Trying to Lose Weight? See Top Things You Should Do (Part 1)

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Jeff Fischer

The key to losing weight is consuming less calories than you burn or increasing the rate at which you burn calories over a given period. To get sustainable results, here are 10 things you can do to reduce your calorie intake, speed up your metabolism and burn more calories every day.

1. Increase your water intake. Water is needed to keep your metabolism rate high and constantly ticking. Metabolism rate tends to reduce as dehydration ad tiredness sets in. Avoid getting thirsty before you drink water. Drinking at least 2 litres of water daily is recommended to aid weight loss. A good tip is also to drink cold water more often as the body has to burn calories in order to heat it up for bodily functions.

2. Increase fibre intake. Eating fibre dense meals such as vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds are a great addition to your weight loss program. Fibre-rich foods are great at aiding speedy digestion, reducing cholesterol in the blood as well as the rate of fat absorption. They also do not contain many calories and helps you feel full quicker and stay full for longer as well.

3. Reduce stress. Rest as much as needed as accumulated stress releases cortisol, a hormone that causes the body to store fat. Ensuring you get an average of 8 hours of sleep every night really helps.

4. Do not skip meals. A lot of people think doing this will make them shed the excess pounds but this is far from the truth. The common 0,0,1 or 0,1,1 eating regimes are the worst things you can do when trying to lose weight as the body metabolism starts to slow down if food intake becomes irregular or the level of calories expected drop significantly. Therefore, if you are skipping meals, you won’t be able to burn fat at optimal level. In fact, the body works to store as much food as possible. Often, dieters also experience a drop in blood sugar when they skip meals. The body then responds by increasing your appetite and cravings for foods as well as fatty and sugary treats.

Eating three small portions of healthy foods daily instead is a great option to kick start your weight loss program.

5. Curb eating out. Meals in restaurants taste great not just because of the chef’s skill but the copious amounts of oil, sugars and other ingredients you probably wouldn’t use at home.

When you do eat out, aim for dry dishes with grilled, toasted, poached or boiled meats. Also, ask for your salads to have the dressing on the side ad ask for half your meal to be packed as takeaway to prevent consuming too many calories.

6. Read food labels. The easiest way to control your calorie intake is to know the amount you consume on a daily basis. Always read the labels of food products you buy at the stores. Learn to avoid products with high levels of saturated fats and high levels of sugars.

Excess calories are immediately converted to fats and go straight to your waists or hips for storage.

In addition, avoid common marketing gimmicks such as when a products says, ‘low fat’ as it may mean it is high in sugar instead and this is equally bad for your waistline and health. A good tip is to avoid foods with a high portion of fat content from saturated fat or those that have high proportion of its carbohydrate content as sugars. Also avoid foods with high salt proportion as they dehydrate, slow down the body’s metabolism and raise blood pressure.

…to be continued.

Photo credit: weightlossxl.com