18 Easy to follow tips to reduce weight

Not able to follow your diet for a longer period? Can’t stick on to “fancy diets”? Not losing your weight in spite of following a strict diet? Not anymore!!!!! Diet should be the one which you can follow everyday. If you go for fancy diets like keto/GM/paleo/fruit diet, 100% sure no one would be able to stick on to it for a longer period. When you leave that and come to your routine meals you will regain the lost weight. Here I am gonna discuss on some of the easy ways which everyone one could follow and reduce weight.

1. Know your BMI – Before you start dieting you need to know your BMI or ideal weight. So that you will know how much weight you have to lose. To be healthy you have to be in normal BMI. If you go below that you may face health issues. To calculate your BMI, there are so many BMI calculators available online or you can use this formula – weight in kg divided by the square of height in meter. If you are in the range between 18.5-24.9, well good it is the normal range. If not you must diet until you reach this goal. Another simple way to know your ideal weight is to minus 100 from your height for male and for female minus 110 from your height.

2. Eat a balanced but a low calorie diet – Balanced diet is always the healthiest diet. As I discussed in my previous posts our body needs various nutrients and each has its own role in the body. So you must not cut down a nutrient completely from your diet, as carbs in keto diet. Instead you can lower the intake. For weight loss a sedentary active person can consume a diet of 800-1000 k calorie. Once you reach your BMI, you can follow 1200k calories. Always your focus should be to eat to meet your requirements and not to fill your tummy.

3. Count your calories – Now you will know to lose weight you have to follow 800-100k calories. But how will you know that you eat only these much of calories?? To know how much calories you eat everyday, you need to download a calorie counter. Calorie counter is available in the play store. Enter all that you eat right from your bed coffee. If you add a spoon of sugar/honey to coffee or a spoon of oil/ghee/butter to dosa, add that in calculator and count your calories. Even if you eat a piece of chips or a bite of chocolate or cake, count the calories. Manage to maintain your day’s calories to be around 800-1000k calories. In case if your breakfast calories is around 300k calories and lunch is 300k calories, then the remaining should be from your dinner. In case if you eat a pizza or a cake in the evening, then you will meet your whole day’s calories. In that case you have to fast for your dinner.

4. Eat unrefined cereals instead of refined – When choosing your cereals it’s always better to choose whole grains instead of refined. Whole grains not only provide glucose but also fibre, vitamins and minerals. When you eat a fibre rich cereal you get satiety soon and you tend to eat lesser portion. Hence the calorie consumed will be less. Example for refined products substitutes –

• White rice –> Brown rice/red rice
• White bread –> Brown bread
• Maidha –> Wheat
• White poha –> Red poha
• Vermicelli –> Ragi vermicelli
• Rice –> Millets
• White sugar –> brown sugar/honey/jaggery/date syrup
• Wheat flour –> Multigrain flour

5. Add more fibre to your diet – Adding more amount of fibre which is a calorie deficit food in the diet reduces appetite, decreases hunger and makes you feel full sooner and thus helps in consuming lesser amount of calories. Whole grains, pulses, fruits and vegetables are the rich sources of fibre. For example, if you make kichadi for your breakfast 75% of it should be vegetables and the rest 25% should only be your cereal. Similarly for lunch, it must be 1/2 cup of brown rice and 1 cup of veggies.

Fruit in the raw form only contains fibre and through juice you will not get your fibre. So to lose weight you only have to eat a raw fruit and not juice.

6. Choose low calorie veggies – When it comes to vegetables choose the one which has lower calories. Green leafy vegetables, brinjals, lady’s finger, cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, turnip, radish, tomato, pumpkin, gourd family vegetables like bottle gourd, ash gourd, bitter gourd, snake gourd, etc, are all low calorie vegetables. Veggies like beetroot, plantain, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yam are all high in calories. If you want to eat potatoes/ sweet potato then make it your main meal. Say for example, instead of dosa or idli you can have baked potato as your main meal.

