Manage Your New Lifestyle Habits to Lose Weight

If you change your attitude and habits about consuming food, you can lose weight faster. Healthier new habits can make any menu plan or exercise program more effective than continuing to live with bad lifestyle habits. While crash diets may allow you to shed pounds quickly, most are impossible to stick with, and the weight can creep back over night. On the other hand, you can shed weight permanently simply by making smart lifestyle changes. Eating healthier and losing weight starts with a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry. Make your grocery list in advance and avoid the temptation of adding more indulgent foods to your cart. Little things you do as part of your daily routine can affect how much you eat and how much you move. So, your success or failure can depend more on managing new daily habits than on the food choices you make.

Tips for Eating and Living Healthier

Although it might sound counterintuitive, stop thinking about losing weight and commit to living a healthier life. In fact, start by adopting the healthier lifestyle tips discussed below:

• Watch Portion Sizes – Studies suggest, when people are given large portion sizes, they eat double the calories without realizing it. To add insult to injury, portion sizes today are larger than they have ever been.
• Embrace Your Future – In addition to how you look, take note of how you feel. If you can walk farther or run faster, it means you are getting stronger and building fat-burning muscles.
• Get Moving – Although anything is better than nothing, three ten-minute walks per day can be just as good as one thirty-minute workout. Nonetheless, start slowly and add small amounts of physical activity each day.
• Add Fiber to Your Menus – Dietary fiber expands and slows emptying of the stomach, which sends chemical signals to the brain that you should stop eating. Important gut bacteria feed off insoluble fiber and produces vital short-chain fatty acids.
• Eat More Protein – Protein suppresses the hunger hormone (ghrelin). Moreover, protein is digested more slowly and keeps you feeling full longer, which means fewer food cravings.

Don’t rely on a weight loss app instead of listening to your body. Tracking calories can become obsessive and backfire, leaving you out of touch with your hunger (leptin) and satiety (ghrelin) signals.

No One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Losing Weight

Many people live much of their life at the same weight range without counting calories. Truth is their body has achieved the right energy balance to support homeostasis. Although there are relatively harmless amounts of natural trans fats in meat and dairy products, it is artificial trans-fat that creates damaging inflammation and contributes to insulin resistance and bad cholesterol levels. While it is true that cutting certain foods from your menu plan is a good idea, it also turns out that adding important nutrients can help you lose weight more efficiently. There is no one-size-fits-all menu plan for losing weight and keeping it off, but consuming fewer calories can help. Nonetheless, you do not want your body to feel like its starving, so it is important to nourish yourself along your journey.