If you're bored with hearing the same old advice on how to lose weight - eat less, exercise more - here are 5 very different tips that really do work.
1. Eat more
Under-eating stimulates an army of fat-storing mechanisms that have evolved to help us survive in times of famine. If we skip meals, fast, crash diet or under-eat in any way, we actually stimulate the body to release hormones that slow the metabolism and increase our cravings for high calorie foods, ultimately leading to binge eating and rebound weight gain. Regular, repetitive eating of well portioned meals does the exact opposite by stimulating our metabolism, suppressing our appetite and convincing our body it's safe to burn off its fat stores. Eat more, binge less, lose weight.
2. Exercise less
There's one simple truth when it comes to exercise for weight loss- you just need to be warm and slightly out of breath. You don't need to kill yourself, you don't need to be in pain, and you don't need to do 60 minutes every day. Keep it realistic and sustainable. Try 10 minutes of brisk walking a day, then build up by 2 minutes each week until you're up to 20 minutes. It's simple, 20 minutes of exercise a day for life is better than 60 minutes every day for one week, feeling burnt out, giving up and never doing it again! Treat your workouts like vitamin pills - for best results take one a day.
3. Progress not perfection
Eating regular meals and exercising daily is challenging, especially if you lead a hectic lifestyle. Put your perfectionism to one side and accept that your nutrition will never be perfect and you won't always get a chance to exercise. The key is 'progress not perfection', not giving up just because you skipped one workout or had one blowout. As long as you're eating more regularly and exercising more than usual, the odd bad day isn't going to be a problem. Enjoy it, never feel guilty for slipping off it, but get straight back to the plan the following day... not the following Monday!
4. Weigh yourself less
Fact - obsessively weighing yourself increases your calorie intake. Here's how... You step on the scales on Monday and see your weight is up. Your response, "this isn't working... I might as well eat chocolate!" You step on the scales on Tuesday and see your weight is down. Your response "wow, this is really working... I might as well eat chocolate!" In short, whether your weight goes up or down, a direct result of weighing yourself too often is eating more junk, which slows down your weight loss! Just weigh yourself once a week and be prepared to see lots of fluctuations, they're perfectly natural.
5. Be an expert at failure
Whether you're looking to lose 10 stone or 10 pounds, it's inevitably going to go wrong along the way. Illness, injury, holidays, birthdays, social events, stress at work - there are 101 events that are going to throw you off track during your weight loss plan. The winners in the weight loss game learn how to get back on track after falling off it. The losers see a few pounds on after a bad weekend and then give up at the first hurdle. Accepting that it will go wrong, preparing for failure and planning how to get back on it is the key to long term weight loss success.
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