How To Lose Weight Without Misery

Keep the sugar to a minimum. Does this mean you cannot enjoy a piece of your mom’s famous cherry pie or a slice of your 30th birthday cake? No way! A healthy well-balanced diet includes the occasional sweet treat, but on a day-to-day basis you want to keep your sugar intake low. This includes refined carbohydrates, like baked goods and processed foods—also known as foods you find in a box. Refined carbs turn into sugar in your body, increasing your blood sugar and promoting insulin resistance, which makes your body hold onto fat. Instead of eating junk food to treat your daily sweet tooth, go for fresh fruit, and you will whittle away at your waistline as well as give yourself a daily dose of all-natural vitamins.

Incorporate healthy fats into your diet. Finally, there’s something you can ADD to your diet instead of taking away! Healthy fats as found in nuts, olive oil, and coconut oil help your brain and body to perform well. These fats also keep you satiated, so you aren’t starving and craving junk foods or lots of snacks. Study after study has shown that no-fat and extremely low-fat diets do not work well for most people. Instead, a balanced diet with a smattering of healthy fats each day will actually help the body fat to decrease.

Journal your food intake. It is really difficult to know how much food you are consuming unless you write it down. Whether you choose to use an online food journal or a good ol’ notebook and pen, keeping track of every bit of food you put into your mouth helps you to get real about your caloric intake. By looking back at a week’s worth of meals you will see where your weak moments are and better know how to prepare for times of mindless eating or overeating. Diet experts differ on diet plans, but nearly all agree that journaling works and is a truly simple weight loss idea!

Eat until you are not hungry, no more and no less. While some dieters try to starve themselves, other would-be dieters can’t get their portion sizes under control. The key to the right portion size is to eat until you are no longer hungry. The other part to this technique is to slow down when eating, so your level of fullness has time to send the message to your brain. When you realize you are no longer hungry, you simply put down the fork and push the plate away. If you reach the point of being overly full, even slightly, you have eaten too much. Just as starvation diets are ineffective, when it comes to how to lose weight, overeating is major sabotage to the best dieting efforts.

Oh yes, you know this one: Exercise! Some people just can’t get into the exercise thing. They want to lose weight by diet alone. Is it possible to lose weight without exercise? Yes, it is, but it so much easier with exercise. You can get away with eating more when you exercise. Plus, your body is healthier and you will physically feel better when you get regular exercise. The good news: your exercise does not have to be killing yourself at the gym daily. Rather, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, playing kickball outside with your kids, and raking your leaves (and your neighbor’s) are all great forms of exercise. Try to work in some activity every day and your weight loss efforts will reap the rewards.