Easy Ways to Lose Weight: 50+ Ideas

If you’re trying to drop a few pounds, don’t start off by trying to overhaul all your eating and exercise habits. You’re better off finding several simple things you can do on a daily basis—along with following the cardinal rules of eating more vegetables and less fat and getting more physical activity. Together, they should send the scale numbers in the right direction: down.

1. Indulge in fat releasing foods. They should help keep you from feeling deprived and binging on higher-calorie foods. For instance:

• Honey. Just 64 fat releasing calories in one tablespoon. Drizzle on fresh fruit.
• Eggs. Just 70 calories in one hard-boiled egg, loaded with fat releasing protein. Sprinkle with chives for an even more elegant treat.
• Part-skim ricotta cheese. Just 39 calories in one ounce of this food, packed with fat releasing calcium. Dollop over a bowl of fresh fruit for dessert.
• Dark chocolate. About 168 calories in a one-ounce square, but it’s packed with fat releasing fiber.
• Shrimp. Just 60 calories in 12 large.
• MORE: 13 fat releasing foods »

2. Treat high-calorie foods as jewels in the crown. Make a spoonful of ice cream the jewel and a bowl of fruit the crown. Cut down on the chips by pairing each bite with lots of chunky, filling fresh salsa, suggests Jeff Novick, director of nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa in Florida. Balance a little cheese with a lot of salad.

3. After breakfast, make water your primary drink. At breakfast, go ahead and drink orange juice. But throughout the rest of the day, focus on water instead of juice or soda. The average American consumes an extra 245 calories a day from soft drinks. That’s nearly 90,000 calories a year — or 25 pounds! And research shows that despite the calories, sugary drinks don’t trigger a sense of fullness the way that food does.

4. Carry a palm-size notebook everywhere you go for one week. Write down every single morsel that enters your lips—even water. Studies have found that people who maintain food diaries wind up eating about 15 percent less food than those who don’t.

5. Buy a pedometer, clip it to your belt, and aim for an extra 1,000 steps a day. On average, sedentary people take only 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. Adding 2,000 steps will help you maintain your current weight and stop gaining weight; adding more than that will help you lose weight.

6. Add 10 percent to the amount of daily calories you think you’re eating, then adjust your eating habits accordingly. If you think you’re consuming 1,700 calories a day and don’t understand why you’re not losing weight, add another 170 calories to your guesstimate. Chances are, the new number is more accurate.

7. Eat five or six small meals or snacks a day instead of three large meals. A 1999 South African study found that when men ate parts of their morning meal at intervals over five hours, they consumed almost 30 percent fewer calories at lunch than when they ate a single breakfast. Other studies show that even if you eat the same number of calories distributed this way, your body releases less insulin, which keeps blood sugar steady and helps control hunger.

8. Walk for 45 minutes a day. The reason we’re suggesting 45 minutes instead of the typical 30 is that a Duke University study found that while 30 minutes of daily walking is enough to prevent weight gain in most relatively sedentary people, exercise beyond 30 minutes results in weight and fat loss. Burning an additional 300 calories a day with three miles of brisk walking (45 minutes should do it) could help you lose 30 pounds in a year without even changing how much you’re eating.

9. Find an online weight-loss buddy. A University of Vermont study found that online weight-loss buddies help you keep the weight off. The researchers followed volunteers for 18 months. Those assigned to an Internet-based weight maintenance program sustained their weight loss better than those who met face-to-face in a support group.

10. Bring the color blue into your life more often. There’s a good reason you won’t see many fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: Believe it or not, the color blue functions as an appetite suppressant. So serve up dinner on blue plates, dress in blue while you eat, and cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.

Read more: http://www.rd.com/health/diet-weight-loss/easy-ways-to-lose-weight-50-ideas/#ixzz2R1lLq4gf

Best Way to Lose Weight Quickly: How I Lost 10 Pounds in 2 Weeks

by Adam Bate [Bodybybate.com]

In fact, it was actually 15 pounds in 12 days. From Monday January the 7th to January the 19th. So far I’ve lost over 20 pounds in a little under four weeks and I’m going strong. The diet I describe below can typically produce 10 pounds lost within your first two weeks without any trouble.

