10 Weight Loss Tips For the Body You Deserve

The tips you MUST know to lose weight effectively

Weight loss can be a difficult journey if you don’t have the know-how. In this article, we’ll be sharing 10 of the best weight-loss tips to help you reach your goals.

  1. Get tested

Before investing time and effort, it’s worth taking the time to get tested by your physician. An underlying medical condition could be putting a dampener on your progress – even if you’re doing everything else right! Conditions like hypothyroidism, candida overgrowth or food intolerance could be affecting the way your body processes food.

If you are tested positive for something, the doctor will place treatment plans into play for you. Just remember not to start using your condition as an excuse; instead, use it as motivation – this is something that you can and will overcome.

  1. Don’t do diets

The most successful athletes aren’t on a diet, they have a diet: fad diets aimed at short-term weight-loss are never the answer to the long-term problem of health.

“Yo-yo dieting” is a term coined that describes the path people take when they’re on fad diets. These diets are effective in the short-term but once you finish the diet, you will likely find yourself rapidly returning to your starting point, often with worse health.

This is due to the alterations to your metabolism by rapid changes in calorie and nutrient intake. By yo-yo dieting between phases of under- and over-eating, you end up disrupting your metabolism’s natural pattern. The negative impacts of this can last long after the end of the diet such as reduced bone density, muscle loss and damage to organs.

Research shows that the only way to effectively lose weight, and keep it off, is by making long-term changes to your lifestyle. Changes in lifestyle will include adapting to a healthier diet and taking regular exercise. These changes will not be quick but are worth the effort and have many benefits to your health and wellbeing.

  1. Don’t eat before bed

Going to bed on a full stomach will negatively impact your sleep quality and your weight loss progress – but not for the reasons you might think.

The most important thing to do if you want to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. The timing of food is not hugely important, but there is some truth in the argument that your body will burn extra fat overnight if you go to bed on an empty stomach. The main issue that ties eating and sleeping together is the effect that sleep has on the digestion and hormonal processes.

During sleep, the digestion of food is slowed down. This is not bad but can cause discomfort and trouble sleeping, as well as contributing to indigestion and acid reflux. Improper digestion can be a real problem, so stick to easy-digesting foods like blueberries, bananas, or a casein protein before bed – avoid meat and other fermentable foods.

  1. Have a role model

A huge part of success in any field is adopting the right attitude. Everyone goes through bad days and setbacks when trying to reach their weight loss and fitness goals, what’s important is the structure and habits that you have in place to combat this.

Reading self-help books, watching educational or exercise-related videos, and listening to podcasts of health and fitness can all provide the boost you need to stay on track.

It also helps to find someone to hold you accountable to your goals. Hiring a personal trainer, or even just recruiting the help of friends or online communities can give you a huge boost to your motivation and confidence.

Make sure you find the correct balance, however: obsessing over Instagram models and fitness gurus is counter-productive if you’re just going to put yourself down. Use these sources to create a positive mental attitude, not a negative one. 

  1. Wear a waist trainer while you eat

Waist trainers are garments that wrap tightly around your waist and act to compress your stomach. Modern-day waist trainers are made from a mix of latex, cotton and spandex and do not damage your organs or rib cage.

The benefit of wearing the waist trainer while you eat is that it will make you much more conscious of how much food you are putting into your body. This is useful in preventing yourself from overeating, especially if you eat for fullness rather than satisfaction!

You can check out our luxxcurves waist trainer collections HERE!

  1. Eat clean at least 6 days a week

Clean eating is, roughly-speaking, the idea of doing away with junk food and eating more whole, natural foods.

At its root, this is an excellent concept. By cutting out processed foods, you will be removing high proportions of excess fat, sugar and salt that you are currently putting into your body. This is a huge benefit to your weight loss and overall health.

However, Clean eating does present us with its own set of problems. Vast volumes of pseudoscience are plastered everywhere and it’s about time started questioning where the facts end, and the fantasy begins. For example, the media scare about gluten and leaky gut syndrome has pushed clean eating to exclude whole grains, one of the healthiest foods in existence – not to mention this only occurs in coeliac disease!

It is not at all clear why ‘eating clean’ should include complete avoidance of gluten, certain carbohydrates and all dairy products, would keep people healthy. As stated by the British Dietetic Association: “Carbohydrates are crucial; they represent the body’s main energy supply” and moderation in these foods has been shown to be the best course of action.

Clean eating is also beginning to damage children whose parents buy into these fads on behalf of their whole family. ’Muesli-belt Malnutrition’ is a worrying trend, first noticed by doctors in the late 1990s. The fear of gluten, milk and other newly unfashionable foods is leading to larger and larger proportions of children in well-developed countries suffering from malnutrition.

The conclusion we need to draw on clean eating is a tentative one. Yes, you should cut out processed food from your diet where you can, but don’t demonize all processed foods. If you choose a fresh, homemade chicken pasta salad over a big-mac at lunchtime, you are guaranteed to feel fuller for longer, gain more nutrients, and see some fantastic changes to your body. But the occasional big mac isn’t going to kill you, and a ‘clean eating’ diet shouldn’t stigmatize perfectly healthy foods.

  1. Eat lots of raw veggies

We’ve already told you the benefits of eating more whole and unprocessed foods and raw vegetables are an excellent example of how you can implement this. 

Raw veggies have wonderful nutritional value and provide the fiber you need in your diet to maintain excellent digestive health. Eating raw veg will keep you satiated for longer, give you more energy and vitality in everyday life. You’ll also notice improvements in your skin, nail and hair due to the nutritional benefits.

An easy way of adding more raw veggies to your diet is to make sure to have a salad with every meal. If you really feel like you must snack between meals, try some carrot sticks, blueberries or kale crisps instead of a bag of chips.

  1. Lift weights

Lifting weights is a great way to challenge your body and will leave you feeling accomplished. As well as elevating mood and improving your mindset, lifting weights has some fantastic benefits on your body.

Building muscles mass is going to speed up your weight loss, improve your joint health and give you a much better shape. The more muscle you have that needs to be fueled and maintained, the higher you baseline metabolism is going to become, so you will burn more calories at rest.

It’s a big misconception that you’ll end up looking like a masculine bodybuilding by doing weight work – us ladies simply don’t have the hormones for it!

  1. Hiit cardio

The most effective exercise for weight loss isn’t about staying on the treadmill in the gym for as long as possible. A much more effective method of exercising for weight loss is High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

High-intensity exercise is going to induce a great rate of calorie burn than lower intensity exercise over the same space of time. If you’re looking to get/stay in shape, but have a busy schedule and competing time demands, HIIT is probably your best bet!

  1. Drink lots of water

Water is an essential ingredient in all your body’s metabolic reactions. If you are dehydrated, your metabolism is not working at maximum efficiency, slowing your rate of calorie use, and impacting on how quickly you can lose weight.

It might seem counterintuitive to drink more water if you feel you are already carrying a lot of water weight, but, there is no negatives what-so-ever in staying properly hydrated.

Our advice would be to purchase of big water bottle, somewhere between 1 and 2 liters. If you are carrying water with you all day, you will automatically drink more than you would otherwise. Try this for one day and see for yourself!  You can also try a fruit infuser or effervescent, if you need to add some flavour to your water.

 

Check out our videos on this topic:

Part 1:

Part 2:

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