Trying to reach and maintain a healthy weight can prove to be a difficult task. We’ve consulted with all of our resident pharmaceutical teams to collect the best tips for you, and here we have picked out the best 15 tips to help manage your weight.
1. Drink Enough Water, Especially Before Meals!
Drinking enough water can increase the metabolism rate by 24-30% over the course of 1-1.5 hours, helping you be eligible to burn off more calories than normal.
A study conveyed that drinking just half a litre, (or 19oz) of water, within a time frame of half an hour before meals, actually helped eat fewer calories along with losing 44% of more weight compared to the people who didn’t drink that amount of water before a meal.
2. Eating Eggs For Breakfast
Eating an entire egg can have more benefits than you think, including helping you lose the weight you want to. Many studies show that swapping a grain-based breakfast with eggs can aid you in eating less calories for the next 36 hours, as well as losing weight and body fat.
3. Drink Coffee! (Preferably Black Coffee)
The quality of coffee has a bunch of antioxidants that can have multiple health benefits compared to what you think. Studies show that caffeine in coffee can help increase your metabolism rate by 3-11% AND increase weight loss / fat burning by up to 10-29%. The only downside to this is that you must make sure to not add plenty of cream, sugar or any other high-calorie ingredients into your coffee, as that’s when it will negatively affect any benefits.
4. Drink Green Tea
Similar to coffee, green tea can also have many benefits for weight loss. However, green tea does contain little amounts of caffeine, it has a load of powerful antioxidants called ‘catechins’ which is believed to work alongside with the caffeine to increase the fat-burning rate. On the other hand, when the evidence is mixed, there is enough displayed evidence to say that overall, if you regularly have an intake of green tea, (whether it is a beverage of a supplement) it can help you with your weight loss.
5. Cut Back on Added Sugar
‘Added Sugar’ is single-handedly one of the worst ingredients to be consumed within the modern diet. Most people consume too much. Sugar (along with high-fructose corn syrup) consumption is highly associated with the risk of obesity increases, as well as certain health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
To lose weight, you must cut back on added sugar.
Make sure that you read all of your food and drink labels, even if they are ‘so-called healthy’, they can still be loaded with sugar.
6. Eat Less Refined Carbohydrate
Refined carbohydrates that include sugar and grains that have been stripped of its nutritious parts and fibrous. This also can include certain things such as white bread and pasta amongst the chief culprits. Refined carbohydrates can cause blood sugar to spike, leading to feeling hunger and increased food intake for a few hours, which has a significant link to obesity. If you are going to eat carbohydrates, make sure you eat them with their natural fibres!
7. Go on a Low-Carbohydrate Diet
If you are wanting to receive all of the benefits of carbohydrate restriction, then make sure you go all out into committing to a low carbohydrate diet. Multiple studies show that having a regimen can aid you to lose up to 3 times the amount of weight compared to a standard low-fat diet, whilst also improving your health.
8. Exercise Portion Control or Count Calories
Portion control is important! Simply eating less, or keep track of your calorie intake is proven to be useful, for fairly obvious reasons. Keeping track by using a food diary, or taking pictures of your meals, or even simple things can help in losing weight. Doing anything that has an increase in your awareness of what you’re consuming, allows you to be on top of your daily food intake and is likely to help.
9. Keep Healthy Food Around in Case You Get Hungry
Having accessibility to healthy food nearby can aid to prevent you from eating unhealthy substances when you become very hungry. Any small snacks that are easily portable are good to take. Anything with whole fruits, nuts, baby carrots, yoghurt and are handy and easy to take around. Make sure you look at the snack in case there are any allergies you could be vulnerable to, and avoid added sugar within those snacks.
10. Eat Spicy Foods
Chili peppers tend to contain ‘capsaicin’, which is a compound that is spicy but can also increase your metabolism rate and decrease your appetite, but only slightly. Although, it is important to know that people may develop tolerance when dealing with the effects of capsaicin over time unless you boost the amount of spice every so often to compensate for the drop-off.
11. Do Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise is known as cardio. It is an efficient and a great way to burn calories along with improving your physical and mental health. Aerobic exercise seems to me typically effective when it comes to losing belly fat. The unhealthy fat builds up around your organs and has a high chance of causing a metabolic disease.
12. Eat More Vegetables and Fruits
Fruits and vegetables have many properties that can make the extremely effective for weight loss. They have fewer calories, but a lot more fiber. The content that is filled with high water, gives them low density and energy, making it feel more filling. They’re also very nutritious, so eating them is important for your overall health.
13. Get A Good Night’s Sleep
Sleep is single handedly one of the most underrated things that people overlook .
when attempting a diet, or simply being healthy and exercising. Poor sleep is one of the strongest factors that aid the risk of obesity, and is linked to 90% of increased risk of obesity in children, along with 55% in adults. If your sleep schedule, or at anypoint you are getting less than 6 hours of sleep, then you are at a much greater risk of falling to obesity than someone getting 8 hours of sleep. To sleep better, try exercising before bed, having you last used your mobile, computer, tablet etc an hour before getting into bed.
14. Eat More Protein
Protein is the most important nutrient when it comes to weight loss.
Consuming a high-protein diet has been proven time and time again that it increases your metabolism rate by up to 100 calories per day, whilst also cutting off another 400 calories per day.
Eating 25% of your calorie intake daily as a protein tremendously reduces obsessive cravings / thoughts about food up to 60% whilst also reducing the late night snack factor by half!
The simplest, easiest and effective way to help your weight loss is my just adding protein to your diet.
15. Don’t Do Sugary Drinks, Including Fizzy Drinks and Fruit Juice
Sugar of course, is bad, however, sugar in the form of a liquid makes it even worse. Many studies convey that calories taken from liquid sugar may be the most fattening to the modern diet. As an example, a study showed that sugar-sweetened liquids are matched up to 60% increased risk of obesity in children for each daily serving.
Bare in mind that it applies to things you won’t expect as well, such as fruit juice, which contains almost the same amount as a sugary drink like Coke.
Eat fruit whole, but avoid the fruit juice altogether, or as little as possible.
So there we have our team’s top tips! Hopefully this will help inspire you to begin your weight loss journey!