You’ve heard the clichés, but it’s no joke – desperate times don’t necessarily call for desperate measures. If you’re desparately trying to shed extra pounds and need a helping hand, you’ve come to the right place.
DESPERATE FOR WEIGHT LOSS
Desperate means “having lost all hope.” If you are desperate for food, it means you are starving, possibly about to die. If you are in a desperate situation, it means things are really, really bad. If you intend to lose weight again but thinking you might end up doing the same mistakes over and over again, do not give up just yet. Frustrated dieters start to believe that they will never achieve their “body goals”. Nevertheless, there is still a glimmer of hope and you’ll just need to start trusting yourself to do it successfully this time. Don’t be too desperate and follow these useful guidelines for a better result.
Set realistic goals
Most dieters are at the peak of their emotions at the beginning of their weight loss journey. Unknowingly, they set goals which are way too high and when they lost their motivation, then they fail big time. High expectations can be the reason for gaining more weight when one doesn’t get progress. By knowing how to set small and realistic goals, you are good to go. Achieving something small can improve your confidence, and you’re most likely able to stay on the right track towards your vital goal. Don’t fall into the trap of establishing idealistic goals and lose yourself in the process.
Don’t isolate yourself, ask for help
The process of a successful weight loss doesn’t need to be hidden in secret. Sometimes, people who are desperate to lose weight tend to keep their dilemma by themselves because they are ashamed of what might people think. But, if you want to stick to your diet or your exercise, you need people to support and motivate you all the way. Learn to confide your goals to your family and friends. Recognize your desires and list people who may possibly help you such as a nutritionist or a fitness coach. Help yourself by asking help from others.
Refrain from mindless eating
Eating something when you are not fully aware of how much you’re eating is mindless eating. Munching something while watching TV or snacking on a cookie while reading your emails is one step closer to failure in weight loss. To fully avoid mindless eating, there are tips that you can follow. First, if you’re driving, concentrate on what you’re doing. Also, eat only when you’re hungry. Before grabbing for a cookie, ask yourself if you really need to eat. If you can’t resist snacking, prepare healthy snacks such as cut carrots, boiled eggs, or a few crackers.
Prepare your own meals
Food is vital to human beings. It is the source of happiness, life, and energy to function daily. However, at times, they are also the cause of diseases and extra pounds. Unluckily, the cravings for fatty and carbohydrate-rich foods are leading us to weight gain and obesity. Preparing your own meal will give you the opportunity to choose healthy, tasty meals for your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Purchase food containers that you can use for your meal prep plan. Exert effort by going to the supermarket, cook your meals, and store them in the refrigerator.
Find time for healthy activities
Most dieters commit a very common mistake and that is the idea that they don’t have adequate time. The truth is, when you are desperate to lose weight, you have to find time to insert exercising to your hectic schedule. Studies show that men and women have declared “lack of time” as the main reason they can’t do healthy activities. You can start by writing down your priorities in a calendar. Jot down important errands and list healthy weight loss activities. If there are tasks that are not so important, don’t be scared to put them at the bottom or ask for assistance from supportive family members or friends.
Keep track of your calorie intake
When you aren’t eating home prep meals, you are most likely to lose track of your daily calorie intake. Attending parties with deliciously made cakes, store-bought coffees overloaded with cream and sugar is an addition to your fixed calorie for the day. Sometimes, dieters become too indulged in something and forget about their calorie goal for the day. While it is mostly true that the key to losing weight is to burn more than you eat, it is always better to count your calorie intake. You can download applications from the internet to help you track your calories. Discover ways to input your foods and workout routine to know how much you burn the whole time.
Desperate To Lose Weight? Scientifically Proven Ways to Lose Weight
Most people who are desperate to lose weight are hoping to see tangible results fast. There are many weight loss programs, diets and even supplements out there that promise to do the trick. While no one can completely write off those methods, there are simpler, scientifically proven ways to lose weight fast.
Anyone who is desperate to lose weight must understand that dropping those extra pounds requires dedication and commitment. Losing and most importantly maintaining weight requires you to give up some really enjoyable habits and take up some new less enjoyable ones. Here are 10 ways to lose weight that actually work!
1. Remove sugar from your diet
Sugars are the primary trigger for the release of insulin in your body. What this means is that when you eat high sugar food your body focuses on the digestion of these sugars instead of fatty deposits. When insulin goes down, body looks to burn up fat.
Insulin also makes you feel hungrier and thus more prone to overeating. So when you eat less sugary foods, you will feel fuller and can actually drop pounds without having to undergo the torture that is hunger.
Cut down sugar, cut down insulin and burn fatter. It’s as simple as that.
Results:
Excess fat is burned up, you consume less calories because you feel less hungry and your body sheds extra water as well. Studies have shown that taking sugar out of your diet, supplemented by regular exercise can actually have you drop up to 5-10 pounds within the first week.
2. Use honey
Honey has the ability to combat weight gain and burn body fat. Not only that, but it is a great anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal agent. You might be wondering, ‘wait… doesn’t honey have sugar?’ It does, but it is not unhealthy sugar like the refined sugar we use in our daily lives.
