7 tactics to lose weight quickly – Part 6
Want to lose weight quickly?
I’ll be blunt but I’ll be honest. Let’s begin.
Most diets work, but you don’t make them work… you have to persevere and not give in.
And that’s precisely what most people do, they start full of motivation and resolve, lose weight quickly, but by week 2 or 3... they quit.
I was one of them
As a matter of fact, I’ll let you in on a personal secret: the first time I joined Weight Watchers, guess how old I was?... 9 years old… a baby!
Even at that age I was already struggling with weight… To my nine year old self:
"The box of Frosties cereal you hid under the bed was not worth it! That was not grrrreat!"
Most of the time we eat out of boredom or to comfort ourselves – and all fat people secretly know that is true.
We all want quick-fixes for everything. We want to get rich quick, we want to lose weight quickly and we want it all now.
Well, it doesn’t work that way. Hate to break it to you.
Patience and perseverance wins
Next time you go out, look at the menu carefully, and you'll see there is always plenty of healthy options to choose from. And you can always tell the waiter to change things for healthier options.The single most important thing you can do to help you lose weight quickly is to pick a diet and stick with it, persist.
I tried Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and more and nothing seemed to work…
At the peak of my weight I joined a boot-camp, leaving home at 5:30am to get to a class at 6am. I was good for about 3 weeks until the pain in my knees was so excruciating that I was barely making it up the 3 flights of stairs to my apartment every day…
I should have known better, running around, doing jumping jacks and burpees while I had an extra 100lbs in weight and with no previous conditioning was a mistake. I was lucky not to get hurt! I really missed the mark there.
As the saying goes: slow and steady wins the race
And that’s part of the problem and part of the solution!
According to Psychology Today, one of the tricks is to acknowledge that hunger is seldom an emergency, especially in our day and age. We are constantly feeding ourselves and have countless opportunities to eat mindlessly.
Over-eating is just a bad habit. We don’t “need” all that food.
Our idea of hunger is probably just an uncomfortable hunger pang or mild craving instead of real discomfort.
Most of the time you have a desire to eat, but are not actually hungry
Only until I started to cook a little did I understand just how powerful spices could be. A little bit goes a long way in giving healthy food great taste!One of the strategies that really made a difference was so simple and happened in a serendipitous manner.
Contrary to popular advice, I started the diet on a Friday instead of a Monday. I weighed myself that Friday, started the diet and kept on weighing myself every Friday thereafter.
Weird, right?
But it worked like a charm!
Another strategy that helped me lose weight was to time my meals right
I have a normal 9-5 job, so this is what my schedule of meals looked like. To give you an example:
I would not skip breakfast but have a protein-rich breakfast by 7am. I would make sure I had a protein-rich snack by around 10:30am and would heat-up my lunch by 12:30-1pm. At around 3:30-4pm I would serve myself another snack before leaving work. Then at home I would have dinner before 8pm.
This meant feeding myself every 3 hours or so and avoiding late night snacks. Keeping my blood sugar levels steady throughout the day was critical to my success.
There are some studies, as seen on Medical News Today, which recommends a fasting period between meals as a means to improve weight loss. By not eating after 8pm I tried to get the benefits of fasting from dinner to breakfast (8pm to 7am).
However, scheduling your meals should be consistent and serve your daily commitments, so you stick with it. And this will be different for everyone.
The trick is to take a hard look at your schedule and as we mentioned before, try to pack all your meals in a cooler for the day
Prep most of your weekday meals at home. Enhance flavor with sauces, spices and nuts and seeds.That way, you know exactly how everything is prepared, you have portioned every meal and there is always something handy to eat.
This is what I’ve learned so far to lose weight quickly:
- Eating more helps me lose weight, eating more of the right type of foods
- Steady cardio, like walking, on the first phase of weight-loss helps me lose weight
- Expecting the weight to go down every other week, not every single week
- Planning my food for the entire week and preparing it
- Pack food the night before and carrying a cooler with all the food I should consume for the day at work (except obviously breakfast and dinner) and eating it on a schedule
- Using smaller plates, instead of the entrée plate use the appetizer plate (which is the normal plate size in the rest of the world)
- Always leave a little food on your plate, do not scrape it clean
Honoring the commitment you make with yourself is the single most important tip I can give you to lose weight quickly.
Make a plan, prepare for it, execute it and stick with it.
If I can do it, you can do it too!
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Psychology Today, 10 tips to stick to your diet, www.psychologytoday.com
Medical News Today, Can simply changing your meal times help you lose more weight, www.medicalnewstoday.com
