Many individuals find losing weight to be a daunting task, especially if they need to shed pounds in a short amount of time for an upcoming event.
However, resorting to crash diets or intense exercise routines can have negative effects on one’s health, leaving them feeling sick and deprived of essential nutrients.
Fortunately, there are numerous painless methods to achieve rapid weight loss without the need for strict dieting. By adopting healthy lifestyle habits such as proper nutrition, fitness, adequate sleep, and hydration, individuals can lose weight quickly while also maintaining a healthy weight in the long run.
Below are 12 effective strategies to help you get started on your weight loss journey.
1. Burn 5000 Calories More Than You Take In:
In order to lose 10 pounds in a week, you need to burn 5000 more calories than you take in per day.
Agreed, that’s too much for an average person, but you have to push yourself to achieve this goal.
Also, it should be kept in mind that an average person burns about 2000 calories while doing normal routine activities.
This means that if you consume exactly 2000 calories through food every day, you will neither gain nor lose weight.
To burn extra calories, you can make simple changes in your lifestyle like walking instead of driving, taking stairs instead of the lift and simply breathing.
2. Do Not Skip Breakfast:
Breakfast is, undoubtedly, one of the most important meals of the day and skipping it in an urge to cut calories is not at all a great option.
In fact, several studies have shown that people who had breakfast regularly had comparatively lower BMIs than breakfast skippers.
So, kick start your day a healthy and nutritious way by having a bowl of oatmeal or whole grain cereal topped with fruit or low fat dairy. Y
ou can also have scrambled eggs to fulfil your protein requirements, but avoid heavy and oily foods for breakfast.
3. Incorporate Lean Proteins In Your Diet:
Incorporating lean proteins in your meals and snacks will keep you from overeating by keeping you full for longer.
You can try 98% lean beef, skinless chicken breast, eggs and certain fish like salmon.
For vegetarians, soy products like edamame or tofu, low fat yogurt, peanut butter, nuts and beans are good sources of lean proteins.
Besides, it is advisable to have frequent meals at an interval of 3 to 4 hours to maintain your blood sugar levels and avoid overindulgence.
4. Cut the Consumption of Simple Carbohydrates:
Simple carbs, also known as refined carbohydrates, get absorbed by our body quickly but provide zero nutrition.
So it is advisable to stay away from simple carbs like cookies, candies, molasses, honey, cakes and other baked sweets, and packaged cereals.
5. Avoid Fast Food:
Fast foods are synonymous of unhealthy foods. Besides being loaded with trans-fat, fast foods like fries, burgers and shakes contain a whopping amount of sugar and salt which can cause you to pile on the pounds.
They are also nil in terms of nutrition. Hence, if you want to shed ten pounds effectively, it is advisable to avoid fast foods completely.
6. Eat Smaller Portions:
It will be, indeed, pleasing to know that reducing your portion size by 10% to 20% can also lead to weight loss.
You can trim your portion size by using smaller bowls and plates or measuring cups to measure your portion sizes.
Eating smaller frequent meals will not only keep you full, but also boost your metabolism, thus leading to weight loss.
7. Avoid Late Night Snacking:
We can’t deny the fact that most of us indulge in mindless late night snacking while watching television or late night working.
We don’t realize that we are loading our bodies with unnecessary calories by doing so. It is advisable to have your dinner before 9 at night.
If you want to have dessert, you can have a bowl of light ice cream or frozen yogurt. After that, just brush your teeth so that you are less likely to eat or drink anything else.
8. Drink Plenty of Water:
Hydration is regarded as synonymous with water and drinking plenty of water is, undoubtedly, one of the best ways to keep oneself hydrated.
Ensure to drink at least 8 glasses of water in a day.
Besides being devoid of calories, water keeps you full such that you are less likely to overeat.
To avoid hunger pangs in between meals, you can have a big glass of water.
Apart from water, there are other ways of hydration.
Unsweetened green tea, for instance, is a good option as it is rich in antioxidants and has zero calories.
9. Avoid Liquid Calories:
As stated earlier, to achieve the desirable weight loss, it is important to control the intake of calories and liquid calories are no exception.
The processed fruit juices, energy drinks and aerated drinks might appear tempting, but they load your body with about a third of your entire calories for the day.
Instead, you can quench your thirst with water, citrus juices or 100% percent fruit juices.
Vegetable juices are also a nutritious option to satisfy your hunger in between meals.
Alcohol calories should be particularly avoided as they add up quickly.
So it is advisable to restrict the consumption of wine or cocktails to weekends in order to save calories.
10.Compound Exercises:
Compound exercises involve working out multiple joints and are considered the best bodyweight exercises.
For instance, the exercises performed below navel work out your quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus, the three largest muscle groups in your body.
They create minor after-burn tears in the muscle fibres, causing a large burn in calories post workout as a lot of energy is required to repair those tears.
You can try compound exercises like bench press, squats, clean and press etc.
11. Weight Training:
Weight training is another way to lose weight effectively. In fact, it is a misconception that weight training is meant for building bigger muscles and not losing weight.
Weight training if done properly can speed up your fat burning process during workouts and even long after the workout is over.
Training with weight is anaerobic in nature that burns carbohydrates. Unlike aerobic training, it helps build lean body mass.
But it accelerates your metabolism, causing you to burn more fat. To effectively lose 10 pounds in a week, it is advisable to indulge in weight training routine involving compound exercises at a higher intensity level.
12. Proper Sleep:
Numerous studies have shown that getting less than 5–6 hours of sleep per night is associated with increased incidence of obesity. There are several reasons behind this.
Research suggests that insufficient and poor-quality sleep slows down the process in which the body converts calories to energy, called metabolism. When metabolism is less effective, the body may store unused energy as fat. In addition, poor sleep can increase the production of insulin and cortisol, which also prompt fat storage.
How long and how deep someone sleeps also affects the regulation of the appetite-controlling hormones leptin and ghrelin. Leptin sends signals of fullness to the brain while ghrelin tells your brain you’re hungry.
Without a properly functioning leptin and ghrelin, you’re constantly hungry and nothing you eat will ever make you full – double whammy.
So, sleep more and sleep well.