When we eat refined sugar we expend our body’s store of vitamins and minerals to digest it. What honey has is these minerals and vitamins in large quantities. These vitamins and minerals not only help digest sugar found in the honey you just consumed but will help in digesting fat and cholesterol that is in your body already.
Results:
Honey is a great agent for fat and cholesterol control. It has many benefits but for it to be useful as a weight loss agent, it needs to act as a replacement to sugar in your diet and not as a supplement. In other words point 1 and 2 together means that you can drop a lot of weight fast.
3. Drink Green tea
Yes, you’ve all probably heard of this by now. I have even met a few people who have dismissed green tea’s weight loss potential to being a myth. Science tends to disagree. Green tea was and continues to be a great way to lose weight consistently. Sometimes when you’re desperate to lose weight you try to look for complicated answers but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Green tea contains antioxidants called catechins that speed up metabolism and help burn up calories. Regular green tea drinkers are not only slimmer but also fitter.
Results:
Research has shown that green tea drinkers burn up to 70-100 calories more per day than non-green tea drinkers. Now 70 calories may not sound like much, but drinking green tea is not a fad. It’s a lifestyle choice that can mean that you are burning 70-100 calories every day for the rest of your life by just choosing to drink green tea.
4. Get rid of salt
Ever feel bloated after a meal? Salt is sodium chloride, and sodium has water retention properties making you feel bloated when consumed too much. The thing with salt is that you don’t need to eliminate it completely from your diet, but make sure that you don’t eat too much of it either.
Chips, canned foods and junk food have a lot of salt, so keeping a close eye on their intake should do the trick.
Results:
Scientists suggest that the optimum intake of salt should be around 2,400 milligrams per day. But most of us eat much more than that. By reducing that intake to 1,500 mg, you could drop 1.25-1.5 pounds of body weight in water within the first day. Maintain that for a week and you can lose up to 3 pounds.
Minimizing salt intake to as low an amount as 1,500 mg has no detrimental affect in the short run. But it can have ill-effects if continued for too long. The best thing to do is to increase your salt intake to 2,000-2,400 mg after a month or so and look for longer term goals after that.
5. Sleep for 30 minutes more every night
Most people will tell you that over sleeping will increase weight. While, that is true in some cases of extreme laziness, the fact is that more and more people around the world are sleeping too little. Studies have shown that by adding 30 minutes of sleep to your routine you can actually lose weight.
Lack of sleep effects the body’s ability to understand hunger. When your body is sleep deprived it produces hormones that will tell the body that you are hungry. In other words, being sleep deprived leads to over snacking. This is something which is quite easily observable, any late night sleeper will tell you just how important snacks are in their lives.
Sleep deprivation will also lead to increase in the release of cortisol, a stress hormone in the body. The body begins to conserve energy and fat is no longer burnt. You have to keep eating to keep your energy levels up since the body fat reserves are no longer in play.
Results:
Most of the observational research carried out on the subject so far has shown that people adding 30 minutes more to their sleeping time are mentally stronger, have lower risk of obesity and lose excess weight. Your craving for snacks will die down, it boosts fat loss and leaves you with more energy to be active in the day (bringing us to our next point).
6. If you’re really desperate to lose weight, Intense Cardio is a must
When you’re really desperate to lose weight, intense cardio for at-least 30-40 minutes every day is an absolute necessity. Nothing burns up calories better than a proper intense cardiovascular exercise regimen.
Intense cardio is best done with low activity intervals, or a recovery period. So short bursts of intense exercise for say 5 minutes followed by 10 minutes of regular / slower activity.
There are many cardio workouts that can do the trick for you. Finding out what works best for you, is up to you. The aim remains to exercise almost all muscle groups and burn as much as 350 calories in your 30-40 minute workout. The three that we recommend would be using the elliptical machine, spinning and kickboxing.
Results
Burning 350 calories, especially when you are on a healthy diet means that your body looks to burn up fatty deposits for energy. 1 pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. So basically you are looking at dropping 1 pound every 10 days or 0.7 pounds in a week with a half hour workout.
7. Drink lots of water and always 30 minutes before a meal
Drink 8 glasses or 64 ounces of water every day and make sure you don’t drink during the meal but 30 minutes before it. You have probably heard this many times in your life and there is a reason they say it. The fact is that the body can only digest fat if it has sufficient water. It is also a fact that compared to other beverages you consume to kill your thirst, water will always have a lower calorie count since it has zero calories.
So for e.g. your favorite energy drink carries 100 calories. Water has a calorie count of zero. So when you take out that energy drink from your daily routine and replace it with water, you satisfy your thirst with no extra calories.
Most beverages contain sugar (and we know we don’t like sugar). If not sugar, they contain sodium (which we also know is bad) or other ingredients that you are better without.
Results
Drinking water will help you lose weight in a number of ways as stated above. Just how much depends on a number of factors. When used in conjunction with a good low calorie diet it can do wonders.
