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Exercise – If you want to stay healthy and make weight loss permanent you just cant do without exercise. Along with cutting down on the fat you eat exercising regularly may be your best ally in improving your all around health and bringing your weight loss under control.
Chew sugarless gum while you prepare meals. It’ll keep you from tasting (eating) that extra serving’s worth.
Increase your protein intake. Without protein your body cannot build new muscle. Protein also helps to increase your metabolism - which burns calories.
Phone a talkative friend when a food craving strikes. Call from a corded phone outside the kitchen, and stay on until the craving fades.
Go calorie free by switching from regular to diet soda (150 versus 0 calories per can). If you drink one can per day, that's nearly 16 pounds lost in a year.
When you shop for groceries stick to your shopping list. This helps you guard against impulse buying. Make sure you list is complete and do not buy any extra food items.
Be patient - it took years to gain weight; it takes time to lose weight.
Take the scenic route. Park your car as far as possible from the entrance to your office, the shopping mall, or a restaurant and get those legs pumping. Ten minutes of daily moderate paced walking (five minutes each way burns about 20 calories) can take off four-plus pounds a year.
Think weight loss is no fun? Try making it fun by challenging your friends and even putting a little money on it!
Bake, roast, or broil your food instead of frying. Remove all fat from meats and skin from poultry before cooking.
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Myth #6: Eating Breakfast Makes You Hungry All Day
Many typical breakfast foods--Danish, toast and jelly, and bagels for example--are mainly carbohydrates in their simplest form. These foods, while initially satisfying, are out of your system in about 30 minutes, and you need (and want) to eat again. Breakfast foods that have some protein and a little fat, in addition to complex carbohydrates and sugars, stay with you longer and give you the energy you need to make it through the morning.
Myth #5: Don't Eat Between Meals
Most people need to eat every 3 to 4 hours to avoid a feast-or-famine mentality and risk overeating because you're over-hungry. Dividing your calories into three meals and two or three snacks, instead of only three meals, can keep you well fueled for the day.
If your schedule only permits you to eat one major meal in a day, eat it in the morning to midday hours rather than afternoon/evening hours.
Schedule your exercise time just as you plan your other activities of the day. Treat this time as an important appointment you don’t want to miss
Limit your time in the grocery store. The longer you stay, the more you will buy.
Pick one place at home and work that you will do all your eating. Be sure you are seated. Don't eat anywhere but in that place. Enjoy your food by sitting down and eating slowly. Sitting down focuses your attention more directly on the activity of eating. By eating in the same place you identify and associate that place with the idea that it is the only area in which you should eat.
Use mustard on all your sandwiches instead of mayonnaise. Mustard has no fat and very little calories while Mayo, on the other hand, is loaded with fat. If you just don’t like the taste of mustard, find a low-fat alternative, but avoid mayonnaise at all costs.
Myth #7: To Lose Weight, Become a Vegetarian
Being a vegetarian does not ensure that you'll lose weight. Like any way of eating, a vegetarian diet can be high in fat and cholesterol, low in fiber, or both. So, cutting out meat and replacing it with other equally fatty vegetarian foods is not only a bad diet move, but it may also increase your chances for nutritional deficiencies--especially if you don't plan your diet well.
Tape a picture of your chubby self to the refrigerator for motivation. Remind yourself what you don’t want to look like.
Taking the stairs burns six times the calories of taking the elevator. Walking to a colleague's office burns twice as many calories as sending an email. Washing dishes by hand burns four times the calories as loading the dishwasher. Take the opportunity to be more active in the little things you have to do anyway!
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