Losing weight on your terms: getting thin the easy way
There’s no silver bullet to weight loss, and you should never believe there is. There’s no quick fix, no drug and no craze that will ever help you drop the pounds in a healthy or sustainable way. Sadly, none of us are perfect and we’re reminded of it every single day in order for companies to make money; businesses work hard to make us hate ourselves and profit from this self-loathing. You need to trust yourself on this one.
If you seriously want to lose weight, do what sensible people do and create your own regime. While the following recommendations aren’t set in stone – to give you a diet to follow would be a little hypocritical at best – they’re certainly worth considering. They’re easy to understand and won’t hurt you, either.
Harness your guilt
Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer Cus D’Amato said that “fear is the friend of exceptional people”. In the same sense, consider how guilt about weight is not an enemy – it’s an ally. If you feel less joy from eating something than the amount of guilt that hits you after eating it, it’s probably best not to eat it – you’ll only beat yourself up. It doesn’t mean that you stop eating treats, but you’ll work harder to earn them.
Meal structures
Here’s a great little tip for you: eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch and a pauper at dinner. Bigger meals mean more energy; having these earlier in the day will mean a greater chance to burn it off during the day.
Pills are sometimes worth popping
A few fads will exist that tell you to take pills with extracts because they supposedly mean everything to your health, yet very few of them are important. Some, however, really are such as Alli, which you can buy online or from a local pharmacy. A large number of people are deficient in vitamin D; it helps fight diabetes and heart disease and keeps energy levels up. Calcium supplements – good for your bones (and hence exercise) – are also a great thing to invest in.
Stop weighing yourself
This is a biggie. Lay out some clothes that don’t fit you and use these as a benchmark for measuring weight loss. You’ll see and feel when you’re getting thinner, instead of being duped by often-inaccurate weighing scales.
Sleep
If you know when you go to bed, don’t eat for the prior three hours. Sleeping gives you more energy the following day and, at a more simple level, restricts further time that you could spend eating. Also, if you’re tired, you’re less likely to want to do exercise.
Try new foods
While you may be averse to a few foods after bad experiences, you should still keep an open mind about them – after all, there are a lot of healthy options that are tasty, filling and customizable. Consider meat-free alternatives like Quorn when cooking saucy dishes, and look to carbohydrate alternatives – couscous, for example, is a great choice.
Finally: exercise under your terms
Different strokes rule the world, yes they do. You may think running is boring, but you may enjoy walking. You may even prefer to keep to exercising through a Kinect sensor on an Xbox 360, or you may want to take the opportunity to learn a skill and get all the health benefits you can from it – for instance, why not take up drumming?
Ultimately, you must remember through all this weight loss chat that you need to accept yourself, because others already have. Women are usually the ones that have a particular issue with this – you only have to see the cover of ladies’ magazines to see it at its awful peak – but people can have this opinion regardless of gender. It takes time to learn that people respect (and love) you for who you are, so don’t lose weight for others – do it for yourself.
And whatever you do, don’t lie to yourself that something’s healthy, or that a lack of exercise is fine, and such. You’re only trying (and failing) to fool yourself if you cheat!