If you want to checkout the pictures:

Here is my day 1 weigh-in.
Here is the 2 week weigh-in, 15 pounds lighter.

Here is my before/after for the initial 90 days of my new lifestyle: click to view the before/after

We’ve also been documenting this process through a daily podcast that you can check out here.

It’s crazy what dropping as little as 10 pounds will do to your energy levels and work productivity. It was going through this process that sparked my renewed interest in the health and fitness community and snow balled into me being much more passionate about all this.

If you’re looking to lose weight quickly, there are three things you need to optimize or focus on:

• Your diet – what you eat and drink
• Your exercise – timing and duration of specific exercises
• Supplementation – speeding up the process with the help of safe drugs

I really think that the best way to lose weight is by optimizing your diet. More specific it’s to manage your blood sugar levels. Click here to watch the video that showed me how to optimize my diet and keep my blood sugar levels consistent.

I lost my weight by only optimizing my diet. I changed what I ate dramatically and literally melted the weight off. I remember waking up on the fourth day after starting this in complete amazement by the fact that my fingers felt skinny. I’m not sure if it was the amount of salt I ate or what, but my fingers and hands have felt fat for the last year – this alone was enough to keep me going. For the sake of this overview, I will not go into any detail on supplements (as I have yet to learn much about them), and will only briefly touch on exercising. Instead, I’ll focus on optimizing diet for rapid weight loss.

So how did I lose this weight so quickly?

I followed a strict slow-carb diet that was made popular by The Four Hour Body. If you haven’t read this book yet, I definitely recommend you pick it up. I also followed the advice I found here surrounding foods and how diet alone can make for some amazing weight loss.

Click here to buy Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Body

Not going into details of the diet (you can read that yourself). These were the key changes I made that I know helped with the rapid weight loss.

I ate a big, high-protein breakfast

I love my breakfasts. It’s crazy to think that I could lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks while eating this every morning. It’s great though because in the evening when I sometimes get cravings, I will just remind myself how awesome breakfast is going to be. I included a picture to the right of a typical breakfast that I will eat. It’s three fried eggs, 4-6 pieces of bacon, and fried mushrooms, onions, and beans. Delicious.

Lets be honest, there were mornings that I just didn’t have it in me to make this. For those mornings I would fall back to just 2-3 hardboiled eggs, or a single hardboiled egg and a protein shake made with water + whey protein isolate. Since I work from home, I can typically take the time to make a big breakfast, but probably 1/6 days I would have to fall back to the quick breakfast.

Remove most dairy products

This wasn’t a huge issue for me. I haven’t drank much milk since junior high, and although I do enjoy cheese on almost everything it was easy enough to give up. Luckily, I could still usebutter to cook with, and if you are like the many people that love cream in their coffee – this is okay as well as long as it’s heavy cream and not milk. Cheese is a big part of my cheat days as I explain below.

Water, Coffee, or Tea

This was one of the biggest challenges for me. That said it is crazy how fast you can lose weight quickly if you simply cut out drinking unnecessary calories. Admittedly, I’ve historically enjoyed a beer or two over dinner at home – and even more than one or two if out with some friends. Although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a beer a night, or a glass of wine a night, I know the former is not great for losing weight.

If all you have is two weeks to lose weight, you’re going to have to be very strict with this rule. Luckily you can still drink any water-based drink such as coffee and tea, so it’s not all bad. I usually have a huge glass of ice cold water plus one or two large cups of coffee in the morning to kick start my day.

No white carbohydrates

In fact, anything that is white or can be white. So no pastas, no rice, no breads, no oatmeal, no potatoes, etc. However, I still ate a ton of carbohydrates. I just ate better high-fiber carbs such as black beans, kidney beans, and lentils. The latter I didn’t really enjoy, so most of my meals were made up of beans. The picture to the left is an example of what I would eat for supper. This night I had a spread of black beans, cooked frozen veggies, and sliced ham. I basically substituted the ham for any other meat – chicken, beef, or pork mostly – and alternated between black and kidney beans. Note – if you find your food getting bland, try using mustard and pepper. For lunch, I’ll often take 1/2-1 can of tuna, 1-2 cups of frozen veggies, and a big scoop of bean, cook in the microwave, add a couple squeezes of mustard and pepper and shake.

