9 Effective Tips for Weight Loss You Need to Know
Written by TYE Medical on Jul 26th 2024
As long as people are trying to lose weight, wacky weight loss fads will exist. Whether you’re advised to eat cabbage soup every day or drink celery juice, these fad tips prove discouraging and can keep you from reaching your weight loss goals. But don’t despair. Science-backed weight loss advice exists even though it requires wading through all the noise and distraction of fad diet tips.
Reliable resources include dieticians, nutritionists, and even personal trainers, who base their profession on the research findings and what actually works for people. Here are X expert tips to help you meet and maintain your weight loss goals.
1. Eat Slowly
Savor each bite! Chew slowly and deliberately, intentionally tasting each morsel. This gives your body time to send out the I’m full and satisfied signal. If you eat too quickly, by the time your body recognizes and signals that it’s full, you’ve already eaten more. In other words, your body needs a little time to recognize that it’s full, and eating quickly doesn’t allow for this.
2. Eat Food You Enjoy
If you’re trying to stick to a diet plan that is based largely on foods you don’t like, you’re not likely to stick to it. Choose a diet plan that is flexible and offers a range of food choices. Try new vegetables and fruit and incorporate them into your meal plans. Don’t force yourself to eat the squash you just can’t stand.
And be sure to season and spice your food to your taste to ensure a tasty dish. Feel free to adapt cooking methods too as long as you’re not adding additional fat. If you prefer baked over sauteed, make the switch.
3. Prep and Batch-Cook Meals
Your healthy eating plan will help you lose weight more effectively if you cook and prepare meals in advance. This keeps you from convenience eating or even skipping meals. When you come home from work exhausted, it’s much easier to call door dash than it is to cook a healthy meal. But if you prepare and batch cook in advance, you already have a heat-and-eat meal that won’t detract from your weight loss goals. Try batch-cooking your breakfast and lunch as well as suppers.
4. Incorporate Weight Training
Lifting weights or performing another type of strength training two or three times per week. Use moderate to heavy weights and do three or four sets of 10 to 15 reps for optimal effectiveness. Just be sure the weight challenges you and is not too heavy or too light. Research shows that strength training increases the effectiveness of a weight loss plan. The more muscle you have, the more likely it is that calories will be burned rather than stored as fat.
5. Get Enough Sleep
A lack of sleep makes you more hungry. It decreases the hormones that help you feel satisfied and increases hormones that make you hungry. As your hunger intensity increases, so does your cravings for sweet or salty foods, as these are often higher energy, higher calorie foods that your body thinks it needs. Your body is trying to make up for the lack of energy (due to sleep loss) through the energy found in food.
6. Go Big for Breakfast and Eat Less at Supper
Try to consume more of your calories earlier in the day. Research shows that a large breakfast and a small supper helps people lose more weight. This gives you an opportunity to burn more of your calories before bed. But if you just can’t make this work with your schedule or circumstances, try eating supper earlier and then not eating after six or seven in the evening.
7. Stay Hydrated
According to research, if you drink two glasses of water before a meal, you’re likely to lose more weight than if you didn’t–and you’re more likely to keep it off. It’s not uncommon to mistake hunger for thirst, which can make you eat more than you need. Instead of eating, you’ll find a hydrating beverage satisfies just as well as food. Another perk is that water makes you feel fuller, which is why drinking before a meal is so effective.
8. Section Your Plate
For effective weight loss, divide your plate so that half contains vegetables, one quarter is whole grains, and one quarter is lean protein. Just remember to classify potatoes, corn, and peas as “grains” since they are starchy vegetables. Doing this allows you to keep the right proportions. Carbs are healthy, but loading up on that at mealtime isn’t, especially if you want to lose weight.
9. Eat Protein at Every Meal
You can shave off those extra pounds when you incorporate protein at every meal. This is especially true for breakfast. Protein slows your digestive process and regulates your hunger hormones and prevents hunger better than carbs. Try protein-rich foods like lean meat, fish, poultry, lentil pasta, tofu, tempeh, yogurt, cheese, nuts, seeds, eggs, beans, edamame, and even quinoa.
Weight Loss Tips You Can Use
We don’t recommend immediately putting all these tips into practice. That could get crazy…and become overwhelming. And not every weight loss tip will be right for you. But you can begin implementing a couple changes and find the path that helps you meet your goals more effectively.
