How to Lose Weight

Steps

1. Set goals. You will be better able to make a realistic weight loss plan if you know how much weight you want to lose.
2. Identify your weaknesses. Are you a bread fiend? Do you have dessert after every meal and every snack? Find the weakness and throttle it. It does not own you, you are stronger and cooler than to allow some silly little craving to knock you off your path. Note from another author: this is a good way to make yourself feel truely deprived and revert. Tips like those are great if you are trying to lose weight to fit into a dress in two weeks, but it is not practical for long-term weight loss. The same is true for the next tip.
3. Throw away anything you know is tempting. Those cinnamon buns with 500 calories each? Gone. The Ramen noodles in your cabinet? Gone. The problem is that this is not always feasible. Often times we are not the only ones in our homes and therefore the call of the food must be withstood. In this case, out of sight truly is out of mind. Put unhealthy, unfilling foods in a drawer or in a cabinet that you rarely use. Put them all together to make a particularly unappetizing sight. Don't place them all in a decorative basket out on the counter. Place them in a drawer. A drawer heaping with pastries rarely looks like anything but a drawer of fat.
4. Eat less, but eat more often. If possible, eat 4-5 meals a day. This helps your metabolism and blood sugar to stay level as well. This does require a change in your schedule. Eat less within 6 hours of your bed time. You're less likely to burn the calories closer to your bed time. It's fine to eat a large breakfast and lunch because your body will be working on burning those calories for the whole day. Large dinners are likely to go unburned and converted into fat.
5. Do not skip breakfast. If you don't have time to prepare breakfast, buy healthy breakfast bars or those smoothies on the go. It is important to eat breakfast to jump start your metabolism and give you energy for the day. Otherwise you will probably end up falling back on unhealthy foods during the day. Yogurt is also known to boost your metabolism.
6. Eat healthy snacks when you feel hungry between meal times. Healthy snacks would be things high in fiber, fruits and vegetables. Avoid high sugar and high calorie snacks. This will help you get nutrients as well as help lower your appetite so you won't overeat during meals.
7. Increase your fiber intake. Fiber acts as negative calories. It's also filling and healthy for your digestive system. Make it a part of every meal.
8. Eat slowly and chew more. Take time to enjoy your meals. This will help you to finish at the same time as others, and you'll not be tempted by a second helping. Also, chewing more will ensure you get the most out of all the food and it will be digested faster. The more you chew, the more your appetite will be satiated.
9. Drink more water every day. Stay hydrated. Eight cups of water each day will help you to feel full. If you're a heavy soda drinker, limit your soda. Note that people drinking diet sodas tend to drink more and feel less satisfied, leading ultimately to a higher calorie intake. Just one extra soda each day can add tons of calories. water will clear out your system, and make you feel better, it is even clinicly proven to even clear up your skin!
10. Increase physical activity. There are two ways to reduce net caloric intake: 1) reduce the number of calories in your diet and 2) Increase the number of calories that you burn in your daily activities. Both approaches are usually necessary and healthful and both are effective in losing weight. You can pick and choose which exercise you want to do, depending on your fitness level and drive. For example: walking, jogging, using the stair stepper, using cross training machines, swimming, tennis, and basketball. Weight training (and resistance training) can help reshape your body. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be. Getting more exercise can be fun! try something that you love to do (ex. Horse-back riding, or even playing with your dog!)
11. Find active friends. Find people that will drag you out to do more active things. It doesn't have to be much, but any exercise, even walking around the mall, is better than none.
12. Don't get discouraged. After one or two weeks of initial weight loss, it is quite common for your metabolism to slow down as it adjusts to the new calorie count. Stay on course and you'll see results. In some cases, the scale will tell you your weight is barely changing, but you may be gaining muscle weight while losing fat weight. Also make sure to weigh yourself first thing in the morning to try to avoid the fluctuations in weight due to water.
13. Take some advice! Everyone is going to have some tidbit of information for you. What worked for them might not work for you. Take it all in stride and work with what is getting results for you. Trying to do everything everyone says will only cause overload.
14. Eat small meals alot throughout the day. Even some rice snacks for snack would be good. When you have a break,eat some carrot sticks, or other vegatables. Try to cut down on the ranch though, it has lots of calories and fat even though it may make the vegatables taste good.

