Steps
- Eat more fresh food! Choose fresh, nutrient-rich, healthy, low-fat foods rather than junk food. Junk food can range from burgers to those cookies that you always bought! Adding a lot of vegetables and fruits to your diet will help you, they keep you feeling full for longer than processed food so you won't even feel the need to eat loads. Also, drinking bouillon, a Haitian soup, made with filtered water will help you feel full.
- Exercise every day! This could be the most difficult step to follow. But what you can do is actually start slowly then steady increase the amount of exercise. For example, today you will walk for 10 minutes, repeat this for the whole week. For the next week, double your workload. You may get leaner that way! The important thing is to get your heart rate up and start, now!
- Feed your temptations once in a while. Go ahead and have that doughnut or slice of pizza, but before you do, drink 8 glasses water and eat a bowl of raw veggies such as cucumbers, celery, carrots, and tomatoes. They will fill you up and you will have very little room to eat the "junk" food.
- Consume things that have no calories. There are two things you eat and drink that contain no calories: water and fiber. The more of these you get into your diet, the better off you will be. For example, you can eat a pound of mixed salad greens with assorted raw vegetables (carrots, red cabbage, celery, broccoli, onion, etc.) with a low or no-calorie salad dressing and only have eaten 100-150 calories. This is because of the high water and fiber content of the salad and low calorie dressing. Also, eat lots of celery. It has only 8 calories, but amazingly, it takes more than 8 calories to digest it. So, you actually BURN calories by eating celery! It's not much, about 2 calories per 8 inch stalk, but it sure doesn't hurt.
- Avoid sodas as much as possible. Instead, drink flavored water or unsweetened iced tea. Caffeine, when placed in a low-calorie beverage like black coffee or unsweetened tea, raises your metabolism and causes you to burn more calories. Too much caffeine has harmful health effects, though, so be reasonable in your consumption if you choose to have caffeine.
- Include foods which burn fat for you. By choosing your foods carefully, you can drop the pounds without going hungry. There are many foods out there that are proven to help you to lose weight, foods such as chilli, green tea, berries and whole grain, can do various things to help you to drop the pounds, by avoiding insulin spikes and keeping your metabolic rate going. Click here to find out how to fit them into your everyday diet.
- Have broth-based soups. They are relatively low in calories. A commercially-available ready to eat "chicken and stars" soup may only have 80 calories for 1 serving, much less than diet "meal shakes" or nutrition bars.
- Practice good eating habits. Always use utensils and sit at the table. This stops you from eating precariously. Eating with your hands will mean that you take in more food in one scoop. Don't forget to eat slowly and stop when you're full. Similar to the above step, if you can't stop, drink up! Maybe your body is thirsty and hungry no more! Also, you can do any other chores (other than eating). For instance, go shopping, or play badminton with your friend, or play games on the computer!
- Drink more water. Often we mistake thirst for hunger which means we eat when it's not necessary. By keeping yourself well hydrated you'll feel hungry less as well as getting a clearer complextion and shinier hair.
- Spread out your diet! Eat more small chunks of meals, rather than 3 big meals. If you eat 100-150 calories or so every two hours, your body stays in a higher-metabolism digesting mode. This allows you to burn more calories than eating just 3 meals a day.
- Record what you eat! This is a simple yet very powerful exercise to open your eyes to see whether you are keeping up with the dieting plan. Often, we tend to overlook those snacking we do between meals and really think that our diet is failing us. But the truth is there can be many petty things that we do that really affect our dieting plan. For example, one might skip breakfast 3 times a week without being conscious about it. Studies have shown that if you eat breakfast, you tend to eat proportionally fewer calories the rest of the day. Without a record, it might seem like you are doing all the right thing, yet fail miserably in your dieting plan.
- Make vegetables a major part of your diet plan! If vegetables are not a major part of your diet, it is time to reconsider. Studies have shown that vegetables can play an important loss in losing weight. This is because vegetables are high in water and fiber and low in energy density.
Tips
- Avoid calorie dense, unhealthy food. Unhealthy food is food which contains calories, but little nutritional value. These calories are called "empty calories." You will probably be best served if you also avoid foods that would contain empty calories if they were not fortified with vitamin C (like some gummy bears) or calcium (like some cookies). Fortification with vitamins doesn't always make unhealthy food healthy.
- Try to do a little bit at a time until you get used to it.
- Get a friend to follow the diet with you. Sometimes, when following a diet by yourself, you'll break the rules because it's just you. But following it with a friend, you have a partner who will help keep you on track and responsible.
- Expect to cheat or binge once in a while. (A word of caution: if you're binging more than once or twice a month, consider a different approach to your weight loss goals.) Don't despair when you realize you've strayed from your goals. It took you a lifetime to achieve your current weight, and it will take time to achieve your new weight and size goal.
- Grab a small snack before heading to restaurants. This will curb off your hunger and keep your head clear while you make healthy choices.
- Opt for chicken or fish instead of red meat, and baked potato or rice instead of fries. Choose foods that are steamed, grilled, broiled or baked instead of fried. Avoid dishes that are labeled as "breaded", "crispy" or "battered" – those are the code words for "fried".
- Ask for dressings and sauces on the side. Even a green salad can pack as many calories as a burger if it’s swimming in a fatty dressing.
- Pack away extra food. At the beginning of the meal, ask for a doggie bag, and put what you aren't going to eat in the bag.
- If the restaurant is known for especially large portion sizes, you can share a portion with a friend.
- Add good fats to your diet. Monounsaturated fats have been clinically proven to help you burn fat, especially in your midsection. So, add foods like avocados, kalamata olives, walnuts, and flaxseed to your diet, and watch the weight fall right off you.
- You might also consider adding "superfoods" to your diet: superfood is a term sometimes used to describe food with high phytonutrient content that some may believe confers health benefits as a result. For example, blueberries are often considered a superfood (or superfruit) because they contain significant amounts of antioxidants, anthocyanins, vitamin C, manganese and dietary fiber. But before doing that, you should definitely read some reviews and do some research. Yes, superfoods are recommended by people like Nicholas Perricone (featured on Oprah and on some PBS TV stations in the USA).
- Eat breakfast, and do not skip meals which could make you become ravenously hungry -- if you don't keep a level of satisfaction.
- A comedic approach towards burning excess fat may be helpful, you could start by reading a fun book about losing weight. Maybe you can laugh while some of those pounds are being fought off.
Warnings
- You have to exercise and eat healthier, otherwise you may not notice any improvement and—even worse—you may gain weight.
- If you need to lose more than 10% of your body weight, consult with your primary-care physician before beginning any weight loss plan.
- Try to limit water consumption to 10 glasses per day. People can drink far more water than necessary while exercising, however, putting them at risk of water intoxication. (Water intoxication is incredibly rare, and easy to avoid by making sure to consume electrolytes
along with the large amounts of water) - Limit the following:
- Soda: the average soda is full of calories, sugar, and other chemicals.
- Too much bread/butter: A slice of bread with butter has around 170 calories (100 calories per medium sliced slice of bread and 70 calories per 10g of butter).
- Large portions: You’ll end up eating much less and save a lot of money as a bonus!
- Dressing: Salad dressing is the main source of calories and other things to avoid in salad, try vinegar or hummus as a low-cal dressing.
