Yes, you can lose weight even without changing your diet. You might be overwhelmed with all the kinds of diet plans—fads and novelties alike, and even crash diets. These diets might influence you in some way to try them out, but for some people, they never work. They follow them, but sometimes something happens and they’re back to where they were again—with all that weight. Introducing sudden and extreme changes to your body in terms of diet and exercise can even do more harm and damage than health benefits. What you can do is to retain your diet and make small changes instead, one step at a time, so your body can adapt to it without any adverse effects. Here are some tips on how you can do just that.
Eat less of what you usually eat. Yes, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t necessarily have to give up your favorite foods just to be trim. But what you should do is to eat less of them. One cookie a day will give you a lot of pounds in the future, as compared with once a week. When eating rice, potatoes and other high carbohydrate foods, limit them to half cup servings instead of the usual one cup. Take the leaner portion of meat and skip the fatty parts. When eating or planning meals, reduce portions by 10 to 20 percent. Take out all your smaller plates, cups, and bowls. Go easy on the calories. This may take some time and more commitment and self discipline on your part, but eventually, you will lose some pounds.
Increase physical activities. The cost of retaining your normal diet is that you should include more exercises and physical activities for faster weight loss. The key here is to always be active. Don’t let yourself fall back on a sedentary kind of life. Take at least 20-30 minute walks and exercises, do aerobics and yoga, walk your dog around the neighborhood, run, jog, play team sports or take up a new sport and hobby. Schedule these activities at least 3-4 times a week. Insert activities in between watching TV shows. During commercials you can do simple stretching or finish chores. Multi-task by using your exercise bike while watching TV. When going from one destination to another, walk if the way is not too far and dangerous. Get out from the bus or train one stop earlier than your destination and then walk the rest of the way. Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. If you have a lot of spare time, find something that you love doing—maybe volunteering or taking dance lessons—anything that can get you motivated to move around a lot.
Complete your meals. Some people think that skipping meals would help them lose weight. This is wrong. Skipping meals would only intensify your hunger that may tempt you take lots of unhealthy snacks and food or even binge eating. Always eat three healthy and balanced meals a day.
Hydrate. Always drink glasses of water everyday, especially after eating. Water cleanses the body and facilitates in proper metabolism. Drink hot tea (especially mint tea) after meals to also help with faster metabolism.
Hydrate. Always drink glasses of water everyday, especially after eating. Water cleanses the body and facilitates in proper metabolism. Drink hot tea (especially mint tea) after meals to also help with faster metabolism.
Gradually introduce healthier alternatives. Take the road to healthy living one step at a time. It doesn’t hurt to forego full cream milk and try skimmed milk instead. And if you’re someone who looks for a sweet dessert after a meal, try frozen fruit yogurt instead of ice cream. Some people are afraid to try healthier alternatives because they think they taste terrible. But what they don’t know is that most of these healthy alternatives not only make you feel satisfied, they actually taste good too.
Be resilient. Follow through with your goals and plans. Nothing would become of them if you don’t have self discipline and commitment. Eat healthy. Don’t be tempted to eat more than what you need.
Although it’s possible not to give up your favorite foods to lose weight, it might prove to be difficult for some because this requires an enormous amount of self discipline and commitment to be able to pull it off. If you have this kind of resilient attitude, eat less, and exercise a lot, your hard work will come out in the pounds that you lose.