Moderate 20 minute weight resistance twice per week

When I was reading the Four Hour Body, it really got me interested in how the body works and how it deals with exercise, food, etc. This is one thing that I think really helped me – especially during my cheat days. I will do a light to moderate 20 minute work out consisting of the following exercises:

• Bicep curl x 15
• Air squats x 50
• Military shoulder press x 15
• Wide arm pushups x 20
• Against-the-wall tricep extensions
• As many close-grip pull ups as possible
• Calf raises x 30

The goal of the workout was to promote food storage to muscle instead of fat – this is especially important during your cheat days. As recommended in the book, during my cheat day I will look to do the air squats + tricep extensions even if I’m eating out. I didn’t go to the gym at all for this, instead I just took a couple old 20lb dumbbells, a pair of 10lb dumbbells and a pull up bar from home. If you don’t have a pull up bar don’t buy one, simply exchange the exercise for a back row or seated back fly exercise. I also don’t own a weight bench so no need to spend your money on that.

I gave myself one cheat day

I say one cheat day, because I wanted to illustrate the fact that this diet can be used for people wanting to know how to lose weight in 2 weeks. If you are only using this as a fast way to lose weight, then you’ll only want to indulge in one cheat day during your two-week period. However, I now give myself every Saturday as a cheat day.

I believe that this cheat day is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, the science behind it suggests that if you go for too long on a limited-calorie diet (which this isn’t, however I noticed that it took me much, much less food to fill me up when I ate well, so you tend to naturally eat less on this diet) that your metabolism will shift to a lower gear in order to compromise for the lower intake of calories. By cheating one day and spiking the number of calories you consume, it will keep your metabolism from doing this – and allow you to maintain your high metabolic rate throughout the week.

Personally, I find the cheat day important because it gives you something to look forward to. This diet is a huge change from most Westerners’ lifestyles. With the diet comes a lot of cravings, especially in the beginning. I would make a little note of anything that I was craving and made sure I went out and bought it Saturday morning. For example, this is what my first cheat day looked like:

• Breakfast – bacon and eggs with hash-browns, toast, a ton of ketchup, and a fruit smoothie
• Snack – Full bag of All Dressed potato chips and a large bag of sugar candy (Cherry Blasters)
• Lunch – Entire box of extra cheesy Kraft Dinner
• Snack – 2 large Caramilk chocolate bars
• Supper (and evening snack) – 1/2 large poutine, a few garlic fingers and 7 slices of a 16″ large pizza from Alexandras Pizza.

Even typing that out makes me a bit sick to my stomach. Needless to say, I didn’t crave any sort of junk for a while after that day. In fact thinking back it was at least Thursday before I made a note of anything for the next cheat day.

Final words on this way to lose weight quickly

What I explained above was how I lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks. I’m continuing to lose week after week at an average of 4-5 pounds per week (I’m sure this will slow down once I get closer to my goal weight). The above method works like a charm and I feel is a great way to lose some extra weight.

I’ve learned a ton about health and fitness – specifically weight loss and motivation – over the past several months. So much so that I’ve decided to become a personal trainer and help others do the same. To start, we have written five of our own books that will be released over the next couple weeks (for free!) that will teach you both the theory behind, and how to actually lose weight in real life. No garbage, no fluff, just real simple information.

Top 6 Smartphone Apps for Losing Weight

The best weight loss apps really can help you stick to your plan. Slim down with these choices for iPhone and Android.

AFP RELAXNEWS [NYdailynews]

When it comes to losing weight, accountability is key -- and smartphone apps can help with that. Here are a few top (mostly free) choices to get you on the right track.

Even better, research supports using apps to shed weight. A study from Northwestern University says that using a mobile app as part of your weight-loss program can help you drop as much as 15 pounds and keep it off for at least a year.

