Struggling to lose weight to the point that you have decided to give up? Well, you are not alone, there are scores of women who confess that they can’t lose weight no matter what they do – they skip meals, sweat it out in the gym, do everything to suppress their appetite, but no effort seems to be good enough to push the numbers on the weighing scale lower. When it may look like you can’t lose weight no matter what you do, try doing these 16 things:
1. Make Water your Best Friend: Water should be your elixir, not packaged fruit juices that claim to have fortified vitamins and minerals. Unknown to many, dehydration triggers signals which you may confuse as “hunger” signals, and instead of sipping on water, you may reach out for more food! Remind yourself to drink water every hour, and do make sure you are never dehydrated.
2. No Fad Diets Please: There’s no such thing as a healthy fad diet because most of them promise dramatic results through unhealthy shortcuts. And they are definitely not sustainable, too strict, and may actually backfire after a while (with nutritional deficiencies, hair fall kicking in). Get on a diet which is based on healthy eating, is sustainable, and you can lose both inches and pounds, and a diet which you enjoy following – such as Rati Beauty Diet. Download the Rati Beauty app for more details.
3. Fall in Love with Spicy Food: Spicy food is not only thermogenic (meaning more calories get torched), they suppress appetite and trick the body into believing less is more! Spicy food with capsaicin (chilli peppers, jalapenos for example) can also increase metabolism up to 8% – that’s more than one reason to fall in love with spicy food now.
4. Move your Body, Even After Hitting the Gym: Sweating out in the gym for just one hour and the sitting glued to the work desk or spending rest of the day on the couch will do nothing for fat burning. Be active, on your feet throughout the day, because even fidgeting legs would burn some good calories.
5. Priortize Protein: There are many ways in which protein helps one slim down – by curbing appetite, keeping you full for longer, and of course increasing thermogenesis. Eggs, peanut butter, yogurt, tofu, green peas are some inexpensive sources of protein that can be added into one’s daily diet. Check out high-protein meal plans on the Rati Beauty diet.
6. Avoid Liquid Calories: As we have mentioned above, make water your best friend and avoid liquid calories that make their way through fizzy drinks, colas, beverages, and packaged fruit juices.
7. Replace Desserts with Dark Chocolate: Hmmm, dark chocolate is something you can have guilt free – from reducing stress, to making skin look better, to curbing appetite, not to mention giving a good dose of antioxidants – it can help you lose weight as well. Instead of opting for a muffin or a cheesecake, opt for a bar of dark chocolate. Pick something that has at least 70-80% cocoa content, and replace all your desserts with dark chocolate.
8. Change your Plate Size: Swap your meal plate with a smaller 8-inch one to trick your brain into believing you are having a big meal when in fact, you have cut down the amount of food served.
9. Change your Cooking Oil: Swap your regular cooking oil with a healthier one such as olive oil, you would be able to make a huge difference just by changing the oil.
10. Pick the Right Snacks: Do you snack out of boredom or when under stress? And most of the time, it’s a packet of chips? Avoid reaching out for food when under stress or to fight boredom – and when you pick, do make sure it’s something healthy like almonds, peanuts, or low-calorie stuff such as roasted makhana.
11. Cut Down Frequency of Eating Out: The best lifestyle change you can make is to cut down the frequency of eating out. You can treat yourself to outside food once or twice a week, but making a habit of ordering food from restaurants, will make losing weight extremely challenging with high amount of calories, unhealthy ingredients making their way to your daily diet.
12. Heap Your Food into a Pile: This is another psychological trick to fool your brain into believing you are having a big meal (when you are actually doing portion control).
13. Portion Control, Even for Healthy Food: Portion control is essential to get into a calorie deficit to get the extra fat burning, and yes, you need to practice portion control even with healthy foods such as oats, quinoa, eggs, and even yogurt. Read about “10 Tips to Portion Control Food for Weight Loss” in this post.
14. Cover Half of your Plate with Veggies: Get loads of nutrients, within few calories, by covering half of your plate with veggies.
15. Make Lifestyle Changes: Without making lifestyle changes (sleeping for 7-8 hours, finding ways to de-stress, coming out of a sedentary lifestyle), losing weight would remain a struggle.
16. Say No To Artificial Sweeteners: Artificial sweeteners are not “healthier” alternatives to refined sugar because they have been found to trick the body into releasing more insulin (which is a hormone that not only regulates blood sugar, it also encourages storage of fat). Give up sugar or find better options like stevia leaves to sweeten things up.
When you implement these 16 tips, you would be able to see significant drop on the weighing scale.
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