5 Tips for Effective Weight Loss

If you are trying to lose weight, here are five weight loss tips that will help you get on the right track – and just as important -stay there.

1) Get enough sleep every night

A lot of people seem to think that sleep is just for babies and kids. As an adult, it is just as important to get the proper amount of sleep every night. I know life can be busy – trust me, I do! It’s important to make sleep a priority, since it allows you to get the energy you need for exercise. When you are sleeping, your body naturally creates a hormone that regulates your appetite for the next day. This means that if you have enough rest each night, you are less likely to crave and munch on unhealthy snacks.

Did you know? With the right type of exercise, such as Interval Training, you actually end up burning the most calories from fat when you are at a resting state, such as when you are sleeping. If that doesn’t convince you to get enough shut-eye, I don’t know what will!

Getting enough sleep each night is the first step to successful weight loss.

2) Replace all – or most – of your drinks with Water 

Liquids are one of the easiest and fastest ways to down calories, and before you know it, you have over done it. It may not be easy at first, but if you are serious about your weight loss, you should swap the soda, coffee, alcohol, and sugary juices with water. Easier said than done, I know. What I also know is this: The healthy benefits of ditching the other drinks for more water is worth it.

If you are looking for more flavor than water, you can try herbal tea that has no caffeine in it. This is a great way to enjoy flavor, benefit from the healthy herbs, without any unnecessary calories. Herbal teas tend to be zero calories.

3) Make exercise a part of your regular routine

Exercising needs to be a part of your life. Something that you just “do” rather than continually think about doing. Doing and thinking about doing are two very different things!

If you make exercise a habit, or in other words, a part of your life, you will eventually lose the weight and keep it off. A big reason why people who lose weight and gain it all back  is because they stop doing the healthy habits that got them there in the first place.

You shouldn’t wake up every morning asking yourself whether you should workout or not. Get in the mind set that exercise is just something you do every day (or on a regular basis), and it’s not a choice. Come up with an exercise schedule and stick to it, even after you have reached your weight loss goals. You may be able to turn the workout intensity down a notch or two, but exercise shouldn’t be completely eliminated once you are done losing weight.

Exercise should be enjoyable for you. If you hate running, you should consider swimming instead. If you like to dance, sign up at a dance studio and shake those hips! If you are hating the exercise you are doing, you need to find a new exercise that will be more enjoyable. Exercise may not be easy, but you shouldn’t hate it.

4) Fuel your body with healthy food

First of all, if you want to lose weight, you must eat. Don’t skip meals, and don’t starve yourself. That’s not the answer if you are trying to effectively lose weight and remain healthy. In fact, if you skip meals, your body tends to hold on to it’s fat reserves,where it will be almost impossible to lose your excess fat.

Here are some tips to eat healthy, and start losing weight:

Eat fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the day. This is your new snack food, so ditch the Fiber One bars and start eating real food!

Eat healthy protein sources such as beans, fish, chicken, and raw nuts.

Start eating healthy carbohydrates, since this is a major source of fuel that your body with use for energy during your workouts. You can ditch the refined and processed breads, such as white bread, since it actually makes you gain fat – especially in the stomach area.

Stop baking or eating foods that contain processed sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners. These types 0f processed sugars turns into fat and usually lands in the stomach area, just like processed breads.  I know that this one if a major change for most people – myself included – but I believe the healthy benefits are well worth the effort to eat healthier. If it helps, remember that processed sugars turns into fat that ends up around the abdominals, which doesn’t help with your goal of flat abs, does it?

In addition to eating healthy food, find out how many calories you need every day, and how many you should eat for weight loss. If your body burns more calories than you consume in a single day, you will lose weight. If you aren’t eating enough calories though, you end up going into “starvation mode” and stop losing weight. It’s all about finding the right balance.

5) Don’t go on a “Diet”

There are more overweight and obese individuals now than ever before. Are we lacking in diets? There are thousands of diets out there for you to choose from! The reason why diets don’t work is because most people are looking at diets as a “get thin quick” scheme, and it just doesn’t work that way.

If you are looking to lose weight and actually keep it off, ditch the “diet” and adopt a healthy lifestyle that you will continue, even after you are done with your weight loss journey.

More than 5

You can definitely lose weight with more than just these five weight loss tips, but I thought I would narrow the list down to these very important five items. You have to start somewhere, right?

Some of these tips may have been a “duh” moment for you. I’ll let you in on a little secret. There is no secret to weight loss. Yes, there are certainly some strategies that are more effective than others, but for the most part, you know what you need to do to be healthier and lose weight, if needed.

Now that this was a nice little reminder on how to lose weight (or just be healthier!), it’s time you do something about it. Knowledge is useless without action.

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