How to lose weight
You are reading this because you have just made the brave and scary decision to lose some pounds. You are doing it for health reasons and self-confidence – both may be achieved by shredding excess weight.
However, losing weight is not instant as if you are wishing on a magic lamp. Today, we live in a society where we expect quick results, such as fast food that is readily available in five minutes. However, breaking down ten pounds will never fit into that category.
Before starting up a weight loss plan, you have to mentally prepare yourself for the challenges you are about to face. Always remember that ten pounds will not disappear magically, nor will it happen overnight. Give yourself time to adjust and prepare for the new you, particularly if you have a history of failing weight loss plans in the past.
First, carefully examine your eating habits. As an example, are you eating more when you are with your officemates than when you were alone? On the other hand, perhaps you and your spouse have a lifestyle that involves drinking chocolate every morning. Or perhaps you end up eating all the foods you baked for a school sale.
Next, based on your existing eating routines, decide on what specific changes you can make. You may want to stop baking for school sales and find other tasks that do not involve food during school fundraisers. You may want to change your habit of drinking cocoa every morning and drink green tea instead. This may even bring great health benefits. In addition, if eating with your colleagues puts some pressure on you to stuff yourself with luscious goodies, you can always try leaving politely before dessert, or maybe just sample small amounts of each dish to avoid offending the host.
With these ideas for your new eating habits, you can now create a day-to-day meal plan. Continue the routine as long as you can, even if you are going to dine in a bistro with your colleagues. Try to do your best to stay within your limitations and control your eating desires. Soon you will be successful in taking full control of your eating habits.
You should pay attention to your exercise routines. This will also help you to lose those excess ten pounds. You may have been extremely active before, but now spend most of your time sitting in the office or at home.
Decide on your exercise goals. Begin by determining the amount of time you can allot for the exercise. “I will exercise for an hour a day” is good enough, if you do not have any other commitments. However, if you are always busy or just too lazy to do an exercise, you may want to make a more realistic goal like “I will exercise for half an hour a day.”
To be able to lose ten pounds, you can divide the time allotted for the exercise into different parts. If you have a lot of free time during weekends, your exercise goal could be exercising thirty minutes during office days, and an hour on weekends.
Exercising really does matters. Suppose that you are an early riser and have some free time before taking your children to school and going to work. Then you could try adding exercise to your morning routine. On the other hand, if you barely get out of bed and often arrive late to the office, you may want to try an evening exercise routine. This is only if you have time after work.
The next thing to consider is what type of exercise you are going to do. Since most of us dread that word, setting your mind to view exercise as having fun or playing around and not as a burden will help you enjoy the process. You may prefer rollerblading or joining a bicycle club. Just remember to try to seek the exercise that you truly enjoy.
After listing all the exercises that you may want to try, the next thing to do is make the right schedule. Create a schedule or a daily planner and jot down all the specific fields you need to know. Your planner may include types of exercises, starting times, and length of exercise. For instance, on May 30, 9 a.m., you may write, “Ride bicycle for 30 minutes.” As you have written, this type of schedule prevents you from saying the words, “I do not have time to exercise.”
You will probably observe that following the routine of your exercises and eating lifestyles do make losing ten pounds more convenient. However, the process can only help you lose weight, if you commit yourself to doing it. Use determination to do this and you definitely realize the loss of that ten pounds.
Does the following sound familiar?
You have been desperately trying to lose weight and yet you have failed. You have even tried various kinds of diets, but with no results and you are now discouraged.
Let’s face it, not all diet programs are as effective as they claim to be. In addition, they may actually work for the duration of the program, but once you have stopped the program, you will notice a sudden increase in your weight again.
No matter what diet you try – low fat diets such as Atkins, or cabbage soup diets such as Master Cleanser, they may result in one of the following:
- You lose a little weight – along with your sanity as you become bored with the unbearable food of the diet plan.
- You do not lose weight because you just cannot stick to that kind of diet.
In either case, you will just feel bad – discouraged. However, you should never give up. Losing weight is not a hard thing to do. In fact, there are five simple yet effective ways you can follow to lose at least five to ten pounds of weight in a week.
- Cut your carbohydrate intake. Lessen your daily consumptions of carbohydrates, particularly white carbs — from white bread or potatoes; and instead eat foods that have high amounts of protein. These foods may include fish and chicken. This is a great way to lose a few pounds. However, you should not remove carbohydrates from your diet completely. You should still eat fibrous carbs such as spinach, berries and apples.
- Remove processed foods from your everyday diet. Instead, eat more vegetables, fruits and whole grains. People who once ate junk foods but have changed the habit have discovered that they can actually consume more fruits, whole grains and vegetables without gaining any weight.
- Lessen sugar intake. Check your consumption of soda and juice because these beverages contain a great deal of much sugar. Lessen the use of sugar in your coffee, and also watch out for low-fat drinks, because fat is commonly replaced with sugar to restore the missing flavor.
- Drink a lot of water. Water can fill your stomach, which will naturally reduce your appetite. Drink at least eight glasses of water every day, and you will notice a daily decrease in your weight. On the other hand, not drinking the right amount of water may cause your body to store fat. To know the right amount of water for you, just multiply you body weight by 0.66. The result will be the number of ounces of water you need daily.
- Exercise more often. This is the healthiest way to lose weight. You can try increasing the load of your exercise daily, and soon enough you will notice your weight decreasing. Just try to remember not to increase your food intake as your exercise load increases. Moreover, excessive sweating from cardiovascular activities such as walking and running can help remove excess fat from the body. Remember, though, if you have not been doing any exercise for a while, be sure to check with your doctor before starting a program.
Remember the key to any weight loss goal is consistency and determination.
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