Tips for effortless weight loss

Here’s how to loss weight without doing anything

Time Your Meals

Set a timer for 20 minutes and reinvent yourself as a slow eater. This is one of the top habits for slimming down without a complicated diet plan. Savor each bite and make them last until the bell chimes. Paced meals offer great pleasure from

smaller portions and trigger the body’s fullness hormones. When you wolf your food down in a hurry, your stomach doesn’t have time to tell your brain it’s full. That leads to overeating.

 

Sleep More, Weigh Less

Sleeping an extra hour a night could help a person drop 14 pounds in a year, according to a University of Michigan researcher who ran the numbers for a 2,500 calorie per day intake. Their scenario shows that when sleep replaces idle activities — and the usual mindless snacking — you can effortlessly cut calories by 6%. Results would vary for each person, but sleep may help in another way, too. There’s evidence that getting less than 7 hours of sleep revs up your appetite, making you uncommonly hungry.

 

When Soup’s On, Weight Comes Off

Add a broth-based soup to your day and you’ll fill up on fewer calories. Think minestrone, tortilla soup, or Chinese won-ton. Soup’s especially handy at the beginning of a meal because it slows your eating and curbs your appetite. Start with a low-sodium broth or canned soup, add fresh or frozen vegetables and simmer. Beware of creamy soups, which can be high in fat and calories.

 

Skip the Bacon

Pass on those two strips of bacon at breakfast or in your sandwich at lunchtime. This simple move saves about 100 calories, which can add up to a 10-pound weight loss over a year. Other sandwich fixings can replace the flavor with fewer calories. Think about tomato slices, banana peppers, roasted red bell peppers, grainy mustard, or a light spread of herbed goat cheese.

 

Build a Better Slice of Pizza

Choose vegetable toppings for pizza instead of meat and you may be able to shave 100 calories from your meal. Other skinny pizza tricks: Go light on the cheese or use reduced-fat cheese and choose a thin, bread-like crust made with just a touch of olive oil.

 Cut Back on Sugar

Replace one sugary drink like regular soda with water or a zero-calorie seltzer and you’ll avoid about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Add lemon, mint, or frozen strawberries for flavor and fun.

One study compared an extra 450 calories per day from jelly beans vs. soda. The candy eaters unconsciously ate fewer calories overall, but not so for the soda drinkers. They gained 2.5 pounds in four weeks.

 

Sip Smart: Use a Tall, Thin Glass

Use a tall, skinny glass instead of a short, wide tumbler to cut liquid calories — and your weight — without dieting. You’ll drink 25%-30% less juice, soda, wine, or any other beverage.

How can this work? Brian Wansink, Ph.D., says visual cues can trick us into consuming more or less. His tests at Cornell University found all kinds of people poured more into a short, wide glass — even experienced bartenders.

 

Sip Smart: Limit Alcohol

When an occasion includes alcohol, follow the first drink with a nonalcoholic, low-calorie beverage like sparkling water instead of moving directly to another cocktail, beer, or glass of wine. Alcohol has more calories per gram (7) than carbohydrates (4) or protein (4). It can also loosen your resolve, leading you to mindlessly inhale chips, nuts, and other foods you’d normally limit.

 

Sip Smart: Go for Green Tea

Drinking green tea may also be a good weight loss strategy. Some studies suggest that it can rev up the body’s calorie-burning engine temporarily, possibly through the action of phytochemicals called catechins. At the very least, you’ll get a refreshing drink without tons of calories.

 

Eat at Home

Eat home-cooked meals at least five days a week. A Consumer Reports survey found this was a top habit of “successful losers.” Sound daunting? Cooking may be easier than you think. Shortcut foods can make for quick meals, such as pre-chopped lean beef for fajitas, washed the lettuce, pre-cut veggies, canned beans, cooked chicken strips, or grilled deli salmon.

 

Chew Strong Mint Gum

Chew sugarless gum with a strong flavor when you’re at risk for a snack attack. Making dinner after work, socializing at a party, watching TV, or surfing the Internet are a few dangerous scenarios for mindless snacking. Gum with a big flavor punch overpowers other foods so they don’t taste good.

 

Shrink Your Dishes

Choose a 10-inch lunch plate instead of a 12-inch dinner plate to automatically eat less. Cornell’s Brian Wansink, Ph.D., found in test after test that people serve more and eat more food with larger dishes. Shrink your plate or bowl to cut out 100-200 calories a day and 10-20 pounds in a year. In Wansink’s tests, no one felt hungry or even noticed when tricks of the eye shaved 200 calories off their daily intake.

 

Eat more Vegetables

You’re aiming for 7 portions a day, with an absolute minimum of 5. This is easy to do if you are considering at least 2 or 3 portions for each meal. Plan your meal by starting with which vegetables you are going to include. Low in calories and high in fiber, they provide the perfect combination for weight loss, whilst of course also plenty of essential vitamins and minerals. Eating more fiber also helps you feel full, which will help you to avoid overeating and sabotaging your weight loss efforts.

Drink more water

Thirst is often mistaken for hunger and you can end up eating when actually you simply need to re-hydrate. Limit your choices to water and herbal teas only. Don’t forget that soups and smoothies also contribute to your fluid intake and can help to satiate hunger. Try this Healthy French Onion Soup Recipe for a nutritious twist on this classic soup.

 

Respond to your body’s signals

Eat when you’re hungry and not necessarily because you feel you ought to and then only eat the meals you have planned. Do not make a quick grab for something less healthy or graze whilst distracted at your computer, with your phone, or watching the TV. Mealtimes must be respected with healthy meal choices to ensure efficient digestion and avoid overeating. Sit down at a table if possible or if you’re at your desk, take a quick 10min break for your meal if your workload is relentless and you’re unable to allow a more relaxed lunch period. Eating your meal slowly also helps to ensure the meal takes longer, so your brain has a chance to register that you are full; this takes around 20 minutes. Allowing this time before you consider a second helping or another course is a crucial activity.

Weigh yourself daily

This advice is often contested but frankly, if your goal is to lose weight, your weight either needs to stay the same or reduce on a daily basis. Weighing yourself daily will establish whether this is the case and if you have gained a pound or two, this will immediately alert you to give more attention to the points noted above. Aiming for weight loss and achieving weight loss is the best inspiration,

but it is very important that you are realistic with what you expect to see on the scales on a daily basis. Most days, there will be no change, but over the course of the week, you should aim for a 1-2lbs loss, depending on how much you have to lose. Generally, you may lose more than this when you first start making changes to your diet and lifestyle and if you have a lot of weight to lose, you can also find your weight loss to be more rapid at the outset.

Eat more apples.

An apple a day really does go a long way. In fact, Bradley employed the apple as his “secret weapon” in his weight loss push. “Before losing weight, I had a habit of eating something sweet in the afternoon (often peanut M&M’s or some sort of milk chocolate),” he recalls.

Then, apples came into the picture: “I would buy the crunchiest, sweetest apples I could find. In the afternoon or whenever I felt a hunger pang, I would eat an apple. This has worked for years and is an amazing and simple way to lose weight,” he elaborates, Medicine.