Start Losing!

1. Clear your Kitchen of Processed & Calorie Dense Food - Clear your kitchen of all food that comes out of a packet. Also gather all types of sodas, cookies, cakes, desserts and anything else that has lots of sugar in it. These food are usually dense in calories and will not help in your weight loss efforts. If you have other people in the house that eat this food, seek their cooperation to place all this type of food in a box in a central location. It becomes much more difficult to resist temptation, if its all around you.

2.  Have Your Favourite Fruits Available – You should reach out to this when you feel like snacking. These fruits should replace all the junk food that you would usually eat. There need not be a limitation as to how much fruit you can eat in a day. The human body has its own natural limits and will make it known to you when it has had enough.

3.  Have a Hearty Breakfast – Having breakfast is an essential step  for losing weight. Studies have found that people who skip breakfast, tend to store more fat in the abdominal section as compared to people who have breakfast. For more information on this, read “Breakfast Skippers Beware! You Could Be Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Efforts!“

4.  Have 3 Main meals and 2 Snacks – Your 3 main meals should be breakfast, lunch and dinner. You should try and have a snack between breakfast and lunch and another snack between lunch and dinner. Your meals should ideally be placed 2 to 3 hours apart. Sustainable weight loss depends on a healthy metabolism. A healthy metabolism can be attained by eating healthy food regularly. The best choice for a snack is fruit or nuts.

5. Plan Your Meals in Advance- Unless one plans, he or she is going to find it very difficult to find healthy food in the coffee shop next to the office. A lot of people never really think about their coming meals, unless they are cooking it. This is because there is abundance of food choices available around us. The challenge is that these spontaneous food choices are not the best options to help you lose weight. Consciously think of your 3 meals and 2 snacks for the next day. This gives you time to make alternative arrangements if the need arises.

6. Never Go for Second Helpings – This single step can give you a major boost in your weight loss initiative. A lot of people consume a lot of unnecessary calories with second helpings

7.  Tapper Your Calories Across the Day - Your largest meal should be breakfast. The smallest meal of the day should be dinner. Consuming a larger part of your calories in the earlier part of the day will keep your energy levels up. It would be very unlikely to store the morning calories as fat. That is provided off course that you are eating healthy. Heavy meals consumed in the later part of the day have a higher tendency to be stored as fat. Your metabolism dips when you are a sleep. All the calories from a heavy dinner cannot be used once you are asleep. The body will be forced to store these calories as fat.

8  Reduce Sugar Consumption to 2 Teaspoons a Day - Sugar contains a lot of empty calories. Be aware of your sugar consumption. Do not drink sweetened drinks or sodas at any time of the day. Be aware of desserts, cookies and cakes.

9. Go To Bed at least 2 hours After Dinner - This provides sufficient time for the digestion process to take place. The digestion process works best when one is upright. One’s metabolism usually slows down after falling a sleep resulting in incomplete and sluggish digestion.

10. Avoid Having Fat and Sugar in the Same Meal - Fat and sugar in the same meal is a potent combination. This primes your body for fat storage.

11. Resolve to Start Exercising - You should make a commitment to start exercising. Your commitment could be as simple as starting to go for walks every day from tomorrow. You could also push yourself and get signed up with a gym.

credit: www.http://correct-weight-loss.net/2009/11/21/11-steps-you-could-take-today-to-start-losing-weight-tomorrow/