Search Weight Loss Topics:




Dec 23

How to Lose Weight Top 18 Simple Tips Diet Doctor

Lose Weight Comments Off on How to Lose Weight Top 18 Simple Tips Diet Doctor

By , medical review by Updated December 5, 2021 Do you have trouble losing weight? Or would you like to lose faster? Youve come to the right place. Get ready for weight loss without hunger.

Our conventional ideas about weight loss eat less, move more require a lot of willpower. Counting calories, exercising for hours every day and trying to ignore your hunger? At DietDoctor, we believe thats needless suffering, and likely a waste of your time and precious energy.

Eventually people often give up. An excessive focus on counting calories has certainly not done much to reverse our current obesity epidemic. Fortunately there may be a better way.

The bottom line? Calories are not the only things that count in weight loss. Your weight is also hormonally regulated. If you reduce your hunger and the levels of your fat-storing hormone, insulin, youll likely have an easier time losing excess weight.

Get your personalized meal plan with a FREE 30-day trial!

What's your gender?

Are you ready? Here we go. Start at the top of the list (most important) and go down as far as you need. Click on any tip to read all about it. Perhaps you only need the first piece of advice?

For extra support on your weight-loss journey, join our Connect community.

Eighteen tips too many for you? Check out our popular video course with the five most important ones. Sign up for free updates and youll get instant access to it:

This guide is written for adults with health issues, including obesity, that could benefit from losing weight.

We dont recommend counting calories, which is controversial. To learn more about the rationale for this, see our guide on restricting calories for weight loss.

Controversial topics related to a low-carb diet, and our take on them, include saturated fats, cholesterol, whole grains, red meat and whether the brain needs carbohydrates.

If you want to lose weight, consider starting by avoiding sugar and starch (like bread, pasta and potatoes). This is an old idea: for 150 years or more there have been a huge number of weight-loss diets based on eating fewer carbs. Whats new is that reviews of modern scientific studies have repeatedly shown that low carb is at least as good, if not better, than other approaches to diet.

Obviously, its still possible to lose weight on any diet just eat fewer calories than you burn, right? The problem with this simplistic advice is that it ignores the elephant in the room: hunger. Most people dont like to just eat less, as it may result in having to go hungry forever. Sooner or later, many will likely give up and eat without restriction, hence the prevalence of yo-yo dieting. While it should be possible to lose weight on any diet, some appear to make it easier and some to make it much harder.

The main advantage of the low-carb diet is that it may cause you to want to eat less. Even without counting calories, overweight people tend to eat fewer calories on low carb. Thus, calories count, but you dont need to count them.

A 2012 study also showed that people who had lost weight experienced far less reduction in total energy expenditure (the number of calories burned within a 24-hour period) when they followed a low-carb diet compared to a low-fat diet during weight maintenance a 300-calorie difference, in fact.

According to one of the Harvard professors behind the study, this advantagewould equal the number of calories typically burned in an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity. Imagine that: an entire bonus hour of exercise every day, without actually exercising.

Recently, an even larger and more carefully conducted study confirmed this metabolism-sparing effect, with different groups of people who had lost weight burning an average of between 200 and almost 500 extra calories per day on a low-carb maintenance diet compared to a high-carb or moderate-carb diet.

Bottom line: A low-carb diet can reduce your hunger, making it easier to eat less. And it might even increase your fat burning at rest. Study after study shows that low carb works for weight loss and that on average itimproves important health markers.

Why low carb can help you lose weight

How to lose weight with a low-carb diet

Do you want to know more about exactly what to eat on low carb, how to do it, potential problems and solutions and find lots of great recipes? Check out our keto for beginners guide. Alternatively, you can make low carb even simpler by signing up for our free two-week keto challenge.

Eating when hungry sounds simple:if youre not hungry, you probably dont need to eat yet.

When on a low-carb or keto diet you can trust your feelings of hunger and satiety again something many people following a low-fat or standard American diet cannot do. Feel free to eat as many or as few times per day as you feel is right for you.

Some people eat three times a day and occasionallysnackin between (note that frequent snacking could mean that youd benefit from adding protein, fibrous veggies, or extra fat calories to your meals, to increase satiety). However, theres some evidence that frequent snacking may not be wise when trying to lose weight.Some people only eat once or twice a day and never snack. Whatever works for you. Just eat when youre hungry, and dont eat when you arent.

It also helps that low-carb diets and higher protein diets tend to reduce hunger.

Studies demonstrate that people eating a very low-carb, ketogenic diet reduce their feelings of hunger and the amount of food they eat.

Multiple other studies demonstrate that adding protein to your diet markedly reduces hunger and food intake.

Our suggestion? Try a low-carb, higher protein approach and see what happens to your hunger levels.

Read more about why eating when hungry is smarter than counting calories

What's your main health goal?

Remember: an effective low-carb diet for weight loss should be based primarily onwhole food.

Prioritize what humans have been eating for thousands or likely millions of years, e.g. meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, butter, olives, nuts etc.

If you want to lose weight, avoid special low-carb products that are full of carbs.This should be obvious, but creative marketers are doing all they can to fool you (and get your money). They will tell you that you can eat cookies, pasta, ice cream, bread and plenty of chocolate on a low-carb diet, as long as you buy their brand. