Ten Best Ways to Lose Weight and Keep it Off

Ten honest ways to tweak your lifestyle into one that caters to a lighter, healthier and happier you.

Many of us are willing to sacrifice our health and go against all reason in order to lose weight. Or we let the newest diet fad tell us that there's no need to exercise or change our eating habits as long as we send some cash their way, a.k.a. buy whatever new weight-loss product they're pushing. Uh, unless that product is sheer magic, there's really no way. Unfortunately a lot of us are so desperate to lose weight that we'll try anything--myself included. After several years of trial and error dieting, however, I've finally found the winning method--one that not only helps you lose weight and keep it off, but which is also natural and healthy. Read on and I'll let you in on the tips that work like magic, but make sense.

1. Stop whatever diet you're on. Before we move on, I need to make it clear that there is no calorie counting, carbohydrate omitting, or diet-pill consuming beyond this point. If you want to lose weight, you'll have to throw those habits away. Seriously. I am about to propose a food habit that has limitations, but does not call on restriction. It may be daunting and difficult for some to follow at first, but it does not cripple your ability to enjoy food, like most diets out there I'm aware of. And if you're thinking of the ones that let you eat whatever you want as long as you buy their product or follow their point system, think again. They don't work, and if they do, they're not the healthiest way you could be eating.

2. Become a vegetarian. Cutting most meats from your diet will inspire gradual weight-loss, especially if you populate your diet with plenty of vegetables, whole-grains, and fruit. This is not to say that you should cut protein out of your diet altogether; get it from other sources like dairy, beans, and nuts so you don't develop a nutritional deficiency. And it's alright to take this step gradually, or by degrees: try cutting all red meat out of your diet first, and see how eating just poultry makes you feel for a while. I'm actually a pescetarian, meaning I'm a vegetarian except that I still eat fish and other seafood as a healthy way to get my protein.

3. Eat carbs! But make sure they're Whole Grain. Refined carbohydrates, which unfortunately make up the majority of the carbohydrates we can purchase at the grocery store, are responsible for the bad-rap that carbs have recently acquired. Their sugars, once ingested, turn mostly to fat. Thus, refined grains have roughly the same effects on the body as sugar does.

Also: Make sure you don't confuse "whole-grain" with "whole wheat" or "multi-grain." These other terms may sound like they're also the healthier choice to refined grains, but they're still not "whole-grain", the definition being that the wheat germ is still entirely intact, and therefore contains all the grain's natural vitamins and no synthetic additives.

4. Listen to your body. Stopping eating when you're full is much more difficult than it sounds, as the idea is simple. But moderation is key. You don't have to finish everything that is on your plate. Remember that if you're not hungry now, you'll always be hungry again later, and you can finish enjoying your food when that time comes.

Try to take the time to savor your meals as well. If you eat slowly and consciously you will become aware that you are full sooner, and ultimately you'll eat less.

5. on that note, Don't skip meals. In order to lose weight, it's important to eat often. Skipping meals may make you feel like you're eating less, but the longer you make yourself go hungry the more likely you are to binge later on. This kind of restriction also has a reverse effect on the way your body processes food. The less frequently you eat, the more your metabolism slows down in order to conserve energy and nutrients, so it actually becomes more difficult to lose weight.

6. Exercise regularly. You may go "Duh!" here, but plenty of people think they can ignore this rule and just eat less. This misguided method may actually seem to work when you get on the scale to see the results, but not if you want to keep that new low number. Eating less and restricting yourself will just make you want to eat a whole lot more, and eventually you will. Don't get swept up on the binge-wagon; supplement healthful and satisfying meals with thirty minutes of cardio a day. That's a half-hour of your day devoted to exercise--I don't ask for much. And it doesn't have to be a chore: if you're just not a runner, try swimming or riding a bike. And don't feel obligated to do every workout in the pool either. Try changing it up with running, biking, swimming, or a cardio kick-boxing class if you're afraid you'll grow bored too fast. Make it entertaining and enjoyable, whatever you decide to do. And the more ways you have to exercise, the harder it will be to come up with an excuse not to do any of them.

7. Say good-bye to pop and soda. Yes, your heretofore guilt-free Diet Coke is not helping you at all. You might actually be doing yourself one better by drinking regular pop (though I wouldn't recommend that either). According to a 2005 study, regular soda drinkers who consumed 1 to 2 cans a day had a 32.8% risk of becoming overweight or obese. For diet pop drinkers, the risk increased to 54.5%.

8. Then say good-bye to Fast Food. We all know fast food is bad for us, so why do we eat it? Because it's so good! Well, so it is. But if your health and your wellness mean anything to you, you'll give up those Mc---s right here, right now, for life. We need to realize that fast food is, in actuality, more of a food-like substance than actual food. Food isn't fast! You can get a burger in less than a minute now because it's loaded with preservatives and special additives to keep it tasty and instantly ready to eat. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the myriad chemicals packed into fast food are responsible for the world-wide increase in obesity (high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamite (MSG), and sodium nitrate, to name a few). Furthermore, a study performed by David Ludwig, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard University, found that on days when children ate fast food, they consumed an average of 126 more calories than they did on the days when they did not eat fast food. This could mean 13 pounds of weight gain in one year.

9. Finally, say good-bye to processed food. Let's face it: anything that comes in a can, a carton, or a box--namely, anything that caters to our grab-and-go lifestyle is fast food, which means the majority of food items at the grocery store are about as good for your body as the highly processed hamburgers you can eat at fast food joints. To help you navigate the grocery store and steer clear of processed foods, a couple good rules of thumb are to watch out for foods that list ingredients you can't pronounce or have never heard of, and to watch out for foods that contain more than five ingredients.

10. Learn how to cook. When you can cook your own meals you have control over what you're eating and how it is prepared. You'll know exactly what's in your food and just how healthy it is, and there's no way you can't feel good about that, let alone having prepared your own meal!

To sum it up, just focus on your health! Having a weightier reason (pun intended?) other than to lose weight for maintaining a healthy diet gives even more incentive to keep eating by these guidelines; so make it your goal to get healthy by living an active life and eating nutritionally rich, natural foods, and the weight-loss will faithfully follow.

References:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050613/drink-more-diet-soda-gain-more-weight

www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/10/19/all-the-health-risks-of-processed-foods----in-just-a-few-quick-convenient-bites.htm