Ten Simple Ways to Lose Weight and Keep It Off
Ten simple methods that I learned to help keep my weight under control
Losing weight is one thing, the hard thing is keeping it off. These are ten ways that helped me not only lose weight, but keep it off.
Cutting out sauces
One of the simplest ways that helped me not only lose weight, but keep it off, was cutting out sauces. Literally, it’s amazing how avoiding eating foods with sauces on them, or just eating food without the sauces on, can greatly help you not only lose weight but keep it off.
So, whether that be avoiding putting mayonnaise in a sandwich or even worse on a salad, avoiding using tomato sauce or HP sauce. Not using gravy — blasphemy I know. Cutting out sauces from your diet can be a great and simple way to improve it.
Don’t fill your shelves with snack foods
Everybody thinks that they have the mental capacity and discipline to be able to have a cupboard full of snacks and not eat them.
Everybody is wrong. Instinctually speaking, we are not designed to be able to resist temptation. So, if the temptation is there, we will frequently give into it because that is what we are genetically programmed to do.
That’s why one of the best ways to improve your diet, and lose weight and keep it off, is to stop stocking your shelves with snack foods. Instead, only purchase snacks at weekends for a treat and only enough for that one weekend. Meaning through the week, your shelves have zero snacks in them meaning there is no temptation there to tempt you.
Walk more
This is a simple one, but it is so easy to forget. If you have access to a car, even short distances when it comes to saving time, taking the car can seem the smarter option.
It’s not. Because it makes you less healthy, and if you are less healthy, in the long run, it costs you time — the less healthy you are, the less able you are, and the shorter your lifespan. That’s why walking places — if you can — is a much smarter option. And the added benefit is: walking is greener.
Delete all unhealthy takeaway numbers and apps from your phonebook
If you have the numbers of takeaway restaurants et cetera all saved on your phone, then you are more likely to eat takeaway food. By deleting these numbers and making it more challenging to order takeaway food, at least of the unhealthy kind, you lower the chances that you will do so.
That’s why deleting all the numbers of local takeaways of the unhealthy kind from your phonebook can be a great way to help you lose weight and keep it off.
Don’t eat so fast
The faster the rate at which you eat food, the more you end up eating before you feel full. The slower the rate you eat food, the faster the rate at which you end up feeling full. Why this is, I have no idea, but it is a well-known fact that the speed at which you eat affects how much you need to eat before you feel full.
Eat faster, and you will eat more before you feel full, eat slower, and you will eat less. So, a great way to lose weight and keep it off is to eat slower because doing so helps you eat less.
Avoid the snack journey trap
Often, if we frequently pass fast-food places, snack shops, things like that, we will frequently stop at those places and purchase food from them. That’s why going a different way to places, a way which avoids passing so many easy access fast-food places and snack shops can be a great way to lose weight and keep it off.
If we have less temptation to stop at fast-food places and snack shops, we will by default stop visiting them as often. If you visit them less, we will eat less junk food and snacks.
Avoid the snacks on offer at the counter trap
How many times have you reached the sales counter of a store, and seen snacks on offer? It’s a well-documented sales tactic that if you put snacks on the counter, and put them up for sale on offer, for example, buy one get one free, or twenty percent off or whatever, that people are more likely to buy them.
Acknowledging this sales tactic, and doing your best not to succumb to it, is a great way to help lose weight and keep it off. Because again, if you buy less junk food you will eat less junk food.
Find a form of exercise that you actually enjoy
If you don’t enjoy the gym, you sure as hell are never going to keep up going to the gym. If you don’t enjoy fitness classes, you sure as hell are not going to keep up going to them. One of the key ways to lose weight and keep it off is finding a form of exercise that you actually enjoy.
That could be going to the gym, that could be classes, or it could be going for walks to nice places, or it could even be taking up a dancing class, going to a climbing wall, taking up martial arts. It could be anything. All that matters is that you find something that you enjoy, the reason being obvious: if you enjoy something you are far more likely to do it than if you don’t.
That’s why experimenting with different forms of exercise is a great way to lose weight and keep it off, because it increases your chances of finding something that you actually enjoy doing.
Download a timer app onto your computer
If you work on a computer all day, it’s amazing how if you download a simple app that tells you to exercise once every forty-five minutes to an hour — just basic stuff, stand up and walk around, stretch a little bit — how much of a difference it can make in helping you to lose weight and keep it off.
When you sit still for hours on end, which many of us who work at a desk all day do, your metabolism never speeds up. Simply setting a reminder on your computer that flashes up every forty-five minutes to an hour, reminding you to actually move, can change that so long as you actually get up when it tells you to and have a little move about.
Meaning downloading a simple free-to-use app onto your computer that flashes every hour — and there are many available, for example, WorkRave is a good one — can be a great way to lose weight and keep it off because it stops you from sitting still for such long periods.
Invoke the mantra of gradualism
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to lose weight and keep it off is to go all guns blazing and start trying to do everything all at once. So, trying to take up the gym, improve your diet, trying to do this, that, and everything, all at the same time is counterintuitive.
Countless studies have shown — and I can vouch for these studies as it is my experience as well — that it is best to start slow and simple otherwise you risk overwhelming yourself. So do one thing at a time. For example, take up the gym, and spend 6 to 8 weeks focusing just on that before you even consider adding to it by trying to improve your diet or making further changes to your lifestyle.
Or start with diet, work on that first, and once you’ve spent 6 to 8 weeks focusing on that, then try to add the gym or something.
It’s well known that if you do something for 6 to 8 weeks, preferably twelve weeks straight, it starts to become second nature. Once something is second nature, it’s easy to keep doing it or at least a lot easier.
So, one of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off is to start slow, make one change at a time, and do not add any other changes until that one change has become second nature. Doing that will in time help you to transform your lifestyle and make healthy eating and living become second nature.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
Five Things I Did That Helped Me Get Great Abs
Seven Ways to Stay Fit and Healthy If You Don’t like the Gym
The Most Important Person You Need to Listen to If You Want Great Abs
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