We all want quick results from our weight loss plan. We, quite reasonably, want to see confirmation that the effort we’re putting in is worth it.
But this can draw us to unnecessarily extreme diets, which might work in the short term if you can battle your way through, but in the longer term simply make the weight loss harder to come by.
So with this in mind, these are my top tips for getting your body to change without doing anything extreme.
In fact, despite the fact that they’re not going to be anything you haven’t read before; I think getting these things accurately in place will get most people most of the way to where they’d like to be.
Improve your food choices
If you mostly eat real food, you’ll find yourself feeling satisfied without the excess calories and overeating triggers that processed food usually come packaged up with.
Eat enough protein
Make sure you’re getting at least 1g protein per kg bodyweight. It might well seem like a lot but it will promote satiety and help you maintain important muscle mass.
Move around
10,000 steps seems like a reasonable target but in reality, just making forward progress on the amount of general activity you do across the day is positive. Keeping moving burns off more energy across the day than you might imagine!
Strength train
Again, doing a little more than you’re doing at the moment is really all you need to progress. If that’s 10 minutes once a week, then that’s ok for now! We want to promote muscle growth, or maintenance, and encourage your body to use up body fat reserves rather than downgrading important calorie burning muscle.
Sleep
Prioritising your sleep is super important. Aside from a whole bus load of other reasons, making sure you’re getting enough good quality sleep is really important for reducing cravings and allowing you to get the most out of your workouts.
Track accurately
Don’t rely only on the scales for telling you how you’re doing. Also take photos, get the tape measure out – and even those trousers which you can only just squeeze into! It’s also a great idea to track some more subjective things too, like your energy levels, your ability to focus, how out of breath you feel when running up stairs – etc. The aim is for you to learn to enjoy a healthy approach to diet and exercise so it becomes something you’re able to stick with for the long term.