You want to lose weight,
but you're not keen on going on a fad diet or counting calories. In this video,
I'm going to give you some strategies that you can use instead.
[theme music for Ivana Chapman].
Don't get me wrong. Calorie counting does work if you get it right.
But not everyone has the patience to do calorie counting on a regular basis.
Still in order to lose weight, you need to get into a calorie deficit.
So I'm going to share seven tips that will help you naturally reduce your
calorie intake without doing any counting.
So you're going to achieve weight loss through habits rather than numbers.
And the last strategy is the most important one for long-term weight loss.
My first tip is reduce sugary drinks.
It's very easy to consume a lot of calories in liquid form,
without even noticing. In some circles, juices are considered a healthy choice.
But for weight loss, they're not really an ideal starting point.
You're much better off eating the fruit because you have the fiber,
which fills you up for longer.
And it takes longer to eat the fruit than it does to drink a glass of juice.
An average glass of juice can be over 200 calories.
And if you're having something like a big smoothie,
then you can be consuming much more than that as well. Chew slowly. Now,
this one is a little bit tricky to do. Some of us are fast eaters naturally,
but slowing down your eating process can make a difference to how many calories
you consume overall.
It takes time for your brain to register that you're full from the food that
you're taking in. Approximately 15 minutes.
So if you just gobbled down tons of food in the first 10 minutes,
then you're going to have a harder time.
You won't even notice how much you've eaten.
If you take your time and appreciate your food a little bit more,
it can really help.
It may actually give you a chance to think about how much of this food that you
want. Do you really need this much? Are you feeling full?
And are you just eating because it's on your plate?
Which actually brings me to my next step, which is use smaller plates and bowls.
If you've got a bigger plate, you kind of perceive that as your entire meal.
And if you only have smaller plates and that's all that you can have for your
meal, you're going to naturally reduce your caloric intake.
It's always good to have a stopping point.
So if you're only eating what's on one plate, that's ideal for your meal.
The same thing goes for if you're snacking or you're having some kind of treats.
It's best to portion things out in a serving size that makes sense for your
particular snack. And that's all you have.
You can actually take it one step further and get little measuring cups so that
you can see whether you're having the appropriate serving size for the food
you're eating. And if you're having like some rice, for instance,
then you can check whether that's about half a cup or whatever the serving size
is that you've decided on.
I find this really helpful for things like nuts because I could easily eat a
huge bag of nuts. And that is a ton of calories.
Plus it's a digestive upset waiting to happen.
So I portion my nuts out into quarter cup servings.
And that's a good way of reducing your calorie intake as well.
Drink water before meals.
So about half an hour before you're due to have your meal, drink
an eight ounce glass of water. Research has shown that this actually reduces the
amount of calories that you take in at your next meal.
That sensation of fullness that you get in your stomach may help reduce your
caloric intake. Another strategy is to control your environment.
So this means keeping the treat foods or your munchie snacks that you could eat
a lot of out of sight, as much as possible. In my house,
I hide the chocolates from my husband because he wants me to kind of modify his
chocolate intake and only bring that chocolate out when he really wants it.
We also keep the snacky things that are really easy to overeat,
like tortilla chips, or veggie sticks. We keep them on a high shelf.
So we don't see them as often. We don't think about them.
That means that we tend to eat less. And on the other side of that,
make the healthy low calorie foods really easy to get.
Make them very visible. We keep our fruits on the counter there.
So we always think about them and it's easy to reach for them and prepare them.
With the vegetables, you maybe want to keep them pre-chopped and ready.
So you can spend one day chopping and getting the vegetables ready,
or you can even buy them pre- chopped and make it even easier.
Don't grocery shop when you're hungry or order groceries online.
If you're hungry or tired when you're shopping for groceries,
then you're more likely to choose those highly processed refined foods that you
want to minimize. We've already talked about controlling your environment.
So it's best not to bring those things home in the first place.
So you're more likely to make better choices if you're well fed and well rested
when you head to the grocery store.
The alternative is that you can also order groceries online.
If that happens to be a possibility for you and in the area that you live.
I actually rarely go grocery shopping.
I order my groceries online and then get them delivered that way.
It gives me a lot more time to think about what I want and what I don't want to
include in my meal plan. I realize that's not an option for everybody,
but if it is, it can be a good way of managing your food intake.
And my last tip, which I think is so important,
but everybody ignores, is get enough sleep: seven to nine hours.
Ideally in that eight range for most people. Not enough
people are getting enough sleep. In research,
short sleep is associated with decreased leptin,
increased ghrelin and increased BMI.
So leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full and satisfied.
So if it's decreased, then you're going to eat more. And more ghrelin,
which is the hunger hormone. That's the one that makes you feel hungry.
I always remember it as ghrelin for gremlin,
because it turns you into a gremlin when you're eating.
So if your ghrelin levels are up,
you're going to have more cravings and you're going to want to eat more.
And the other hormone that's involved is growth hormone,
which is produced during sleep. And if you shortchange yourself on sleep,
you reduce your growth
hormone levels. And growth hormone is associated with muscle building and also
fat loss. Please hit the like button if you learn something today.
Subscribe and hit the bell for more evidence-based fitness and nutrition
information and check out these videos as well.