5 Great Tips On Losing Weight

Everyone you talk to seems to have dozens of tips on losing weight. Some are good common sense tips, but some seem to come out of left field.  Even people who can’t seem to successfully lose weight and keep it off, seem happy to offer up tips and advice to other people.  That’s a pretty good indication that many of us know the best advice and tips on losing weight, but we just don’t follow them very well. Here are some tips which, if you use them in your daily journey toward losing weight, can help you.

Use smaller plates. This is one of those tips on losing weight that often makes people roll their eyes.  It has nothing to do with eating or exercise, but it really does trick your mind into thinking you’re eating more food.  A smaller plate will look fuller than a large plate if they have the same amount of food on them. You might even naturally put less food on the smaller plate, to keep it from looking so loaded down.  It’s a mental trick, but you should try it because it works for many people.

Eat slowly. This is one of the oldest and most popular tips on losing weight. Have you ever watched a speed-eating contest?  Imagine someone eating the same amount of food as the winner, but imagine them eating it slowly.  The champion may have scarfed down 20 pies in very little time.  Could you actually sit down with a fork and slowly eat 20 pies?  It’s not likely.

The speed eater ate so fast, his body didn’t even have time to scream, “STOP, I’M FULL!” And if it had, he was only focused on putting more and more food in, just as we are when we’re “starving” and we gulp down our food.  Eat slowly and you’ll reach a pleasant feeling of fullness rather than the one that means you’ve eaten too much too fast.

Watch your portion sizes. If fried chicken is your favorite, you might start out with 2 or 3 pieces on your plate. Try grabbing one small piece instead, and filling up on salad or green veggies to replace those missing pieces of chicken. Try to keep a portion of food about the size of your fist. Those mashed potatoes that you don’t want to give up?  Still eat them, but stop after one small portion, instead of piling a mountain on your plate.

Don’t clear your plate. Of all the tips on losing weight, this one is often the hardest. As children we were taught not to turn down food because other people were starving.  We might have even gotten punished for “wasting food” and forced to eat it.

You’re not starving, and you can’t send that food to those who are, so do yourself a favor and don’t eat it. To avoid the guilt of wasting food, use another one of the good tips on losing weight and simply start out with less food on your plate next time.

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What To Do If I Can t Lose Weight

You’ve dieted, you’ve exercised, and you feel like no matter what you do you can t lose weight. Many people say that no matter what they’ve tried they can’t seem to drop any of their unwanted pounds.  Though the problem is the same, the reasons for having so much difficulty losing weight usually vary from person to person. Just like the same way of eating might not work as well for some people as it does for others, the problems associated with weight loss are bound to be different for many different people, too.

If you’ve been following a diet plan and still can t lose weight, you need to look very carefully at the diet and see if it’s really one that can work.  You’ll need to look at things like how many calories you eat a day on the plan, and whether your diet seems to be heavier in things like fat or dairy products, or whether it leans the other way and focuses mostly on fruits and vegetables. 

If the amount of calories you’re eating every day seems reasonable—enough to keep you healthy but low enough to let you burn fat—yet you can t lose weight while eating this way, it’s likely that the type of diet just doesn’t suit your metabolism.  If the diet is calorie-focused and allows things like white bread, flour, potatoes, pasta and sugar, trying cutting down on those items. Maybe the diet is too high in carbohydrates for you and that’s sabotaging your efforts.  Experiment to see if you start losing weight.

If the diet is already low carb and you can t lose weight on it, then maybe it’s gone too far in the other direction. Are you eating lots of red meat, fried foods, oil and other fats like butter?  Some low-carb diets claim you can eat these foods in almost unlimited amounts, but that’s simply not true. All that fat adds up to hundreds of calories, and no matter how few carbs you eat, a calorie is still a calorie.  It can be very easy to eat too many calories per day if you’re eating fatty meats, nuts or if you have lots of oil in your diet. 

If your diet really seems healthy, with lean meats, lots of vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables, some diary and little sugar or flour and you still can t lose weight, then you could be eating too few calories and causing your metabolism to slow. Or you’re eating much more food than you think you are.  Look at all the little snacks you have throughout the day, no matter how healthy they are.  

Try keeping a journal and writing down everything you eat each day, including anything you drink that has calories in it like soda or coffee with cream.  If you can t lose weight because you’re eating more than you think, a week or so of logging the details of your diet should start to show you where those extra calories are sneaking in.

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