1. Lose It! - This popular app features a free barcode scanner, a recipe builder, and a comprehensive database of food and activities. Users can add food to the database and track nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Free. Availability: Android and iPhone.

2. MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter and Fitness Tracker - Reviewed by more than 300,000 people on iTunes and nearly that many in the Android Market, this top app comes with a barcode scanner to see what's lurking in your favorite packaged foods and help you tally up the calories you eat every day. A database contains more than 750,000 foods. Free. Availability: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Phone.

3. Fooducate - Fooducate lets you scan the barcode on food products to get a quick health grade from A to F. Tracks your weight but also clues into the nutritional quality of the food you're buying. Helps you create healthy grocery lists. Free. Availability: iPhone, Android.

4. iTrackBites - This app assigns food scores and points to each food, similar to Weight Watchers. Users can keep a food diary and select foods with an assigned point value from the food database, or enter foods not in the database and receive point values for them. $1.99 for iPhone users and $2.99 for Android users.

5. Endomondo - This app, which offers both a free version and a Pro version for less than $3, can be used for a variety of sports, such as running, cycling, and walking, showing GPS tracking route, distance, duration, and calories burned. On certain handsets, the app also supports integration with built-in music players and Bluetooth heart rate monitors from Polar and Zephyr. Availability: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry.

6. Fitocracy - Launched for iPhone in 2010 by two former out-of-shape video-game addicts, Fitocracy has become a hot ticket, with more than 1 million registered "Fitocrats" playing against each other to enhance their fitness and swap workouts, advice, and inspiration. In the game, users begin at level one, then depending on the frequency, duration, and difficulty of their workouts, they earn points and bump up to the next level. Free. Availability: iPhone and Android.

How Can You Lose Weight

When you’ve tried everything to lose weight, but still come up short, you begin to look at more aggressive methods of weight loss. If you’ve found yourself in this situation, you’ve more than likely considered a boot camp in your area to lose weight quickly, as well as alter your general bad habits that are encouraging your weight gain in the first place. The bigger factor that keeps people away from weight loss boot camps is they don’t know exactly what to expect, so here are a few things that you can look forward to from selecting a boot camp.

Selecting Your Boot Camp

When picking out your boot camp, you aren’t going to be restricted to just one location. Depending on your preferences you can choose from camps that offer a natural setting, luxury homes and mansions, and even bunkhouses that are hidden far from civilization. Several venues will also offer access to saunas and outdoor pools when you’re not preoccupied with other boot camp events. From exotic views to living in the beautiful wildlife, your options are not restricted, and you certainly won’t be dealing with bunk buddies.

What to Eat

Remember, weight loss isn’t just about aggressive exercise and military workouts. Though several options, depending on the length of your boot camp, may impact your exact schedule, you’ll be exposed to several methods of weight loss, including the most likely culprit of your weight gain, your diet. While you may eat three square meals a day, what you eat plays a vital role in your body and your metabolism. With licensed nutritionists on hand during your stay, weight loss boot camps help you analyze your current diet and make changes that allow your body to burn calories faster while boosting your metabolism, especially when you exercise. This change in your diet will increase your weight loss exponentially when compared to your regular nutritional intake.

Personalized Training

If you’re out of shape, it’s often difficult to do exercises with proper form that not only maximizes the results of your workout, but assures that you won’t cause physical injury to yourself while you exercise. Personalized trainers are always on hand watching your every move to make sure that you maintain the best form to get the results you want to see faster.

Customized Training Regimen

Nothing provides lesser results than a generic set of exercises meant to appeal to the masses. If you see no results from other routines that you’ve found online or ordered through TV, it’s because your body simply won’t respond to the routines. Trainers develop workouts that are specific to your needs and the trouble areas of weight loss for you. Everyone gains weight differently, and everyone loses weight differently. Weight loss boot camps are one of the few venues that recognize this.

Friends

Finally, it’s important to note that you’ll never be alone at a weight loss boot camp. There will be dozens of people alongside you in a similar situation to yours. You won’t be short of motivation, provided that you can help motivate others while making new friends.

[losingweight.com]