Pizza is good stuff, an ice-cream sandwich is even better, but they both have one thing in common – they have no place in your diet. To lose weight, you’re usually advised to sacrifice those treats that bring you so much joy and take to eating grass instead.
At first, it’s easy to keep up the motivation and eat all the veggies and plant-based foods the doctor recommends, but the cheesecake and chocolate commercials don’t care about your new resolve and the smell of those fries you like wafting through the air will not stop existing because you started a diet. Sooner or later, you embrace the guilt and succumb to your desires for that juicy burger, you have failed to lose weight, and you’ve starved yourself too.
There’s a better way to get results. A way to lose weight without having to drop your favorite foods – by adopting healthy habits to lose weight.
What are these healthy eating habits to lose weight?
These are the slight modifications to how you eat, rather than what you eat, that will be made to get you eating what you want, and still lose weight:
Eating earlier than 9:00 AM
The world is scary enough as it is without additional stories about how eating at later hours makes people fat overnight. You can dash those myths alongside the tooth fairy tales. Instead, what you should watch out for is not how much slower your body burns calories when you’re asleep, but how much food people that eat late are usually tempted to eat when they’ve starved yourself since lunchtime.
They are also usually more open to eating fatty, sugary or ultimately unhealthy foods to deal with their hunger. The irony is that these people somehow forget that eating energy-giving foods means they get too much energy to even sleep, which makes weight loss even harder.
Make Eating an Intentional Activity
It’s easy to get lost in the pace of the world these days, between work and keeping your family and friends close, eating can seem pretty unimportant sometimes. When you do remember to eat, anything – which is usually unhealthy food – looks good enough to be eaten. At the same time, following a stiff eating schedule takes the enjoyment out of food, even if it is an efficient solution.
You can instead choose to adopt a more flexible, but stable, weight loss routine where you take advantage of events like family breakfasts or lunches out in the park to spice up the eating plan.
Also, while you eat, learn to be rid of all distractions as the Food Quality and Preference have reportedly studied people eating while blocking their ears with music and those who were not, to discover that those listening to music on headphones tend to eat more food since they don’t allow their brains pay attention to satiety messages.
Know what you’re eating
Even if you follow your eating schedules strictly and intentionally, it doesn’t mean squat if all you’re doing is swallowing calories. Eating out helps to do exactly that since it is usually packed with salt, artificial additives, and unnecessary calories to keep you hooked. That is why one important healthy habit to lose weight is for you to develop a better attitude toward cooking until you eat more than half of your meals at home.
In case you want to eat out anyway, then at least make the right call by choosing foods that are rich in protein, fiber, and healthy fats. Foods belonging to this class are indispensable to healthy habits to lose weight since you don’t need to eat much of them to be full, which means you don’t get to overeat.
Know when you’re full
Just as you should stop activities like watching TV or listening to loud music while eating, you should also try to not rush your food. Eating slowly allows your stomach to pass the update to your brain that you are full (which takes about a third of an hour to do).
On that note, check if you’re hungry before you eat, and space out your chews when you begin your feast. If you’re not sure if you’re hungry or not, try drinking water, you’ll get a good idea of if you’re full or not.
Don’t reward weight loss, by gaining weight
It might seem obvious, but it’s interesting how everybody has the urge to breathe a sigh of relief and dip their faces in some cake after losing a pound or two. While getting more fitness is always a reason for joy, losing the reason for the celebration in one night is not productive, to say the least. Instead, why not kick on from that by surprising yourself with new fitness gear, it’s just as exciting, and safe too.
Call in your lunch earlier
This is one thing you might not have expected, but ordering food before you get hungry allows you to avoid poor decisions against your weight loss routine. Under the influence of hunger, people are more susceptible to ignoring healthy eating habits for losing weight by going for unhealthy foods, per the joint-research carried out by academics of the Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania.
What do you have around you?
Food researchers have also discovered that people are more likely to reach out for snacks within proximity, Duh! The solution to that temptation to losing your way in following your weight loss routine by eating unhealthy snacks lies in upgrading your snack collection.
You can do this by using fruit bowls filled with an assortment of fruits, keeping nuts handy or even creating a veggie mix by cutting up diverse vegetables and keeping the mix in the fridge as a probable dip for hummus.
Eat healthily, every time
If the other parts have not seemed as exciting as you expected, this should play a chord. There is room for eating snacks in the healthy habits that help you lose weight if they are healthy snacks. In fact, it is advised that a good snack and refreshing water is within reach at any time of the day. The healthy snacks protect you from holding excess fat in your body or destabilizing your blood sugar levels. Although, it must be done in moderation, and even considered the last option, maybe when you can’t take the hunger anymore.
And Drinks?
Soda, tea, and cleanses are no substitutes for actual food since they neither have fiber and healthy fats. This pushes the body to keep drinking more in search of nutrients and satisfaction. Additionally, zero-calorie and alcoholic drinks are not any better since they tempt people to drink more than they normally would have.
Compared to that, solid food gives you a full stomach quicker than drinks do since the act of chewing improves the chances of getting full. Instead of these drinks, detox water, seltzer or green tea will be a better choice, or you could add Greek yogurt to your protein shakes.
Sit Down
It’s a joy that we can get better fitness levels with pedometers and timers, but eating while walking should not be one of the benefits of technology. First, because people tend to eat more while standing, while our body is programmed to assume food eaten while standing to be “False Meals”.
What exercise burns the most belly fat?
The mountain climber is one of the most effective exercises for burning belly fat since the core is asked to work overtime in this workout routine. The mountain climber is more like a moving ‘plank’ weight loss routine where the knees are made to alternatively touch the chest from the push-up starting position. Alternatively, exercises like the Kettlebell swing, burpee, medicine slam. If you have the equipment, you can try the Dumbbell overhead lunge too.
How can I lose 20 pounds in a month?
There’s no simple trick to losing that much weight in such a period. It’ll take a combination of efforts including a better hydration culture (drinking water frequently), reducing your carbohydrate intake and increasing your protein and fiber consumption instead, monitoring your calories, exercising intensely (more work with weights than just jogging and jump rope) and, of course, sleep.
How can I lose weight around my waist?
Weight loss routines specifically for the waist region include exercises like the Plank, High-Intensity Interval(HII) training or even yoga, as well as eating more of vitamin D, probiotics and soluble fiber and less of carbs and salt.
Simple choices like switching to green tea from coffee and harder decisions like reducing alcoholic intake also help to build a better waistline.
Essentially, the bulk of weight loss routines depend on developing a healthier eating habit, and it’s necessary that you keep that in mind.