Thursday, July 1, 2010

10 Easy Tips to Help You Lose Weight

There are hundreds of "get thin quick" or "lose weight fast" diet scams out there.  Don't trust them.  There is no SAFE way to lose weight fast.  A steady and controlled loss over a long period of time is the best way to lose weight and keep it off.  Losing about one to two pounds a week is optimal for long-term success.  Follow these tips and you should start seeing results within two weeks.



1.  Avoid fast food.  This is an obvious one.

2.  Avoid processed foods (boxes, bags, and cans)...these foods contain too much salt, sugar, chemicals, preservatives, and hydrogenated (bad) fats.

3.  Drink more water.  Proper hydration supports all your body systems.

4.  Eat good fats (unprocessed, natural fats) like eggs from pastured chickens, butter, whole milk products.  All of these things will help you lose fat.  See my post Eat Fat to Lose Fat for more info.

5.  Avoid bad fats.  See my post Bad Fats for more info.

6.  Exercise.  Even if you don't have time for an hour at the gym 3 nights a week, you can probably find time to do two 20 minute exercises a week.  See my post that discusses A More Efficient Way to Exercise by Dr Mercola.

7.  Check your portion sizes.  If you need help figuring out proper portion sizes, read THIS.  I will focus a post on healthy portion sizes in the upcoming weeks.

8.  Get support.  Join SparkPeople for free tools, great forums, and wonderful advice.  Often people find that having support while losing weight is the greatest incentive to actually losing that weight.

9.  Give yourself a cheat day.  Don't try to cut out EVERYTHING bad, all at once.  Give yourself a cheat day/meal/snack, whatever you need.  Just don't destroy all the progress you've made by starting a binge.

10.  Go easy on yourself!  If you suffer a setback, relax - it happens to everyone.  So you couldn't resist eating that chocolate bar.  Or you had a bad day/week.  Just re-evaluate your goals, remind yourself of why you want/need to lose weight and get healthy, and start again.  Remember that it takes 21 days to start a new habit.  And once you get into that groove of eating well and exercising, you'll find you don't really want to eat that chocolate bar, or miss your workout, because you know what it feels like to be healthy.

Good luck!

No comments:

Post a Comment