With this holiday season, it is often hard to maintain your weight goals due to all the feasting that is involved. However, fret not as we give you some tips and habits to lose weight or simply ensure that you do not overeat. Moreover, these are habits that you can continue after Christmas, thus ensuring a sustainable method of either maintaining or losing weight.
Firstly, don’t stress about it. If you’re someone that’s trying to implement habits that can help with weight loss then we’ve got a few tips for you. We’ll only be listing five but we’ll make sure to put in some helpful links if you want to learn about more methods that could help you out. As an added bonus, we recommend you check out Elika’s article on tips that can help you not just lose weight but also feel healthier.
Pay Attention to Your Portions
While it’s true that this is one of the more basic things that a lot of people do when they’re trying to watch their weight, it should be stated that a lot of the time people don’t really know how much they should be actually eating. Moreover, whenever we go out to eat, we have been trained to finish everything on the plate or bowl.
It has to be noted that no one should be stopped from eating what they love, but even then, it’s wise to check what the serving size of a given food is and how it could affect you. This goes for all foods, as the body needs a specific amount of calorie intake so you can’t go too high or too low either.
You should also take this into account when you’re going to snack. This doesn’t mean that you can’t, but you have to make sure that it adds up well with your intake for the day. We’re not asking you to calorie count as that has been proven not to work, but just to take note of your portion sizes per meal.
Now as for what exactly accounts for a portion…that’s a bit more complicated. A portion generally represents the serving size of a given food and they can be measured differently depending on what you’re eating.
For example, here’s a list of some ways to measure a few different products. Other than that it also comes down to how many calories you should eat in order to maintain or lose weight depending on your gender, age, height, weight or even what kind of lifestyle you lead. For example, if you’re required to consume 1,500 calories to maintain your weight, you have to make sure to check the measurements of any given food you buy. There are, thankfully, some calculators that allow you to measure how many calories you have to consume as well. We also love mobile apps such as My Fitness Pal which syncs nicely with Fitbit so you can easily track whether you’re eating right for the day, depending on how active you are.
Try Putting Your Fork Down Between Bites and Focus Only on Your Food
Eating is good. We all love to just eat what we like at our own pace, if it’s good then we eat it fast because we like it, if we don’t then we eat it fast to get over with it or we eat it agonizingly slow. That being said, these little mind trick, which is also known as mindful eating, is one that requires you to slow down and…taste the roses if you will.
The reason for this exercise is that according to an October 2015 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, this can actually not only make your food taste better but it also helps your stomach process what you eat, so you might actually end up feeling full even before you finish eating. This makes sense if you think about how sometimes when you eat too much it doesn’t register till after you’re done and then you feel like just laying down on the couch (which is rather nice).
At the same time it’s advised to not multitask while you’re eating. While it is true that at this point it’s an impulse to not check your social media or watch the television as you eat, this causes you to lose track of your food and may make you feel like you’re not getting your fill even if you are.
Make Sure to get Enough Sleep
This one can be a bit tricky, as life can sometimes get complicated and you can’t exactly get the right amount of hours down. However, this habit helps in reducing the level of hunger that you feel during the day. This happens because, when you don’t get enough rest, your body has to make up the loss of energy in some form and that form usually manifests itself by eating.
By making sure to get enough sleep (between 5 to 9 hours for adults in accordance with the National Sleep Association), you’ll be able to calm those pesky hunger gremlins down and also get some more rest that will result in more energy during the day. It’s a win-win situation.
Eat Enough Vegetables
This one is kind of a basic guideline that’s given in every tip guide. However, it’s important to mention it since it’s a crucial one. When it comes time to bettering one’s eating habits, nothing is as tough as adding more vegetables, in fact, we might even write an article about ways to add them into your meals in the future.
The importance of vegetables is a big one as they offer a lot of nutrients and benefits to your body and your health, plus they’re also important for everyday meals in general. They also contain fiber, which helps in satiating the stomach and stopping it from wanting more than it can handle. That being said, you shouldn’t just put them all into a plate, start small and simple and try to add more as you go along.
Much like with portion sizes, the amount of vegetables you eat varies depending on what kind of person you are, in this case your ages as well as the lifestyle you lead. The average woman between the ages of 19 and 30 who exercise for around 30 minutes a day for example, would have to consume about 2 cups of fruits and 2 ½ cups of vegetables a day. This, again, also varies depending on the amounts of calories you need to keep up or lose weight.
Keep a Food Journal
This tip goes well with the first one in that its purpose is also to help you keep better watch of your intake. The point of this is to keep a better control of the portions you eat, if you keep track of what you eat on every meal you’ll be able to see if you’re eating more or less than what you should and change things accordingly. Alternatively, as mentioned previously, you can use apps to help you track and just be more mindful about what you put into your body. Remember, it is not about calorie counting but to make you more conscious about how much you really need to consume. Again, and like all the other tips offered here, this one is up to your own choice and if you feel comfortable with it.
At the end of the day all these tips are meant to help you better yourself at your own pace, how you implement them, if you do, is up to you and what matters is that you feel happy with yourself and the methods you use. Regardless we hope that these tips can help you out and if you want to look for some more tips we recommend this page, as well as this one that offer some simple advice for things to follow (some of which you see on this list too).
Photo Credits: Eat this Not That, Self, Eat Mindfully, Youth Health Magazine, Suzie Weber, New Mexico Etitian
Melissa Fann
Trevor Klass
