Most people struggle with weight loss. These 8 simple common-sense tips will help you trim the fat.
Drink more water
Drinking water is one of the cheapest ways to lose weight. If you have some water before a meal, it makes you feel fuller sooner and helps to prevent you from over eating. It’s also the perfect substitute for sugary, high-caffeine drinks. In fact, it’s a way to stay hydrated without the kilojoules.
Drinking water is also a good idea if you struggle with food cravings when you’re bored or emotionally distressed. Adding some lemon, strawberries or mint to a hot or cold glass of water can help satisfy your cravings and prevent you from reaching for something sugary and high in fat.
Limit Your alcohol
Alcohol contains a whopping 7kcal/g – almost double the 4kcal/g that a carbohydrate contains. Alcohol isn’t only high in calories – the body almost always processes it first. This means that when you have alcohol with your meal, almost everything that you eat is stored as fat. Your liver recognises the alcohol, and your body processes the calories from the alcohol first. By the time your meal is ready to be digested, your energy stores may already be full – and these calories get stored as fat.
Five Meals a Day
Eating five smaller mealsa day really can help us lose weight. It helps prevent eating too much at meal timesbecause you won’t feel that hungry. When we have lunch and then don’t eat until dinner, we end up ‘starving’. By the time we do eat again we eat much more than we should. Every time that we eat, our metabolism is kicked into gearand we burn calories faster. Eating regularly helps to stabilise blood sugar levels, which helps keep those cravings under control.
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Exercise and Strength Training
The more muscle we have, the faster our metabolism becomesand the quicker we burn calories. This can be achieved through strength training. Add some weights and do some lunges, squats, sit-up and push-ups in your training.
Be Carb Smart
One of the problems with carbs is that we tend to eat them with tons of fat added. A pizza with cheese, pasta with cream and bacon, a sandwich with chicken mayonnaise or even cookies with chocolate chips. Cutting down on these carbs will lower your intake of fats too, making a big difference around your middle. So, try to make smart carbohydrate choicesby choosing whole grains instead of refined and processed carbs.
Eat Your Breakfast!
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When we skip breakfast, our metabolism slowsand we burn calories more slowly. It is also essential to ‘replace’ the nutrients that have been utilised overnight so that the body functions at its best.
Limit Your Sugar Intake
Limiting sugar can make a tremendous difference. Sugar causes a sudden increase in your blood glucose so you secrete more insulin. When you secrete more insulin, your blood glucose drop again and you start to feel hungry. This is really just a vicious cycle, which makes it much harder for us to lose weight. If you can’t cut down your sugar intake, try using a sugar alternative such as Xylitol.
Get That Beauty Sleep
Leptin and ghrelin are hormones produced in the body. When we don’t get enough sleep, our ghelin levels rise while our leptin levels are driven down. Ghrelin stimulates appetite, so when you don’t sleep enough, you are hungry more often. Leptin tells the brain when you are full. When you don’t sleep, you take longer to feel full and you may eat more.