when the weight creeps back. A healthy weight should be a part of your mindset. It’s not just about looking better or fitting into smaller clothes but about being healthier and maintaining a healthy lifestyle of the rest of your life. This is easier said than done. It takes some practice. Ask yourself WHY do you want to lose weight? Can you zero in on a better reason than a smaller dress size? Sure, you want to look good, but you want to feel good, too, right? That is what will keep you motivated for a lifetime.
2. Write everything down. Take a journal and make a note of how much you exercise, what you are eating, your successes and your failures.
Write down what you eat, and check it against a calorie counter every night for the next two weeks. For many people, this is all it takes to wake up and reverse a lifetime of bad habits. This may sound silly but it’s one of the best weight-loss tactics in the world. I have heard several instances where clients eat a healthy salad but sprinkle itwith so much dressing that you end up with a 500 calorie meal. Once you start seeing how many calories there are in what you’re eating, you’ll know which foods to cut back on or eliminate.
3. Become more active. This is my favorite tip. Exercise is the single strongest predictor of you ability to lose weight – and keep it off. Yes, exercise burns calories, increases your metabolism and energy, and develops lean muscle mass. But just as important, exercise catapults your self-esteem, which makes you more likely to do other things to take care of yourself, like eat less. Get moving means strength training AND aerobic conditioning.
4. Resist that first bite especially for the foods you love. You’ve heard it before: everything is okay in moderation. But face it: there are certain foods you simply can’t eat moderately. If one cookie or a handful of chips is never enough, it’s best just to avoid these foods altogether. If you’ve spent your entire adult life trying to eat a little of certain foods and failing, that is your signal to just forget it and don’t even take a bite.
5. Drink more water. Most people complain
“I hate water.”
“It’s soooo boring. There’s no taste!”
“I can’t drink too much or I’ll waste my day in the bathroom.”
“I know I have to drink more water. I just keep forgetting about it.”
You know you need at least 8-10 glasses of water a day. You need to understand why water is so important. Yes, it fills you up. It controls your appetite. Did you know that it also aids in metabolizing fat? your liver is busy metabolizing fat and ridding your body of toxins. Water helps to get rid of toxins. If you’re not drinking enough water, you have more toxins in your body, compromising the liver’s ability to metabolize fat. You need water on hand for fat metabolism.
6. Reduce 100 calories from your diet every day. Make a commitment to cut 100 calories a day from your diet and replace it with an activity that burns 100 calories. It’s easier to pinpoint the 100 with the journal I talked about earlier. If you did nothing else, you’d lose 10 lb. at the end of a year. A few activities that burn 100 cals are 1/2 hr. of walking, 20 minutes of swimming, or even dancing around your living room.
7. Eat fruits and vegetables every day. These have a powerful effect on sugar cravings. Plus, they’re low in calories, fill you up with fiber, and pack a powerful nutritional punch.
8. Start training with weights. More muscle means more calories burned, even at rest. The key to permanent weight loss.
9. Eat more fibre. Fiber-rich fruits and veggies are great nutritional fare, since they fill you up without adding too much fat or too many calories. But increasing fiber intake could actually reduce the amount of calories absorbed by the body, too.
10. Spread your calories out over the course of the day. The typical American eats light during the day, and heavier at night. Yikes! By the time you get to dinner, your metabolism has gotten sluggish, which means a greater number of calories will be stored as fat. It’s even worse if you’re not active after dinner. Eat larger meals during the day, and have a light dinner.
11. Change Your Shopping Style When I go grocery shopping I can take one look at someone’s shopping cart and make some basic assumptions about their lifestyle. If you want to lose weight your grocery shopping habits must improve. Thin starts at the grocery store. Before you hit the checkout lane, review your selections and dump any sugary, fatty treats and snacks. Your family may complain but they will get used to it.
12. Mix up your workouts. Crosstraining is the key to success. It is said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and yet expect the same results. The same applies to fitness. You can’t expect to do the same exercise, at the same intensity week after week and continue to see results. The body must be ‘shocked’ to respond with results. As long as the exercise is unpredictable and varied or manipulated every two weeks you will continue improving and losing weight.