 Tips

• Know that weight loss will come as a result of creating a calorie deficit, i.e., spending more calories than you eat. However, too large a deficit will slow down your metabolism and be unhealthy. Determine how many calories you are burning using tools available on the internet, then each day eat 500-1000 calories less than you are burning daily. Do not eat less than 1200 calories if you are female, or 1500 calories if you are male, as these calories are needed for basic life-sustaining bodily functions. If this formula is adhered to correctly, you will lose weight.
• Let your conscience be your guide. Keep a log of everything that you eat. Buy a daily planner and write in it everything that you eat every day. This will keep you mindful of what is going into your body. Do you really want to log in 6 cookies or one half of a cookie?
• Don't go on one of those "fad" diets. Losing too much weight too quickly can lead to health problems. All the weight lost from most fad diets will return soon after you transition off of them.
• Allow yourself to cheat depending on your will power. If you don't have the will power, allow yourself the treats like dessert and a little ice cream (but it's better to go with frozen yogurt). Many people when they try to avoid comfort foods altogether, find themselves binging on those very foods. If you have a very strong will, you will not need to cheat at all. If you have a very fragile will, you'll likely cheat often. Just make sure as you progress, the "cheating" becomes less and less.
• Leave left overs when dining out. If you find yourself overeating at restaurants, train yourself to always leave half of the food on your plate. Bring it home for later. Don't feel compelled to eat it all in one sitting since it's usually way too much food for one meal. Or just box it.
• Only eat when you feel hungry. That way you rely on your body to regulate itself to a healthy natural weight. You must be very honest with yourself!
• You will never lose weight and keep it off unless you manage to incorporate these tips permanently. Applying these tips for a short time is useless in the long term. Realize that this is for the long term. Take as much time as you need easing yourself into it.
• Once you have a routine, it's easy to maintain. For example, start exercising once a week NEVER missing a single session. Once that becomes routine, it should be easy to sneak in another day of exercise and slowly have that become routine too If you have unhealthy snacks you're likely to munch on them. Get rid of that temptation. A lot of people will just grab something and munch on it without even realizing what they're doing.
• Keep in mind that a 3500 calorie deficit will result in the loss of one pound. You can use this figure to decide how many calories to cut back each day to result in the weight loss you want to achieve in a certain period of time.
• If you are engaging in an activity that you usually snack during, find something to do with your hands instead of eating. Take up knitting, learn to sew, write those thank-you cards, anything to keep you from munching mindlessly while you watch TV, etc.
• Take a multivitamin. The more good things you put into your body, the more small steps you take to filling yourself with nutrients the better you will feel and look.
• Do not eat in front of the television, most people eat more when sitting in front of the TV.
• Avoid gorging yourself. If you are at a friend or relatives house, they will not be offended if you do not eat it all.
• Salads are a perfect meal, and you can add little bits of toppings to give you some comfort food, but it mostly consists of good lettuce. Avoid butter lettuce. You can add small chunks of chicken, lite salad dressing, a small bit of cheese, etc. Just make sure you keep the fatty toppings, like cheese, to a bare minimum.
• Your meals should decrease in size as the day goes on. Eat a big breakfast, a somewhat smaller lunch, and a small dinner. This usually coordinates to help you burn off what youre eating. If you work at midnight, then this is not true for you. But if you rise early and sleep normally, then this is how to go.
• When you don't eat for a while, your body goes into something called 'starvation mode'. Even though our bodies have changed since the stone age where food was scarce, we still hang on to that. Starvation mode is when you don't eat for a certain amount of time, and your body begins to feed off of its fat stores to put off starvation. This WILL cause a weight gain. This is why breakfast is important. It lets your body know its not starving. So this is why you should eat 4-5 times a day.
• Remember- Protein and carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram, while fats of all kinds contain 9 calories per gram.
• You need an even amount of fat, sugar, and oxygen in your fat cells to burn fat. Exercise all the muscles at once, dont exercise just one area! Differ good calories from bad calories. low calorie diets DONT WORK! They actually havent made a diet pill yet that burns fat! most diet pills make you lose all your water weight not fat! exercise a little and changing your diet together can make a BIG difference!
• Avoid smoking pot. It makes you hungry.

 

Warnings

• Lose weight safely. When losing weight you have to pace yourself or risk damaging your health. Losing more than two pounds per week is likely to adversely affect your body and you will probably just experience a yoyo effect.
• Ask your doctor for advice. They can give you dietary advice as well as discuss any physical problems you may or may not have while exercising. If you're planning to take weight loss very seriously, ask your doctor if there will be any complications.
• Some medications cause weight gain and make it very hard to lose weight. This is not an excuse to live an unhealthy lifestyle. Even if you will never be able to lose the weight your medication put on, you will still be better off to get more active and eat better. And you might be surprised at your results.
• Most work out devices will essentially do what any "free" exercise can do. The only difference is you pay hundreds of dollars.
• Even a healthy meal can be turned unhealthy with chips or fries and a drink. Just ask for water.
• Absolutely under no circumstances should you just stop eating. This can (and eventually will) cause many health problems and may even put you in the hospital. Not only that, but if your body goes without food for too long it will go into "starvation mode" in which it stores fat more readily because your metabolism slows down.