5. Eat Only when Hungry
As important as it is to eat when you’re hungry, here’s a quick weight-loss tip: don’t eat when you’re not hungry—your body doesn’t need it.
Your brain may pay attention to the clock on the wall but your body doesn’t.
Sometimes we don’t feel hungry at meal time but we sit and eat anyway because everyone else is. Other times we feel a craving for something but aren’t really hungry or we might keep eating even after we feel full. Making a conscious decision on how to manage these situations is a critical weight loss trick.
If your family is sitting down to dinner but you’re not hungry yet, drink a cup of herbal tea at the table to benefit from the togetherness and interaction and wait for hunger to arise. It’s hard to not eat when someone else is; if you have something to sip on while others eat and your hands are occupied, you’ll get the aroma of food and the tea you’re drinking while hydrating and deriving the benefits of the herbs. A small snack later when you are hungry is better than forcing yourself to eat a full meal when you’re not.
If you’re not hungry but seem to be craving something sweet, it could be a sign of nutrient deficiency. Take a walk or make a glass of lemon-infused water with a little honey instead.
Eat slowly so that when your stomach is full, you know it. Stop eating before you feel stuffed.
6. Measure your Progress Wisely
Calorie counting isn’t especially helpful. Neither is stepping on a scale every day. Muscle weighs more than fat so body weight isn’t necessarily the only metric to monitor fat loss. Similarly, the body mass index can serve as a guide but is not an effective way to measure the success of your diet changes. You’ll know you’re losing weight by how you feel and how your clothes fit.
A good way to measure weight loss is to keep track of your waist circumference. Both women and men tend to store excess weight around the middle.
Here’s how to do it:
- Put a measuring tape around your waist, slightly above your belly button (to be exact: at the midpoint between your lowest rib and the top of your hip bone, at your side).
- Exhale and relax (don’t suck in your stomach).
- Make sure the measuring tape is horizontal and fits snugly, without compressing your skin.
- Measure.
- Compare your result to these recommendations from the CDC: men should have a waist circumference of no more than 40 inches. On the other hand, a non-pregnant woman should have a waist circumference of no more than 35 inches (6).
If you don’t have a measuring tape, you can use any string and cut it to fit around your middle before making any dietary changes. Use this string to measure the circumference against your starting point as time goes along. Note your waist circumference and measure again once a week before meals and see how well you’re doing!
Alternatively, other health factors will reflect your progress:
- Blood pressure – high blood pressure is often associated with carrying too much weight. A decrease in pressure means things are clearing up around your circulatory system.
- Blood sugar – high blood sugar often results from eating unhealthy foods and indicates the body’s efficiency in the metabolism of food. If your glucose is high, cutting carbs should lower it pretty quickly. Occasionally checking levels will tell you if the reduction in carbs is translating to better sugar metabolism.
- Cholesterol profile – high LDL (low-density lipoprotein) along with low HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol levels correlates with too much body fat and risk for cardiovascular and other diseases. Ideally, you want a better balance between the two. The optimal range for LDL is 65-80; for total cholesterol, it’s 125-165.
7. Be Persistent and Patient
You didn’t gain weight overnight and you can’t lose it that way. Sage advice for how to lose weight and keep it off: be reasonable in your expectations. As a guide:
As a guide:
- It’s common to lose 2-6 pounds (1-3 kg) within the first week on a strict low-carb diet, then (on average) about one pound (0.5 kg) per week as long as you have a lot of weight remaining to lose. This translates into about 50 pounds (23 kilos) per year.
- Every 5 pounds of fat loss roughly equals 1 inch lost around the waist (1 kilo = 1 cm).
Some demographics have a tendency to lose weight faster than others. Children and young men will lose weight faster than post-menopausal women, for example. Noticeable progress is more important than the numbers. You may start out losing weight faster and level off until your body feels it’s reached a comfortable weight. Increased physical activity will burn more fat faster. Don’t be discouraged at the inevitable weight loss plateaus you’ll hit along the way: it’s your body’s way of re-adjusting to changes in metabolism.
Maintaining a healthy weight requires permanent eating changes. If you lose weight and then go back to old eating habits, you’ll gain it back. Starting your weight loss journey is difficult but maintenance will be challenging too.
8. Don’t Overdo the Fruit
Here’s a specific weight loss tip for women: limit the amount of fresh fruit you eat. It may seem counter-intuitive because fruit is so exceptionally nutritious. The downside of fruit is that it contains a lot of natural sugar. Limiting sugar (even naturally-occurring) is important for losing weight. It’s not a black-and-white issue, however. The natural sweetness of fruit can help curb cravings for refined sugar. Moderation is the more common sense approach. For initial weight loss, replace a couple of your daily servings of fruit with lower-sugar vegetables to get your vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Once you’ve reached your weight goal, feel free to add back another piece or two of fruit to your regular daily diet.
9. Avoid Beer
Beer includes all 3 categories of carbohydrates: sugar, fiber, and starch. While there is some nutritional value to the drink, beer should be avoided to achieve weight loss. If you would like to indulge in alcohol, your best bet is distilled spirits: vodka, gin, whiskey, rum, and tequila contain zero sugar per ounce. Dry wine (red or white) has less sugar than sweet wine and is a better alcohol option if drunk in small amounts.
Beer contains 10-20+ grams of carbohydrates per 12-ounce glass. Dry red wine contains about 2 grams of carbs in a 6-ounce glass and dry white wine about 1 gram. Wine and spirits, however, have higher alcohol contents than beer. As far as calories per gram go, beer has fewer. All-in-all, wine is a better choice on a low-carb diet. (7)