10 Easy Weight loss Tips

When looking for easy weight loss tips it’s not always easy to find a simple list of tips that can make a big difference. That is what this article is about.

So here are my 10 Easy weight loss tips:

1. Always eat breakfast!: Eating breakfast kick starts your metabolism which has slowed down overnight. It also prevents your blood sugar levels from dropping and causing cravings for high energy, high sugar content foods like candy, doughnuts etc. While you may think that skipping breakfast will reduce your daily calorie intake, the opposite is actually true. Skipping breakfast leads to being over hungry later which leads to increased calorie intake. From personal experience, if I eat breakfast within an hour of waking my daily calorie intake is around 200 calories less than when I skip breakfast.
2. Reduce your plate size: Did you know that in the last 20 years plate sizes have increased from 8″ (20cm) to 10″ (25cm) and scientists believe this has contributed to overeating and obesity. It’s purely psychological, but we ‘eat with our eyes’ and if our serving LOOKS bigger (i.e. the plate is fuller) it makes our brain think we should feel more satisfied after eating it. Weird but true!
3. Eat several small meals per day: Instead of just eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, add some between meal snacks like morning tea, afternoon tea and supper. Reduce your portion sizes for lunch and dinner slightly. Snacks should consist of something light like a 3 oz can of tuna or salmon, a piece of fruit, a handful of sultanas or nuts or a couple of water crackers with light cream cheese or tzatziki dip. Try to keep snacks under 100 calories. Eating regularly like this keeps your metabolism buzzing along at peak rates as your body tries to digest the food (and digestion itself burns calories). The longer you go without food the slower your metabolism becomes. Try to avoid heavy meals for dinner and avoid eating in the last two hours before bed.
4. Skip the butter or margarine on your sandwich: Did you know that skipping butter/margarine on sandwiches reduces your calorie intake by 70 calories? (Based on the average of one teaspoon of butter per slice). If you don’t like dry bread, try spreading some low fat ricotta cheese or other light cream cheese on the bread before adding fillings, this adds around 16 calories compared to 70 with butter.
5. Increase protein intake: Protein is one of the main food components that satisfy appetite (the second being fiber), it’s also much harder to digest than carbohydrates which means the digestion process burns more calories. Protein comes from red meat, fish, poultry (including eggs), legumes like lentils, edamame (soy beans) and mushrooms. Try to avoid mass produced sausages as they contain around 40% fat content. Make sure you trim excess fat from your meat. Another great way to boost protein intake is to have a smoothie and add an egg, or an egg white if you want to avoid the fat content of the yolk.
6. Increase fiber intake: Fiber satisfies appetite by slowing digestion, this makes food stay in the stomach for longer thus avoiding the empty feeling. Your body is incapable of digesting fiber so it exits the body in much the same form as it entered. Fiber also absorbs water and maintains regular bowel movements. Increase fiber intake by eating high fiber cereal, brown or multigrain bread, wholemeal pasta or fiber supplements. Check out this post titled Best fiber supplement for weight loss to discover how to make your own fiber supplement for less than half the price of commercial brands.
7. Decrease carbohydrate consumption: Carbohydrates supply the vast majority of our energy requirements because they are the most easily converted to energy. However, many of us consume far too much carbohydrate which leads to fat storage. Reducing consumption of potatoes, pasta, rice and baked products made with white flour at meal times by about half will assist with weight loss. Check out this video about Shirataki noodles for an alternative to pasta made from 100% soluble fiber that contains NO carbohydrates and NO calories.
8. Reduce sugar intake: Did you know that every time you add two level teaspoons of sugar to a cup of coffee or tea you’re adding at least 30 calories to your daily intake? Cut back consumption of sweet baked products, candy and sweet snacks. Use artificial sweeteners if you like, though these tend to confuse the body and lead to fluid retention. Another alternative is Stevia, it’s around 250 times sweeter than regular table sugar. A small pinch is enough to sweeten your coffee or tea and contains about 2% of the calories. It’s a little harder to get but is available at most health foods stores and also on Ebay. You may look at the price and think it’s expensive but when you take into consideration that 1 oz of Stevia is equivalent to almost 16 lbs of regular sugar you will realize that the prices are comparable if not cheaper. Don’t purchase stevia leaf powder, you want the extract which is a white powder and look for 90% stevioside concentration or higher.
9. Watch what you are drinking: If you are a fan of soda like coca cola etc you need to take the calorie content of those drinks into account. Did you know that a can of non diet soda contains around 160 calories? That means that if you drink four cans of soda per day you are adding around 640 calories to your daily intake, that is almost one third of the average daily energy requirement and they’re empty calories at that, they do nothing to satisfy hunger. If you must drink soda, at least drink diet soda!
10. Get active: No, that is not a suggestion to run out and spend a fortune on a gym membership or personal trainer. The expense is not required. Simply taking a 30 minute leisurely walk per day is sufficient exercise. Take the dog for a walk. Walk to the store for bread and milk instead of driving. Take the stairs instead of the lift at the office. Walk to the park for lunch instead of eating in the lunch room. Get outside and jump rope, skipping burns up to 1200 calories per hour depending on your weight (average male weight of 180lbs burns 1018 and average female weight of 155lbs burns 880). If you have a Nintendo Wii, have some fun with the Wii sportz or Wii Fit packages. Like dancing? Get a Zumba package! There are lots of ways to get active in fun ways without huge expense or time commitments.

So how much effect can this have in ONE DAY? Take a look at these figures:

Eat breakfast	-100 calories (conservative)
Replace sugar in 1 cup of coffee or tea	– 30 calories
Drink one less can of soda	-160 calories
Don’t use butter/margarine on sandwich	– 70 calories
Skip for 10 minutes per day	-158 calories (based on 167lb weight)
TOTAL	518 calories per day

That’s an average of 3626 calories per week. Scientists have calculated that it requires 3,500 excess calories to create one pound of fat so these simple measures could cause weight loss of over a pound per week. And that is just the quantifiable tips. It should be noted that each individuals results will vary since we each have a unique metabolism. These figures are only intended as a guide.

So there you have it, my 10 easy weight loss tips… can’t get easier than that can you?