Maybe you need to lose weight so your clothes will fit or you just want to feel better about yourself. You know what it’s like, you promise yourself this coming Monday that it is going to be different this time, and by just a few days into the new week you are back to your old habits.
Here are five practical ways you can lose weight this month, that are easy peasy to integrate into your life and won’t feel like you are on a crazy fad diet that always fails in the long term.
1. Reduce stress
Anxiety and tension can wreak havoc on the body and mind. Not only that, many people deal with stress by eating high fat and high sugar foods, and this will pack on the pounds. You can lower your need to eat those foods, by lowering stress levels if you exercise regularly, and a yoga class is a super great place to start.
Yoga teaches us how to relax the body and mind and also shows us the value of meditation. Even if you don’t try yoga, it only takes a few minutes in the morning and evening to meditate, nowadays there are apps that can help you do this using your mobile device. Develop the habit of quieting the mind, being less frazzled and you may be reaching for snack foods less often.
2. Eat more soup
Soup is an important weapon in your fight against weight gain. Soup gives you a large serving and this can be very filling. Soups have fewer calories on average than most foods, so you get more satisfaction for less.
Soup is eaten slowly one spoon at a time and this is very good for you. Many people eat too fast and when you eat fast there is no time to enjoy your meal or for your brain to realize the stomach is already full. It takes the brain approximately 20 minutes to know your stomach is full, so by eating soup it helps you reach this point easier if you don’t gulp it down. For best results, choose soups with a lot of liquid and vegetables only. Ensure also that the soup you choose isn’t made with cream and you don’t add to calories by adding bread that you don’t need.
3. Cut Portions
Use a smaller plate for your meals. Plates are a bit like women’s handbags, the larger the bag, the more you will fill it with ‘stuff’. Plates it seems, suffer from the same abundance choice in our hands, the more space available the more food we will put on it. More food equals more fat on your butt, right? If you have to, put away the large plates and let everyone use smaller ones.
You trick your body into thinking you have had enough to eat when you use smaller plates, and the reasoning is simple. Your eyes see a plate that is full. That tells your stomach you have a sufficient portion of food.
4. Change your beverage habits
Why take in a lot of empty calories when you don’t have to? Drinking coffee and tea becomes a major culprit in the war against calorie consumption that you don’t need. Neither the tea nor coffee themselves are the issue, it’s how much sugar we add that becomes the weighty problem. You can drink tea without sugar, but if you prefer your hot beverages sweet, an excellent sugar alternative is xylitol. 100% natural xylitol which is derived from birch trees and corn cobs has no horrible after taste like artificial sweeteners, it tastes sweet like sugar and does not have all those calories that you don’t need. That way you are not missing your sweet tea or coffee and this makes weight loss easier when you do not feel deprived. Perfect Sweet™ xylitol is Australia’s #1 brand and can be bought in health food stores or online here.
5. More fruit and less juice
Eat oranges but stay away from orange juice. Fruit juices, because of the juicing process, have a lot more concentrated natural sugar than whole fruits. Also, whole fruit is more filling because it contains bulk via fibre in the fruit. You also receive more nutrients when you choose fresh fruits over fruit juices. In short, you will take in far fewer calories if you eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juice.