It’s a known fact that everyone should do their best to follow a healthy lifestyle for a happier and longer life. With this, you should practice eating a balanced diet and doing regular exercise. While you’re trying to stay healthy, losing a fair amount of weight can be helpful, especially if you’re leaning towards being overweight or obese.
While gaining a little weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing, gaining several pounds can be detrimental to your health. There’s plenty of ways to lose weight—listed below are some tips for effective weight loss unless if you’re planning on having a weight loss surgery:
1. Consider Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is one of the most popular fasting methods to date. This involves allowing yourself to eat only during certain hours of the day and avoid eating for the remaining hours. In Rose Wellness’ article, you’ll learn that there are four different types of plans you can choose from for your weight loss program.
The most common type of intermittent fasting is eating only from noon up to eight in the evening. After that, you’re not allowed to eat meals or snacks during the fasting period, but you can drink water. With intermittent fasting, you can freely eat anything you want, but only during your prescribed eating hours.
2. Drink Water Before Meals
You’ve probably heard people saying that you should drink water before consuming a meal as it’s good for your health. While this is true, there are plenty of hidden benefits to drinking water before meals, and that includes weight loss.
Drinking water can help boost your body’s metabolism by 24-30% an hour after consumption. Through this, you can guarantee that you’re burning more calories than the amount you’re taking in.
3. Decrease Added Sugar Intake
One of the basic rules for losing weight is reducing the amount of sugar you consume within the day. If you have an incredibly sweet tooth, you must learn to control and limit the sweets you eat within the day. With too much sugar, you’ll be more at risk of obesity, which is not helpful for your health.
Always read the label before purchasing any products and look for items with less sugar in them. However, if you cannot resist the urge to consume sweets, you can try using a sugar substitute that adds sweetness without causing disadvantageous effects on your body.
4. Use Smaller Plates And Cutlery
You can trick your mind into eating less by switching your regular plate and flatware into a smaller size.
If you have a large plate, your mind will believe that you need to fill the entire platter—otherwise, you won’t feel full. Apart from this, your mind will send signals that you’re still hungry if you don’t finish all your food. This remains to be the case even when you already consumed too much. This is not helpful to your weight loss plan.
5. Chew Slowly
Along with replacing your regular plates and flatware with smaller sizes, you should also practice chewing slowly to aid your digestive processes.
Your brain will take a while to realize you’re already full. When you continue to chew and swallow fast, you’re not allowing your brain enough time to register your stomach capacity. When you chew slowly, you’ll have enough time to enable your body to send signals that you’re already full, thus minimizing your food intake.
6. Consume Spicy Food
If your taste buds can tolerate it, you should consider eating spicy foods during meals. Spicy foods are known to be an effective and excellent way to boost your metabolism, allowing you to lose weight fast. Along with this, spicy food can also curb your appetite.
You should note that when you consume spicy food in the long run, they may lose their effectiveness, especially if your body has developed tolerance to spiciness.
7. Count Your Calories
Another popular method of losing weight is watching your calorie intake in every meal consumed within a day. If you’re planning to have a low-calorie diet, you should only consume between 800 to 1,500 calories per day.
Your body needs calories as it’s one of the primary sources of energy that enable you to function well. However, when you consume more than your body needs, your body will store the excess as body fat and add to your body weight.
In counting calories, you’re not required to eat less of everything as there are alternatives you can try. You can still consume the same amount of food while making sure that they contain fewer calories. You can enjoy eating a handful of oats, Greek yogurt, fish, chia seeds, berries, potatoes, lean meat, and many more. This way, you’ll still feel full despite limiting your calorie intake.
Conclusion
While eating to your heart’s content is satisfying and enjoyable, you should practice eating healthy meals to stay in great shape. If your bodyweight exceeds the average for your height and age, you should start trying to lose weight for a healthier body. There are plenty of ways for you to lose weight, and you should choose the methods you’re comfortable doing.
Furthermore, you shouldn’t forget that weight loss can’t only be achieved by regulating food consumption, but also exercising regularly. You can always consult your doctor whether your body can handle a particular diet, especially if you’re taking medications.
