12 Simple Habits to Help You Lose Weight Faster

It is very easy to try to go on diet after diet or to take supplement after supplement… All in this vain attempt to look like the supermodels and bodybuilders, that we are bombarded with day after day on the television and in the advertisements of most of Corporate America.

The fact of the matter is that we can’t, in our wildest dreams all expect to look like them. It is simply not possible for everyone to have that type of body, but we can certainly do our best to shed the excess weight. While you may not come out looking like a supermodel, here are some tips and tricks that will help you shed the extra pounds you want to lose and help you to feel like the supermodel you dream of being.

1. Drink Water Before Meals

Drinking water before meals has been shown to help reduce appetite, which allows you to consume fewer calories during your meals. It also has been shown to help boost your metabolism to help you burn a few extra calories during the hour to an hour and a half after the meal.

2. Drink Coffee

Coffee may contribute to dehydration so drinking water as well is an outstanding idea. Good quality coffee is high in antioxidants, which helps to give your immune system a solid boost. Additionally, the caffeine in coffee has been shown to help boost metabolism and help you to burn more calories as well.

3. Drink Green Tea

Green tea contains small amounts of caffeine and large amounts of antioxidants. One of the specific antioxidants that is found in a large quantities in green tea works well with the small amount of caffeine it contains and helps you burn extra calories, so that you can lose some of that extra weight you’ve been wanting to drop.

4. Cooking with Coconut Oil

Coconut oil has been shown to have fats that are metabolized differently from other fats you may consume. These fats help to reduce your appetite and boost your metabolism by as many as 120 calories per day.

 

5. Reduce Your Sugar Intake

In a previous article, we discussed several negative impacts of sugar. We have found that even a lot of our so-called ‘health foods’ contain high amounts of added sugar. Sugar is one of the leading causes of obesity and diabetes and is one of the first things that should be cut from your diet if you are serious about wanting to lose that extra weight.

6. Eat More Whole Grains

Refined carbohydrates such as white bread and pasta have stripped away all of the nutritious and fiber-rich qualities of the grains. In doing so, we are feeding nothing but extra carbohydrates and sugars to our bodies. If we switch to a whole grain diet, we begin to consume all those healthy fibers as well and we can watch as we slowly strip away those extra pounds just by changing our diet a little at a time.

7. Switch To A Low Carb Diet

Most people can’t really handle this particular step in changing our diets. We find it extremely hard to eliminate bread, pastas, tortillas, and crackers from our eating habits. If you are one of the lucky people out there who can handle this particular step, low carb diets, have been demonstrated to help people lose weight two to three times faster than those who continue to eat carbohydrates as part of their regular diet.

8. Use Smaller Plates

This may not work for all of us but scientists have tried it and found that in many cases it causes an instant reduction in caloric intake for many of their subjects. The reduced size of the plate, even with full portion sizes on it, tricks the mind into thinking it is eating the normal amount of food and helps to make people feel full faster. This trick may help to keep you from eating your normal portion size because when you eat it or when you eat your second portion, you will generally not realize that those smaller plates are adding up to less than the larger plates you normally use.

9. Keep Healthy Food Around To Snack On

This one might seem to be a no-brainer but you’d be surprised at how often we actually keep junk food around to snack on instead of healthy foods. Healthy foods don’t necessarily mean carrots, celery, broccoli, and apples (although they are among some of the best snack foods to keep on hand), but it does mean keeping less of those sugary sweet treats and more of the snack foods that will help make you feel full quickly and on fewer calories than what those sweet or salty treats provide us with.

10. Brush Your Teeth After Dinner

While no scientific studies exist on this one, many people have indicated that by brushing their teeth after dinner, they find themselves far less likely to want to snack or eat anything else before bed because they don’t want to have to brush their teeth yet again. This may or may not work for you, but it is certainly something fun to try.

11. Eat Spicy Foods

Unfortunately, many people in our society can’t really do this. Acid reflux and heartburn seem to be consistently growing problems. If you are unaffected by these two issues, the capsaicin found in peppers and spicy foods helps to reduce your appetite and boost your metabolism. In this case, I guess you could say that by eating red hot spicy foods you can literally burn calories off your body.

12. Cardio, Cardio, Cardio

I know, I know. As we get older, we hate to run, jog, bike, or hike like we used to. We feel our age creeping up on us and it makes us feel tired and lazy. In this case, that doesn’t help us in even the slightest. Studies have shown that if you do aerobic exercise regularly (ie run a mile a day, work your way up from running short distances to longer distances, or participate in that marathon for your favorite charity) it not only helps you to burn calories but it can help to make you feel better about yourself.

That ‘runners high’ as a friend of mine once called it is actually because once you cross a certain threshold in the exercise routine, your body begins to release adrenaline and dopamine and a few other neurochemicals that help to keep you energized and feeling good. You may be tired as a dog afterwards, you may not want to do much of anything, but when you make a routine of it, you will find that you are less tired .