Here are some great weight loss tips to help you reach your fitness and body composition goals. Why eight weight loss tips and not ten… or even fifty weight loss tips? I want to keep it simple so there is a higher chance that they can be followed. All the weight loss tips in the world won’t help if no one remembers to follow them. You don’t even have to follow all of these tips. To get started, just pick one and when it becomes a habit, try the next weight loss tip that strikes your fancy.
The most important idea to lose weight has to do with the Law of Thermodynamics. This law means that to lose weight, you need to expend more energy than you take in. To gain weight you need to take in more energy than you expend. So losing weight is simple; Eat less food while moving more often! The following weight loss tips are just ways to take advantage of and make more efficient use of this inevitable law of nature.
Weight Loss Tip #1: Don’t go on a diet! Yeah, I said it, don’t go on a diet. Most people cannot stick to a diet for a long period of time. They get discouraged and quit. You need to make healthy lifelong changes, not look for the next fad quick fix. Does this mean that diets and diet books are bad? Certainly not, you may be in the minority who find one that works for you. If not, you can still learn something about nutrition that you can apply to your eating habits. Make small changes to your nutritional habits and over time you will reach your goals and be able to stick with them.
Weight Loss Tip #2: Make 1 Small Healthy Change You Can Live With Today! For me, that was cutting out sugary sodas and other sugary drinks. A typical regular can of soda has between 140 and 170 calories. Two of them per day equates to 280-340 calories per day, or about ¾ pound of weight loss per week if you were maintaining your weight before that change (see weight loss tip #6). What do you drink instead? Cold water!!! Water is not only healthy, but an ounce of cold water will burn one calorie when your body warms up. So, drink the recommended 64-96 oz. of water per day could equate to up to 96 additional calories burned (depending on how much cold water you drank earlier).
It doesn’t have to be sugary drinks. It could be eliminating desserts or limiting them to once or twice a week every day. Try to replace one unhealthy snack per day with a healthier one. Pick one you can stick with (but start drinking more water anyway).
Weight loss tip #3: Eat breakfast! There’s a reason for the cliché that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s because after fasting overnight, your metabolism is at its lowest point in the morning. You need to stoke the metabolic fires with a hearty breakfast that contains carbohydrates and protein. If you don’t, your body will think it’s starving and will want to store excess calories from the first thing you eat (for example, at lunch) as fat to guard against long periods without energy. Eating breakfast first thing in the morning prevents this from happening and gives you energy to start the day.
Weight Loss Tip #4: Eat 4-6 small meals a day instead of 2-3 large meals. The easy way to do this is by eating breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a snack, and then dinner. There, that’s 5, good enough. A piece of fruit is a great snack. By spreading your energy intake into smaller, more frequent increments, you’ll increase your metabolism (burn more calories) because your body never thinks it’s starving.
Weight Loss Tip #5: Reduce Stress. Stress causes our body to release cortisol, which is a hormone that helps us deal with stress physiologically. Simply put, the adaptations our bodies make in response to stress work against weight loss. The release of cortisol promotes fat storage and suppresses the production of other hormones that promote the building of lean muscle mass. Try yoga, try meditation, try a hobby, or hit a heavy bag. Just do what works for you to reduce stress.
Weight Loss Tip #6: Determine how many calories you need to maintain your current weight and how many you need to reduce each day to reach your weight loss goals. Step 1: Determine your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the number of calories your body burns just to maintain minimal life support functions and is about 75% of all the calories you burn. The formula is simply your body weight ____ X 10 = Basal Metabolic Rate.
Now, to determine how many calories you need each day to maintain your current weight, multiply your base metabolic rate by a “lifestyle factor” based on your activity level. A note about the formula: This is only a rough estimate, women will need a few fewer calories (perhaps 200) than this formula indicates. Males might need 100 more. As you get older, you’ll also need fewer calories to maintain your weight. So, use the formula to get started, then adjust your daily caloric needs based on your results (this is where a nutrition log is important – see weight loss tip #7).
For sedentary people (office workers, people who mostly sit or drive all day) use 1.4. For moderately active people (people on their feet all day like servers, service industry, moderate exercise) use 1.6. For very active people (jobs with a lot of physical labor, people who move, etc., athletes) use 1.8. If you think you are between two of the examples, you can split the difference.
Let’s plug in some numbers: I weigh 195 pounds, office worker. 195X10 = 1950 calories basal metabolic rate. 1950 X 1.4 = 2730. This is roughly the number of calories you need to consume to stay at 195 pounds. It’s not an exact science, but it should be pretty close and it’s a great starting point.
Now you can set your weight loss goals based on how many kilos you want to lose and in what period of time. The maximum sustainable level of healthy weight loss is approximately 2 pounds per week. To lose 2 pounds per week, you must decrease your energy intake and/or increase your energy output by 1,000 calories per day. A reduction of 500 calories per day will result in a loss of approximately one pound per week.
So losing 40 pounds will take 20 weeks, or about 5 months at 2 pounds per week. If you decrease your daily intake by 500 calories per day and increase your energy expenditure by an average of 500 calories per day. From our example above, to lose 2 pounds per week, they would need to eat 1730 calories per day (2730-1000) or 2230 calories with an average of about 500 calories of exercise each day.
Weight Loss Tip #7: Keep a Food Log. Write down everything you eat for 3 days (all the calories!), then add up the calories and divide by 3 to get an average. Now that you know how many calories you’re eating, you can plan how many you need to cut each day to reach your goals.
Weight Loss Tip #8: Move More! This doesn’t mean you have to start a grueling exercise program. At first, just look for ways to move a little more than normal. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to the store down the street or to the park instead of driving. When you start an exercise program, do it slowly and calmly. No more than 3 days a week at first. Twenty minutes of walking 3 times a week is a great start. Or, 3 short workouts at the gym or at home per week. This will start to increase your caloric expenditure so you don’t have to cut as many calories from your diet and still lose weight.
Like diets, most people overdo it when starting an exercise program, then run out and quit. It’s okay to miss a few workouts, or even have a rough week and do nothing. There’s no reason to quit out of frustration, just start over next week.
That’s all the weight loss tips I have for you…just remember that slow and steady wins the race. You were not overweight in a short period of time… it will take some time for you to lose the weight too. Make one change at a time, add it when the previous change becomes part of your lifestyle. Stop making changes when you are happy with your results, your health, and your lifestyle. The good news is that you can start making some small changes today that will last a lifetime and make you feel better, be healthier, and live longer.