8. Fiber is useful in more ways than one
Fiber is one of the most important food groups you are most probably not getting enough of. It’seffect on satiety i.e. the feeling of being full is quite well known. Eating a healthy dose of fiber with every meal will ensure that you don’t over eat. Adding special viscous fiber can do wonders in the short run as well as the long run.
It is a fat releasing food and helps the body burn fat faster. There is a reason that the use of fiber is so stressed upon by most dietitians. It works like a charm and more often than not, it will help you lose weight and flatten your tummy.
Results
Many a research has found that the introduction of fiber in the diet can lead to weight loss. By introducing viscous fiber like glucomannan or guar gum into the diet, you may be able to drop 1.5-2 pounds in a week depending on your diet and current weight.
Sometimes when you’re desperate to lose weight, you tend to skip the simplest answers. Following fad diets is never the answer and might actually be detrimental to your health in the long run. By writing this article we hoped to provide you the information and motivation to go for the simple. Let us know what you think.
Not Losing Weight? Reasons Why That Happens
1. You’re way overestimating your muscle weight.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought something like the following after stepping on the scale: “I’m still losing fat, I’m just strength training really hard and gaining muscle.”
Most of us have done it, but the problem is, Dr. Weiner says, it doesn’t work that way: Muscle is similar in density to water (while fat has a higher density), so it’s not an apples-to-apples exchange. In other words, refusing to re-evaluate your weight-loss strategy because you’re “working on building muscle” can result in your fat composition staying put.
“A good thought experiment is comparing one pound of muscle to a 16 oz. can of soda [which has a similar density],” Dr. Weiner explains. “Imagine adding that much muscle to your body—you would see it.”
In other words, you would notice yourself actively building enough muscle to tip the scale toward a higher number, so if you basically look the same, think about something other than muscle gain. Consider tweaking your diet a bit to create a caloric deficit to move the needle, or try HIIT workouts to get your heart rate up and burn fat.
2. You’re eating less, but still picking unhealthy foods.
If you consume fewer calories than you expend, Dr. Weiner says it’s definitely possible to lose about 10 percent of your total body weight through dieting alone. But if you want to lose more, you can’t just keep cutting calories. “You have to change the type of food you eat,” he says, “focusing more on the quality of calories versus the quantity.”
Foods digest differently in our body—some slower, some more quickly, explains Keri Gans, RD, the author of The Small Change Diet. “Sugary foods digest quickly, leaving you hungry sooner than later, versus foods rich in fiber,” she says. Fiber-rich foods, like fruits, veggies, 100 percent whole grains, and legumes, help promote satiety and can be an easy weight loss tool.
For example, if you order in delivery for dinner every night, eating fewer restaurant-prepared meals every week for lunch will probably help you shed some pounds at first, but eventually, the weight loss is going to stop unless you make the switch to even healthier lunches (like ones made with fewer oils, dressings, etc.) on a consistent basis. Once you’ve changed the quality of your calories—and are consuming better-for-you foods with more satiating power—you’ll also naturally eat less, which can help weight loss continue past the 10 percent point.
Even if you’re on a calorie deficit, you’ll want to pay attention to the type of calories you’re consuming, says Jessica Cording, RD, CDN, the author of The Little Book of Game-Changers. “I really encourage people to eat foods that provide a lot of nutrients—there’s a difference, for example, between having a slice of white bread and whole-grain foods,” she says. “The nutrient value will carry you much longer.”
3. You’re not keeping track of what you’re eating.
It’s human nature to judge ourselves favorably, dismissing or underestimating our bad decisions and emphasizing our good ones, Dr. Weiner says.
Translation? You’re likely to pat yourself on the back for eating a salad on Tuesday, while overlooking the fact that you ate two bowls of B&J for dessert (and then still wonder why you’re not losing weight). Tracking your caloric intake in a visible, tangible way—like in a food journal or on an app—can help keep you accountable and “eliminate the bias we all have toward ourselves,” says Dr. Weiner.
4. You’re not eating enough plant-based protein.
Generally speaking, protein has benefits: It fills you up (which means you’ll eat less food over time) and also helps you build muscle, skin, and healthy bones. But when it comes to weight loss, not all protein is created equal. Dr. Weiner warns about over-consuming animal protein—and the fat that typically comes with it—because too much can lead to weight gain and other health problems like diabetes.
Plant-based protein, on the other hand, is different (think: legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains). You can eat higher amounts of these foods without worrying about negative effects on your health, Dr. Weiner says. “I’ve literally never seen a study suggesting that sources of plant protein like nuts cause weight gain,” he adds.
5. You’re not looking at the big picture.
Frustrated because you’ve been on your diet for three months and you’ve only lost, like, eight pounds? Before you freak out and try some new fad diet, think about whether your goal is just to lose as much weight as possible right this second, or to slim down healthily over time, so you can keep the weight off permanently.
“We tend to look at weight loss in the short term, when it’s actually a long-term problem,” says Dr. Weiner. “There will be individual ups and downs every day, just like there are in the stock market.”
Instead of taking a short-term POV on weight loss, consider looking at how your weight has changed over the past several years and how you would like to feel several years from now too.