5 Things to Do to Lose Weight

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Diets are practically omnipresent. Magazine covers are decorated with impossibly beautiful models and carefully airbrushed celebrities who offer to share the secrets that will let even the most harried parent and office worker achieve a movie star physique. The airwaves are dominated by advertisements for mysterious milkshakes and energy bars that enable a person who consumes them to melt 50 pounds of fat off their body with little to no effort. “Healthy” cookies and “low-fat” cakes are available in most grocery stores. Summer offers human models and plastic manikins alike strutting around in impossible bathing suit bodies. Winter, meanwhile, boasts dozens of tips on keeping to New Year’s weight-loss resolutions, and gyms offer a wide variety of classes that will help the holiday weight vanish into the ether. Unfortunately, dieting is not as simple as the media would like people to think. No special craving crushing milkshake will keep you from watching your friend eat ice cream enviously. No energy bar will keep you from being hungry when you try and go right from a 2,300 calorie diet to subsisting on 1,200 calories a day. Unless you eat like a bird, you cannot “eat whatever you want” and still squeeze into those painted-on jeans without serious huffing and puffing. If you want to lose weight, you need to accept that there is no shortcut and that it is going to take a lot of work and determination to get to your goal. There is no weight-loss fairy to make those extra pounds magically disappear, but there are ways you can speed up and ease your weight loss. Here are five things to do to lose weight in a healthy manner.

Build Muscle

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The idea of building muscle in order to lose weight seems somewhat counterintuitive to many people. Skeletal muscle, however, is essential for those who want to shed a few pounds. While increasing your muscle mass will make the needle on the scale tip upwards in the short term, it will help you melt those pounds off later. Your organs are one of the biggest calorie consumers in your body. The other calorie burning machine hiding under your skin is your muscle mass.

Skeletal muscles burn massive amounts of calories when compared to other parts of your body. So, if you want to ditch those pounds and keep them off, you need to pack on some muscle first. Lift weights or do other versions of strength training two to three times a week to help build calorie burning muscles, and watch as you not only get lighter but stronger and more toned as well.

Eat Protein and Fiber

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What you eat when you are trying to lose weight is incredibly important. Eating poorly can render all the exercise in the world moot, while a clean diet can make up for an awful lot of binge watching your favorite shows instead of hitting the gym.

In order to lose weight, your diet needs to be relatively low in fat and sugar. Your calorie intake should also be only a couple hundred calories lower than your calorie output. Too big a deficiency and your body becomes convinced that you are starving. It then works to pack on as much fat as it can to help you survive the “famine.”

Cutting even 200 calories from your diet, however, can leave you awfully hungry by the end of the day. To help prevent your stomach from growling nonstop, make sure your diet is heavy on protein and fiber. Both of these will help you feel full sooner and stay feeling full longer. Eggs, chicken, nuts, Greek yogurt and meaty fishes, such as tuna and salmon, are excellent sources of protein. Beans, lentils, edamame, blackberries and brown rice are all high in fiber.

Cook at Home

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Here is a riddle for you. You have decided to go out for lunch rather than bring a lunch to work. Your take-out lunch is sitting on your desk. Take a close look at it. Now, what is in it? Do not just list the basics such as chicken, beans or rice. Name the ingredients of the sauce. Was it made with heavy whipping cream or evaporated milk? The answer to that question is nearly a 500 calorie difference. How about the oil? Were those veggies sautéed in a tablespoon of olive oil or half a cup of canola oil? This has a smaller calorie difference but a massive nutritional impact.

When you go out to eat, you do not know precisely what is in your meal. This makes it impossible to know how healthy you are eating. If you want to lose weight, dig out the old saucepan and cook at home. Home cooking does not need to be fancy or time consuming. Placing a chicken breast and some sliced veggies in the oven makes for a swift dinner that is diet gold. So brush off those culinary skills in order to brush the inches off your waist.

Ditch the Drinks

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Calories do not count when you drink them, right? Wrong. You could be eating a diet that is weight-loss perfection and lifting weights regularly, but none of that will matter if your morning coffee has three creams, two shots of syrup and four sugars. If you like your coffee to have a four syllable name, the odds are that all your other diet successes are being undone every morning. The same is true if you absolutely have to have a soda in the afternoon. Sodas are loaded with sugars that can drive their calorie content through the roof. One can of soda has approximately the same number of calories as a bottle of beer. Fruit juices and sports drinks are not low-cal alternatives either. One eight ounce glass of orange juice contains nearly 150 calories, and most people have far more than eight ounces of OJ at breakfast. Apple juice and cranberry juices are nearly as bad with Gatorade not too far behind. So, if you want to really knock off those pounds, you need to put down the sugary, creamy, calorie-packed drinks. Switch over to straight herbal teas, black coffee and, of course, plain water.

Get Enough Sleep

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Sleep is an essential component of just about any goal, and weight loss is no exception. A lack of sleep will sap your willpower like nothing else. This means that instead of walking away from the burger joint and continuing on your healthy way, you will be lured in by the smell of French fries and end up wolfing down a couple thousand calories.

In addition to keeping your willpower functional, sleep has a noticeable effect on how the body deals with food. People who are sleep deprived tend to be hungrier during the day and make poorer eating choices. Some of this is the aforementioned lack of willpower rendering them unable to walk away from those donuts sitting in the office breakroom, but people who are short on sleep are also more likely to deal with serious cravings for sugar and salt, the two things that are most likely to come in a high-calorie package. A lack of sleep can also simply mean that meals do not keep you full as long and lead you to overeat. Shed the pounds, not your sleep.