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Tricks to Help Lose Weight

No matter what they say losing weight is not easy we are all looking for tricks to help lose weight. A weight loss program will succeed only if you are 100% committed to your goal and are willing to work hard to get rid of your excess pounds. Fortunately, there are a few simple tricks to lose weight that will make the task easier. With a few simple changes, you can get the ball rolling and start losing weight.

Tricks to Help Lose Weight – Change What You Eat

You are what you eat. If you continue eating high-calorie, high-fat foods, you will never have that lean and trim body you have always wanted. A few simple changes in the food you eat can help you shed pounds.

Reduce your consumption of red meat. Burgers and steaks are high in calories and cholesterol. Instead of red meat, build your meals around chicken, lean pork, and fish. The method of preparation also counts. Avoid deep-fried meats or preparation methods that call for creamy, high-calories sauces. Opt for grilling, steaming, or baking.

Eliminate fried foods. Make healthier choices by grilling, roasting, boiling, or baking to reduce the amount of fat in your foods.

Keep your kitchen stocked with herbs and spices to boost flavor without adding calories.

If you must eat fast foods, choose wisely. Have a grilled chicken sandwich and a salad on the side. Watch the dressing, as it could add unwanted calories.

Start with soup or salad. A fresh salad with vinaigrette dressing or a broth-based soup can help curb your hunger and control portion sizes.

Have some fruit for dessert instead of cake, cookies or ice cream. The natural sugar in fruits will satisfying your craving for sweets while adding fiber, vitamins and minerals to your diet. In time, you’ll learn to forgo high-calorie desserts and reach for healthier fruits instead.

Changing your eating will make a huge difference to how your body metabolizes the food as well as storing fat. You want to make sure that your blood sugar does not fluctuate and and by using these tricks to help lose weight by evening out your diet this will happen.  And finally these changes will help you to not be hungry all day or bloated after big meals.

Tricks to Help Lose Weight – Change What You Drink

Many people are surprised to learn that calories also lurk in beverages and drinks. Cutting back on liquid calories can make a big difference in your weight loss plan. Here are a few tricks to reduce calories in your drinks and help you lose weight.

Tricks to Help Lose Weight

Tricks to Help Lose Weight

Put a ban on soda. Eight ounces of regular Coca Cola contains approximately 97 calories. If you drink several glasses of soda every day, you could easily rack up 500 calories or more of empty calories.

Ditch that diet drink. If you think switching to a diet drink is a smart move, think again. Sugar-free drinks may not help you lose weight after all. Apart from the potential health hazard of artificial sweeteners, diet drinks increase your cravings for sweet foods and can make you binge on high-calorie, sugar-laden foods.

Cut down on alcoholic beverages. They are high in calories and can give you a beer belly. Reduce or eliminate your alcohol consumption.

Drink water. When you are thirsty, drink plenty of water. It quenches your thirst, helps eliminate toxins and waste products in the body, and contributes to overall health. Best of all, it’s calorie-free.

The most important tricks to help lose weight is not exercise but instead what you eat and drink. When changing your diet you need to make sure that you make changes over time and you will find as you make changes that your metabolism will increase all the time.

At the same time your body will not change your leptin levels which would cause your body to start storing more fat. Using all of these eating and drinking tricks to help lose weight should help you to lose weight fast.


Tricks to Help Lose Weight

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Weight Loss Exercise

Carbohydrates for Energy


There are essentially three types of diets these days. There is the Atkins diet which stresses low to zero carbs. There is the low fat diet which stresses no fats and there is a vegetarian diet which stresses low fat and low protein but allows higher carbohydrates.

Today I would like to demystify the need for carbs. And then in the future we can deal with fats and protein as well as what diet is best.

Where to find Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the main component of grains, rice, fruits and vegetables. You essentially need carbohydrates for energy and fibre. When your body is looking for a source of energy it tends to use the simplest form available. The very simplest form of energy is glucose and although this is pure table sugar its next closest form is found in fruits as sucrose. These carbohydrates are called simple carbs because they are easy for your body to break down into energy.

If your body can not find one of these sources of sugar for energy it will move down the food chain and try one of the next most easily available carbs next would be grain based or what we look at as ‘white’ carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, or rice. (Chocolate bars although not an official food group are closer to sugar than veggies or other carbs). Your body will use any of the complex carbs as well as vegetables for fuel before moving to fats or proteins.

Now that we can see where our carbs site in the energy chain it is a good idea to see what happens when we eat one and what happens to our energy from them. When you eat a sugar it immediately increases your blood sugar otherwise known as your insulin level.

What happens when you rely on sugar?

When you blood sugar spikes from sugar, chocolate, or pop you will get a bit of a euphoric feeling from this extra unneeded energy but because it is quick pickup it is also a quick drop for energy and thus you will get a sugar crash 30-45 minutes after the initial energy peak, this is very bad and bad for your body. If on the other hand you only had potatoes or bread or rice for your carbs you would have no nice spikes but no crashes either and would feel after a couple days on a very more even keel, you would feel like you energy is pretty good all the time but never to low or to high. This is the key that we are looking for.

Tomorrow I will write more about bad foods just for a nice way to start minimizing them not to scare people away from them. But now you know energy wise why you would rather get you energy from more complex carbs than simple carbs.

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Meal Sizes and Frequency


Meal sizes and frequency are very important. Over the years people are amazed by how much food I eat at work in a day and part of this can probably be explained by decent genetics but more importantly I make sure that I have a higher metabolism by eating more smaller meals.

Most people will eat Breakfast lunch and dinner or even less often as in the case of my parents where the only real meals are breakfast and dinner. I on the other hand eat at 7:30, 10:00 12:00 3:00 5:30 and 8:00. I have been eating six times a day for years. My only large meal is dinner the other feedings are smaller snacks even lunch and breakfast.

There are a few reasons to eat small meals often:

  • One reason to eat a smaller meal is that your body can not metabolize as much food as the average North American eats so some is wasted and some is stored as fat.
  • Secondly, if you go a long time between meals your body stores food as fat to get you between meals when your blood sugar drops.
  • Thirdly, you blood sugar will fluctuate a lot during the day if you have a big meal then a long break and then another meal and you will feel your energy constantly going up and down.
  • Fourthly, you can really vary what you eat and enjoy food more when you do not have four or five things to eat at a time.

Here is a sample of what my day will have for food:

7:30 Bagel and Natural Peanut Butter
10:00 Apple, protein bar, coke
12:00 Frozen lunch entrée or leftovers from last nights dinner
3:00 banana, chocolate bar and a granola bar
5:30 a regular dinner, Meat, vegetables and maybe desert
8:00 popcorn or fruit

You will notice that this is not the best diet, I really have some work to do still but the meals are spaced and the sizes are smaller.

One of the most important ways to look at food and meals is that you should eat six meals a day and each of these meals should have about 30 grams of protein and 50 grams of carbohydrates. This kind of meal is important as it will give you the energy you need to get through a great day including a hard workout. With a meal this size as well you should not gain weight and you should not waste any protein, your body can assimilate this much protein every three hours or so.

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