Long term weight loss is easily achievable as long as you set some reasonable goals. A good rule of thumb using any good diet plan is that you can healthily lose 2 pounds (1 kilo) per week on average. Try setting a long term goal,and then breaking it down into short term way points. For example, if you want to lose 30 pounds try saying “I will have lost 10 pounds by this date, 20 pounds by this date, and 30 pounds by my goal date”. Breaking your weight loss goals down into steps in this way will help you make sure you are on track. Don’t worry if you don’t quite reach a goal – you will get there in the end, and you can use this as an opportunity to see where you might need to make more changes to your diet or exercise.
Once you have your goals set for weight loss, it’s time to evaluate your caloric intake, and the type of foods you eat. Avoid eating greasy or sugary foods, which are full of empty calories and high fat content, and try to fill your meals with lean meats, fresh fruits, and steamed vegetables, which provide nutritious tasteful meals and are great weight loss foods.
Eating unhealthy food is won’t help you lose weight but eating too much good food and at the wrong times, such as before sleeping, can also hinder progress, so try to program your eyes to “sight measure” your food. At first use measuring cups at home to train yourself to measure portions visually, and once you are confident then you can graduate to “visually measuring” without the cups. This will give you confidence when eating out, and you wont be prone to over-eat.
A very good point to keep in mind is to focus on eating low GI foods. Low GI foods are those that are digested more slowly, helping you avoid a sudden peak in your blood sugar levels. Check our sidebar for links to charts showing the GI value of foods.
Another good tip is to try splitting your daily meals up to 6 small meals or 3 normal size meals with small snacks between. There are many resourceful recipe books available to guide you towards delicious healthy recipes.
The best way to control your caloric intake is to divide your daily calories up between meals, snacks, and beverages. You should aim to drink 64oz. of water everyday, and replace all carbonated drinks, and sugary juices with water. If you don’t like the taste of water try adding a capful of lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, or unsweetened fruit juice for flavor, and soon enough you wont go anywhere without your water bottle.
Now comes the fun part, exercise! We are all aware of how important exercise is for weight loss, but many people lack the extra activity needed to burn the extra calories they have consumed. When you consume the correct amount of calories to lose weight for your body type, then any extra activity you do will really help to shed pounds. You need to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound of fat, and with a healthy diet and continued activity that pound is gone forever.
Here is a great formula to follow and help set your daily activity goals. Caloric intake minus activity calories burned equals daily calories burned. For example, if your caloric intake was 1800 calories, and you have burned 2800 calories from exercise, then you burned 1000 calories of fat. Continue this for four days and you would have burned 4000 calories, which equals one pound of fat! Check out our links section for information on how many calories you can burn with different exercises.
Try making exercise fun by playing sports, dancing, gardening, swimming, playing with children, and even cranking up the radio while housecleaning. Any vigorous activity is great so exercise doesn’t have to be boring. If you have some exercise equipment like a bike or treadmill, these are great activities as well. Staying motivated to be active, committed to eating healthy, and having fun are they keys to meeting your long term weight loss goals. And as we have said before, follow the Quick Weight Loss Diet to get your diet started with a bang.