Tips for Losing Weight
Identify Bad Habits
Think about what caused you to be overweight in the first place. Is it too many fast food dinners, or ice cream on the couch before bed each night? Be honest with yourself and identify your bad habits. If you are overweight, you also didn’t burn off what you took in. So make sure to include a lack of exercise as one of the habits you may have slumped into.
Decide How Much You Want to Lose and Record Statistics
Think about what your short term and long term weight loss goals are. Write them down. Then take some before photos and measurements. The thighs, hips and waist are good places to start. But you can also measure your upper arms and anywhere that fat has accumulated. Write down your measurements so that you can revisit them later as you watch your progress.
Start Making Healthy Eating Choices Today
This sounds too obvious. But, if you are eating ice cream every night before bed, try to switch it up with something healthy. Try eating some fruit earlier in the evening, or go for a protein snack. When you go grocery shopping, try to not only eliminate bad choices, but replace them with something better. For example, if you eat potato chips, try switching to baked potatoes. Stay away from juices since they are very high in calories and switch to whole fruits instead. Whole fruits as opposed to fruit juices have more fiber that will make you feel fuller sooner. Remember, what you don’t buy, you won’t eat.
Add in Physical Activity
If you take the elevator each day to your high rise office, then start using the stairs. Make deliberate healthy choices throughout your day, everyday and stick to it. Even small changes will make a difference. In addition to small activity changes pick an exercise that you will do daily and stick and commit to doing it everyday. It will be the extra calorie expenditure combined with reduced calories that will get you your weight loss results the quickest. Some ideas for exercising are walking, running, swimming, biking, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, or a fitness video or class. For weight loss, it doesn’t matter so much which activity you choose, just so long as you stick to it.
Record Your Progress
Pick a day of the week to weigh in and record your progress each week. Once you see results it will help you to become more motivated to keep going. Be careful with weighing in daily, as body weight can fluctuate depending on time of day, how much salt you took in, etc. Just because the scale goes up slightly, it doesn’t mean you didn’t lose some fat. Weekly progress recording is better than daily.
In Conclusion
Be honest with yourself and identify what got you in the shape and weight you are at. It may sound depressing to talk about bad habits, but the point is to not stay there. Once you identify bad habits, you can change them for good. Decide how much you want to lose and start making healthy choices today that will put you on the road to success. Don’t forget to take both before and after photos so that you can concretely see how much all of your hard work has paid off. Stay away from fad diets that don’t include a well balanced diet. Those kinds of plans don’t help you to change what you got you overweight in the first place. A lifestyle change will keep your weight off for good.
