You are ready to be fit and healthy and chisel out a new you. Even though you are highly motivated, you aren’t sure of any healthy way to lose weight fast. You’ve considered crazy diets like restricting calories and diet pills but you’d prefer ways that you can sustain, that are safe and will help your health prosper in the long term. Let’s take a look at three healthy ways to lose weight fast, effectively and safely.
Healthy Way #1: Stay Busy
One of the biggest causes of eating excess calories and putting on excess pounds is eating out of boredom. Maybe you are watching television and nothing on is really grabbing your attention. What do you do, you grab for some snacks to liven things up. Most of what we grab is loaded with calories, sugar and fat but has little in the way of nutrition: cookies, chips, candy bars, etc. Eating when your bored is also known as emotional eating and it is a quick way to gain wait and a horrible “fly in the ointment” when you want to lose excess pounds as quick as possible. If you fall into this trap, then getting out of it will definitely help you lose weight with ease. Here are some ideas to help curb boredom eating:
Find a hobby (Garden, write, cross-stitch, build a model, do some home improvement, learn to play a musical instrument, learn a new language, etc)
Follow a dream (For example, write a book or go back to school)
Go to sleep (The majority of television watching happens at night. Instead of staying up late and snacking, get to bed earlier and get some rest)
Eat smart snacks if you gotta snack (If you simply can’t seem to break the boredom habit all the time, snack on high quality whole foods like nuts, vegetables or a piece of fruit. You’ll get much needed nutrition and much lower calories)
Healthy Way #2: Drop The Sugar
If you poll most people, they would say that eating fattening foods would make them fat. While fat does have more calories per gram (9 versus 4 from carbohydrates or protein), it is really the sugar that does the most damage when it comes to weight gain. Why is this? Sugar is our main source of energy. At each meal, carbohydrates get broken down into simple sugars and the sugar then gets into our bloodstream. Some hormone reactions occur (such as our insulin spikes) if we’ve consumed too much sugar, the liver converts some of the sugar into fatty acids. These fatty acids are then pushed back into the bloodstream and then get deposited and stored as fat. Basically, eating foods that are high in simple sugars (or fast digested carbohydrates) cause our blood sugar to spike quickly and this puts our body in a mode to more readily store fat. Of course we need some sugar to survive, just not in the amounts that most of us eat in today’s “typical” diet. So look for ways to drop sugars. Here are some tips:
1. Drop the sugared sodas (drink water instead)
2. Always think moderation (if you eat cake, consider half a slice)
3. Always think moderation II (eat sugared treats only on one day each week)
4. Instead of a sugary snack, try alternatives (nuts, oatmeal, veggies)
5. Snack on some fruit instead (dump the candy bar, choose the apple)
Healthy Way #3: Journal The Eats
To lose weight quickly and in a healthy way, one of the best ways is to keep a journal of what you eat. It might seem a bit cumbersome at first but it will definitely be an “eye-opening” experience. When it comes to shedding fat, one principle should be held as golden:
To lose weight, you need to have a calorie deficit, meaning you consume less calories that you use/burn each day.
According to the “World Health Organization” (WHO), most Americans are getting obese, not because they don’t exercise but because they eat too much. In reality, we likely over-estimate the number of calories we eat by up to 50%. I first suggest that you journal the foods that you eat over the course of a few days. There website for tracking calories of various foods and activities at fitday.com
It is free and all you do is enter the food and portion and it tracks the number of calories in that food. You can enter all the foods you ate for the days you track. This will be the amount of calories you’ve consumed. The website also has an activity tracker and it will give you an assessment of how many calories you should consume (based on height, weight, gender, age, etc) and what activity level you had that day. For instance, when I enter my specifics, I had:
Calories burned (based on activities for the day) = 3,179
Calories consumed (based on food log) = 2,830
In the above example, I was in a calorie deficit of 349 calories (3,179-2,830). It takes a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose one pound. So in about 10 days, I could lose one pound! When I started logging the foods I ate, though, I was shocked to find that I was eating way more calories than I was burning. I always considered myself a very active guy but the numbers didn’t lie. I was slowly gaining weight. So after some easy adjustments to my diet, I found the online tracker helped me fix my diet problems. Online trackers like “fitday.com” are great because they can help you see where your diet is broken and then you can fix it. What you’ll find is that with some easy tweaks (like dropping sugary drinks), you save a ton of calories and it will be surprisingly easy drop weight or maintain once you are at the weight you want to be.
It really isn’t hard to find healthy ways to lose weight fast. With a little diligence and commitment, you can make shedding the extra fat and weight a reality. Easy lifestyle changes like staying busy so you don’t eat out of boredom or reducing sugar intake will keep excess weight off. In fact, you’ll also improve your health, feel great and look great. I leave you with a list of “foods to avoid” that will help you in your journey to healthy and weight-loss:
Foods to Avoid For Healthy Weight-loss
Processed meats (lunch meats, hot dogs, sausages)
Sugary drinks
Gravy
White flour breads
Fattening sauces/spreads (mayonnaise, dressings, sour cream butter)
Gourmet coffees (no Brownie Frappuccinos)
Cereals high in sugar
Fried foods
Candy
Processed foods (cakes, ice cream, candy bars)
Potato chips
Fast food
Cheese/cheese sauces
Alcohol