7. Eat more of protein – Eating a protein rich food is an simple and easy way to lose weight. It increases metabolism to burn more amount of fat and also protein helps to keep you full for a longer period and thus helps you to eat less. Starting your day with 3-4 boiled eggs for breakfast helps you to eat lesser food for that whole day.

8. Drink skimmed or diluted milk – Milk has high amount of saturated fat but at the same time it also contains most of the vital nutrients. So you cannot avoid milk in your diet. Instead you can opt for skimmed milk which has no or low fat in it or another easy way is to dilute the milk with water. To lose weight it is advised not to add any powders like horlicks, boost, complan, health mix etc because these products give you more calories.

9. Avoid white sugar – If you are really bothered about loosing your weight and being fit then you have to sacrifice certain things. First thing in that list is white sugar. White sugar is a food which doesn’t contain any nutrient. It only increases your calories and make you to gain weight. If you really can’t drink your tea/coffee without the sweet taste then instead of white sugar try honey, date syrup, jaggery or brown sugar. Even these foods are an extra calories but along with calories they also provide certain nutrients. To lose weight it’s better that you don’t take sugar in any form.

10. Avoid oily foods – Avoid oil, ghee, butter and fried foods in any form. Whatever the oil let it be olive oil or coconut oil everything is gonna give you the same 9k calorie. Hence stop believing in false advertisements which says that so and so oil aids in weight loss.

11. Stop purchasing high calorie foods – Avoid buying unhealthy high calorie snacks, junk foods, bakery items, biscuits, chocolates, etc. Only when it is at your home you will get the temptation to eat it. One way to avoid the temptation is not to buy those products. If those products are not infront of your eyes you will not get the thought of eating unhealthy high calorie foods.

12. When hungry eat healthy snacks – Instead of high calorie snacks fill your dinning table with fruits, nuts and seeds. Whenever you feel hungry you can eat these foods. They are low in calories but high in lots of nutrients.

13. Use a smaller plate – When you use a small plate you tend to eat lesser portion. In a small plate, smaller potion itself fills the plate and ultimately you end up eating fewer calories. This is a simple way to cheat your brain to control your portion size.

14. Increase the metabolism – Increasing the metabolism will increase the expenditure of calories and more amount of fat will be burned. Ways to increase your metabolism are – 1. Drink hot/cold water whenever possible 2. Drink green tea in the empty stomach or before exercise 3. Eat spicy foods 4. Add plenty of protein in each meal 5. Do high intensity workout.

15. Chew more slowly – Chewing food more slowly will help you to eat fewer calories. It not only makes you to eat fewer calories but also helps in the production of hormones linked to weight loss.

16. Get enough sleep – Lack of sleep is linked to increase in obesity. It is because people who do not get proper sleep will have increase in hunger hormone and decrease in fullness hormone because of which they will feel more hunger. So if you are focused to lose weight then have a good sleep cycle. Sleep early and also for 7-8hrs.

17. Try to fast– Initially when you start exercising or dieting you will lose weight but there will be a point in which you neither lose nor gain weight. To break that plateau, fasting is a good option. People who do not have acidity or gastritis problem should only opt for fasting. During fasting the body will try to derive energy for it’s activity by burning the stored fat. Fasting will also increase the metabolism to burn more fat. 18 -20hrs fasting is ideal for weight loss.

18. Sweat it out – Dieting is alone not enough for weight loss. You have to exercise for better effect. Sweat is the sign of burning calories. So work out until you sweat it out. If you are fed up of with the regular exercises then follow these simple steps. First step is to stop sitting for hours and hours in the same place. Make it a habit to get up from the chair for every 1hr and jump for 10 times or run around your home or do squat or push ups. Standing burns more fat when compared with sitting. So stand for short periods to break up the length of sitting down.

Eat healthy to live healthy!!!