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Losing weight could be an older or recently made goal in your life. But for many people who are new to losing weight and slimming down, it can be a difficult road ahead. You simply might not know where to start, how to maintain your lost weight or what exercises to do, which can be frustrating. In fact, one of the more difficult notions of slimming down is finding the correct balance of diet and exercise, which can be a complex task to do when starting out.
At Stay Healthy Advice, we have accumulated the best-practised tips and tricks to ensure that your journey to slim down is as effective as possible.
The Most Important Thing To Remember When Slimming Down
Whether you want to slim down for personal reasons or lose weight for health concerns, there is one important piece of information that even health professionals and nutritionists can vouch for.
The most important thing to remember when slimming down is to be patient with your progress. This goes to all body types and all types of weight-losing goals that people may have. Losing weight can be a lengthy process that you have to trust in order to see results.
With that being said, here are some of the most effective tips, tricks and advice we can offer at Stay Healthy Advice, for those wanting to lose weight this year.
Note Down Your Target Weight!
There’s almost no point in losing weight if you don’t have a specific goal in mind. There are many ways to figure out a long-term goal, and setting your sights on your goal weight can help fuel your progress and develop your motivation to make the health change you want.
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When creating a weight loss goal, you need to make sure that you follow a SMART procedure. You need to be specific with your goals and clear about your intentions, ensure that you can measure your progress, make sure your goal is attainable with the resources you have, be realistic and ensure your goal is time-bound by setting a deadline!
Weigh Yourself Regularly
Following the SMART process of weight loss, you have to make sure that you track your progress by weighing yourself regularly and noting down your current weight at that time. You can check it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Weighing yourself regularly can allow you to measure your progress, figure out what’s going right and at the same time, identify what’s going wrong.
Write Down What You Eat In A Week
In terms of identifying the right and wrong things you are doing during your weight loss journey, writing down what you eat has been a successful (and successfully proven) strategy for weight loss. This is also what’s known as keeping a food journal.
Allowing yourself to note down everything you eat and drink will make you more conscious of what goes into your body, as well as allow you to make amendments to further help your weight loss progress and reach your goal. What’s great is that there are already plenty of online tools that you can use to make this easy for yourself, however, using the old-school pen and paper can be just as effective.
Eat Three Meals A Day
If you are looking for ways to lose weight, then you might stumble across some pages telling you to only eat when you’re hungry, which is a terrible word of advice when looking to lose weight! This can cause problems that range from weaker and slower metabolisms to ambiguous cases of extreme hunger at odd times of the day.
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Meal frequency has proven to have a fundamental role in weight maintenance, as well as weight loss. You are likely to eat fewer calories, avoid decision fatigue and become more mindful of your food. Therefore, eating three meals a day is a crucial part of your weight loss journey.
Become Aware Of The Nutritional Value Of What You Eat
This is more of a given point in this entry, but becoming mindful of the nutritional value of your meals can help you understand what goes into your body. You can do this by simply looking at the nutrition facts label on your food shopping list, as it shows you some key nutrients that impact your health.
Keep in mind, however, that looking at the label will not provide an exact number of what calories, protein or fats will give you as cooking can alter these nutrients – more likely reducing them than adding onto them.
Create A Diet Plan
Meal plans are an important part to create when trying to lose weight. However, creating a diet plan can be a challenging task if you aren’t comfortable with cooking or are not aware of what food goes with which.
Some quick tips in creating a diet plan: Increase your protein intake, while decreasing your fat intake. This means choosing food that has a lower fat value (whole grain bread, low-fat meats, drinking water instead of sodas or fizzy drinks, etc.) which can make a drastic difference with your weight loss journey, providing you with the energy you need while holding back on what can add weight to your body naturally.
Exercise!
While dieting can be a great way to lose weight, you need to accompany your diet with consistent, hard exercises to fully maximise your weight loss. Exercising is one of the most common strategies employed by those looking to lose weight – the number of calories you burn, the muscle you gain and the energy you give out can play a key role in weight loss overall.
Exercising can also lead to other helpful benefits such as improved mood, improved blood circulation, stronger immune systems and stronger bones. All exercises can deliver these advantages right to your body and mind, but some exercises can better help you with your weight loss.
Cardio Exercises
Cardio exercises are exercises that require high-intensity movements, so think biking, running, skipping rope, jumping jacks, and more. Cardio exercises are often connected with fat loss due to their effectiveness in burning calories and are also thought of as exercises that make you sweat more.
You can mix your exercise routine with different types of cardio exercises. Maybe start by running for the first 10 minutes (or a jog if you are just starting!), then a set of skip roping, cycling, or even swimming if you have the facilities to accommodate that type of exercise.
Some easy exercises for cardio are:
- Jogging
- Jumping Jacks
- Knee Highs
- Cycling
- Mountain Climbers
- Jogging On The Spot
Don’t Forget Weight Training
Cardio exercises are effective on their own, but mixing in strength or weight training into your routine can significantly help increase the rate of your weight loss. This is because weight training increases muscle mass, which effectively replaces the fat content around your body to an extent.
Because strength training increases lean muscle mass, you will also have an increased metabolism – and a higher metabolism can help your body burn calories and lose weight overall.
Not to mention, weight training can also increase your strength and tone your body structure!
Weight training is relatively simple, and we strongly advise starting at lighter weights (and gradually increasing your weights the more you exercise) and practising the movements first.
Verdict: What Do You Need To Lose Weight?
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Following most, if not all of these steps can lead to an efficient weight-loss journey towards your ideal weight goal. The key that we want to establish here at Stay Healthy Advice, is that patience is the most important factor you need to take into consideration.
All of these entries, whether you want to watch your weight gain or loss, create diet plans, or exercise, can take time in terms of planning, and can often discourage you from continuing with your progress. We strongly advise you to take some time in creating a plan that can work for you.
Rather than look for external help in creating your plan, the sense of control that comes with creating your own diet plan or creating your own exercise program can help motivate you to develop yourself further. With that said, however, there are also no downsides in hiring a professional to help you plan your weight goal, diet plan or exercise program. At the end of the day, the way you want to lose weight and reach your goal is entirely on you!
If you are looking for more great articles regarding weight loss, or health in general, visit our health or fitness blogs for more in-depth articles regarding health and exercise.
This article was made with the help of Physiosupplies Ireland, a 100% Irish owned physio-equipment supplier. Check out their website for more information!