12 Healthy Weight Loss Tips

Most healthy weight loss tips are common sense. Even so, hopefully you can dig a few nuggets of wisdom out of what you're about to read.

A woman following an exercising routine as one of the 12 healthy weight loss tips

To lose a pound of fat, you need to burn off 3,500 calories. And the fact is, to do that, you have to eat right, exercise, and boost metabolism. There's almost no other way to lose weight unless you want to resort to drugs or surgery.

So if you're overweight, the best healthy weight loss tips are ones that face the facts. Here are a few things you and I can probably agree on:

  • Dieting, as in “I'm going on a diet,” does not work.

  • Willpower does not work.

  • Hating yourself for eating foods you enjoy does nothing worthwhile for you.

  • Depriving yourself of food does not work long term for weight loss.

  • There is no such thing as spot reducing a particular part of your body. This is ridiculous.

Here's what else I know about healthy weight loss tips from everything I've read. You can be overweight and still be healthy. On the flip side, you can be slender as a reed and be unhealthy.

I think the goal of weight loss is not to get as skinny as a model, but rather to reach a weight where you are healthy, feel healthy, and have more energy.

In addition, if you use a cpap machine for sleep apnea, losing weight may help you to get away from it. If you snore loudly, losing weight may help you improve so you don't snore as much.

Here are the healthy weight loss tips

1. Shut Your Eyes and Lose Weight

This is perhaps the most important of the healthy weight loss tips because it's a significant breakthrough in the fight against being overweight. And it will help you take action on the other 11 tips that follow. What I'm about to show you can almost effortlessly help you lose weight.

  • You're going to finally discover why you have not been able to keep those pounds off...

  • You're going to see exactly what the number one key to weight loss is...

  • You're going to uncover a safe way to stick to any diet you choose...

And you're going to see that this method is even approved by the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association.

It's clinically proven to work better than just about anything else you may have tried for losing weight. What is it? Click here to see all the details about medical hypnosis.

Or click here to see stunning results men and women are getting using hypnosis. (Both links open a new browser window.)

Imagine actually enjoying weight loss!

2. Get more sleep! Sleep deprivation can lead to weight gain. How? First of all, sleep deprivation can lower your metabolism. Secondly, going to bed at a decent hour instead of watching television can save you a few hundred calories because you won't be snacking on chips, cookies, or ice cream. And third, new research has shown that sleepy people make poor food choices, especially for foods with saturated fats.

3. Preload your meals. Research shows that preloading is proving to be an effective weight loss technique because it helps a person feel fuller. Hence, they eat less at meal time which reduces overall calorie intake.

What you do is eat a nutritious, low calorie food about 20 minutes or so before you eat your meal. Particularly effective is consuming foods with high water content, like soup. However, some research has shown that solid foods, such as an apple or a salad, work just as well.

4. Drink more water, preferably filtered. You can even preload your meals by drinking water beforehand. Avoid plastic water bottles whenever possible and drink out of stainless steel or glass containers instead. Unfortunately, you can't buy water in stainless steel containers, so bring your own when you go out. (Why avoid plastic? See below for my article called Hidden chemicals that make people fat.)

5. Eat what you enjoy. I wouldn't call the following advice healthy weight loss tips, but the reality is, within reason, you can eat almost anything you want, as long as it's in moderation. Whether it's high fructose corn syrup, white sugar, alcohol, soda pop, fast foods, or any other food or drink, it's the calories for the most part that count.

I know this sounds like blasphemy, but you are far better off having a couple pieces of pizza rather than starving and depriving yourself. If you starve yourself, your body will actually hold on to your fat. The key is whether you can eat one cookie, have one beer, or whatever food you enjoy, and stop at that. Sure it's tough. So is life.

6. However, eating healthier foods, and developing a long-term strategy of eating, especially more fruits and vegetables, will make you feel better physically. The fiber in these foods will make you feel fuller, and they have far fewer calories than a candy bar. And you probably have experienced the blood sugar drop that comes from eating too many sugary foods. That in turn may make you want to eat more.

7. Consider drinking weight loss smoothies in the form of a daily protein shake for breakfast. You need good protein to keep muscles fit. Fit muscles in turn can help you burn more fat. I've been drinking protein smoothies recently. They are a great way to fill up in the morning and provide outstanding nutrition.

I combine a scoop of vegetable protein powder, 1/2 to 3/4 cup soy milk, a banana, and 1/2 cup frozen blueberries and blackberries or raspberries. Then I blend the heck out of it. Delicious! And you can adjust ingredients as you see fit.

8. Build muscle. This may be the most important of all the healthy weight loss tips. You can help boost your metabolism by strengthening your muscles, either lifting weights, doing pushups, or doing yoga or other stretching. You can also boost metabolism with interval training (see below).

9. Let's face it. When it comes to healthy weight loss tips, daily exercise is king. Exercise is THE essential key to getting healthy and dropping weight. You simply cannot lose weight if you are not active, and I'm sure you already know that.

Only 31 percent of U.S. adults report that they engage in regular leisure-time physical activity (defined as either three sessions per week of vigorous physical activity lasting 20 minutes or more, or five sessions per week of light-to-moderate physical activity lasting 30 minutes or more). About 40 percent of adults report no leisure-time physical activity. (This information comes from WIN, see below.)

If more people made a concerted effort to be more active on a daily basis, we could do away with most of the other healthy weight loss tips and still lose weight.

A few years back I got a little rounder than I wanted to be. Doing nothing else but hiking and riding an exercise bike I was able to drop 25 pounds. Still ate whatever I wanted.

10. Do interval training. This is one of the healthy weight loss tips that can be demanding. So you need to be in fairly decent shape. Martin Gibala, a professor at McMaster University, has shown that you can burn more fat over several weeks time by exercising more intensely. For example, pedal faster for one minute on an exercise bike (95% of maximal heart rate), then rest for 75 seconds. Do that eight to twelve times for a total exercise period of 20 to 25 minutes.

11. Get a good pair of walking shoes and find a friend you can start walking with. This can help you stay motivated. You can even use interval training when walking.

After you warm up with some easy-going walking, walk fast for a minute, rest for a minute, speed up for a minute, rest for a minute. Do that for 20 to 30 minutes.

12. Start small and go from there. Getting started with exercise is always the hardest part. Work with your doctor; get a physical. Then start small. Five minutes of walking is better than nothing.

Keep this in mind: small goals reached are better than big goals abandoned. And using medical hypnosis tip number 1 above can help you reach and stick to your goals.

And lastly, as I pointed out in a previous issue of my newsletter Sleep Chat, one of the strangest healthy weight loss tips is: watch out for those hidden chemicals that make people fat!

Here are more articles you will find helpful

6 Good Weight Loss Foods

Can Weight Loss Be A Natural Cure for Sleep Apnea?

Discover How to Avoid Snoring Starting Tonight

Return From Healthy Weight Loss Tips to Sleep Disorders Home Page

References for Healthy Weight Loss Tips

  1. The Weight-control Information Network (WIN), a national information service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

  2. The Journal of Physiology, March 2011. Research by Martin Gibala, PhD.

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