When it comes to weight loss and dieting, everyone has their ideas and suggestions for works best. With so many conflicting ideas out there, it can be hard to decide on what’s right and what isn’t. No one wants to waste their time, spinning their wheels, while trying to achieve their goals.
It is likely that the weight you are holding onto currently took you a while to accumulate. Many people forget about this when it comes to weight loss. They assume that once they’ve taken to shedding some fat, it’ll come off in an instant. Weight loss is not a race, and it takes time to see results.
If you have set yourself the goal of losing weight, consider some of the following tips. Then, stick with them for the long haul:
Expert Tips For Faster Weight Loss
1. Stay Hydrated
If you’re looking for a way to achieve faster weight loss, consider upping your water intake. People who make hydration a priority often find losing weight a little bit easier.
On average, someone who drinks one or two cups of water a half an hour prior to meal time for three months ended up losing three more pounds than those who didn’t! Drinking water in this way is a great way to achieve faster weight loss; it helps make you feel satiated. This often results in you consuming less when it comes time to eat!
2. Try Food Journaling
Tracking your food intake or keeping a food journal is another great way to achieve faster weight loss. It may seem like a bit much, but research has shown time after time that it works! A recent study done on food journaling found that keeping a diary of the foods you eat throughout the day could result in nearly double the weight loss!
It’s not uncommon for those that are watching what they eat to overlook some of the smaller snacks they are eating throughout the day; when the scale stops trending downward, they wonder what’s gone wrong. By tracking what you eat, and being honest about it, you’ll keep yourself accountable, resulting in less overeating!
3. Switch Your Plate Around
Another great to reduce the calories you are consuming throughout the day is by switching around your main courses and sides or accompaniments. Instead of having a large bowl of pasta with some vegetables thrown in, have a bowl of vegetables with a small amount of pasta! You’ll be surprised to find that you are much fuller after eating a meal like this, and you don’t have to deny yourself the pasta in the process! Another added benefit of this technique is not only will you be consuming less calories, but you’ll be eating more vegetables!
4. Do Some HIIT
If you’re strapped for time, but still want to get a great cardio workout in, consider doing a HIIT workout. Studies have shown that a short 15 minute HIIT workout can burn just as much calories as 30 minutes of a less intense cardio session!
The idea behind a HIIT workout is that you spend short bursts of time intensely working, and then switch to a more relaxed pace for a slightly longer interval. By working out in this way, you’ll keep your heart rate up, which burns more calories, while effectively doing less actual work. You’d be hard pressed to get your heart rate up and keep it at the levels achieved in a HIIT workout for 30 minutes or more. HIIT provides a real bargain when it comes to cardio!
5. Try A Pre-Meal Snack
This tip might seem weird at first; having a bite to eat prior to your meal would surely ruin your appetite, or result in overeating, right? You’d be surprised to find that come time to eat, you are still able to enjoy your meal, but you’ll likely end up fuller, sooner. This will result in less eating in the end!
A great way to do this is to eat something small, say 30 minutes before dinner, that is around 100 calories and contains a decent amount of fiber. By having this smaller bite of food before your meal, you wont go into the main attraction feeling ravenous, which makes eating less that much easier!
6. Prioritize Weight Lifting Over Cardio
If you’ve ever done any reading on cardio workouts and their calorie burn, you’ve likely seen that over the course of the workout you end up burning more calories than during a weight-lifting session. While this is true, strength training not only burns calories while you work, but results in your body burning more calories throughout the rest of your day!
Doing a strength training workout will boost your metabolism slightly throughout the day, resulting in a greater calorie burn throughout the day. An added benefit of this is that as you build more muscle, your body will naturally start to burn even more calories!
7. Snack Wisely
The emphasis on the standard 3 meals a day is slowly fading away. With this change in eating habits comes a shift to more frequent, smaller meals, and snacking through the day for many. While this can be a perfectly healthy way to feed yourself throughout the day, making the wrong choices on what you choose to snack on can end up adding a lot of extra calories to your daily intake!
If you’re one to snack throughout the day, choose healthier options such as nuts, vegetables, or an apple. These kinds of foods will keep you full, provide you with beneficial vitamins and nutrients, and are likely much lower in calories than a bag of chips!
8. Consume More Beans
If beans aren’t already a mainstay of your diet, consider making the change! Beans are a great way to get in a source of slow-release carbs, while also netting you a healthy serving of protein and fiber! This combination results in your digestion being slower while will make you feel fuller, longer!
There has been research done that shows eating as little as three quarters of a cup of beans daily can net you an extra six pounds of weight loss! With numbers like that, it’s hard to not give beans a chance!
9. Avoid The Empty Calories From Drinks
A great way to cut out a huge chunk of excess calories from your diet is by eliminating sugary beverages from your diet! These drinks are simply empty calories that provide you with little in the way of satiety, while often spiking your blood sugar, which results in an increased appetite as your day progresses!
Avoiding consuming beverages that contain calories; try to stick with water, coffee, or tea, in order to minimize the amount of empty calories you consume. Often people will not even think about the calories they consume from the things they drink, and this ends up being a big mistake!
10. Take Care Of Your Gut
Gut health has been getting a load of attention these past few years. There appears to be something to all this talk; taking care of your gut and making sure you are consuming foods that will boost the health of the beneficial bacteria residing there is in your best interest!
Consider adding some additional fiber rich foods to your diet, such as whole grains, vegetables, and fruits in order to feed the good bacteria in your gut! Other great foods for you to consider include prunes, peas, pears, lentils, beans, and yogurt. All of these options are healthy additions to your diet that will boost the health of your gut!
11. Try Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a great technique that many have had luck with, when it comes to losing weight. Studies have shown that minimizing the amount of time throughout your day that you eat often results in weight loss being much easier.
The idea behind intermittent fasting is that you avoid eating for a certain period of time throughout your day, and then consume all your calories for the day in a smaller window of time. Common eating schedules for intermittent fasting include a 8-hour feeding window, with the other 16 hours of the day being fasted. Smaller feeding windows work even better for many, with 6- and even 4-hour feeding windows practiced!
12. Prioritize Sleep
There has been some research done which looked at the amount of time people slept. In conclusion, the less you sleep at night, the bigger appetite you end up having during the day!
In today’s fast paced world, sleep is often overlooked, or put on the back burner! How few hours some sleep can even be a source of pride for many! This is a mistake though, and sleep should be made a priority in everyone’s life, regardless of weight loss goals! Another study looked at sleep duration and was able to observe a link between it and people’s rates of weight gain!
Final Thoughts On Faster Weight Loss
Losing weight isn’t impossible. By sticking to sound weight loss advice, your chances of reaching your goal weight become much better! After reading through the above advice, you should be well-armed and off to achieving the body you’ve always wanted!
Consider adopting some of these tips today, and you’ll likely be surprised by how quickly the weight starts to fall off! It is important to remember that in order to succeed at losing weight, consistency is important. Even once you’ve reached the weight you were after, make sure you maintain those healthy eating habits.
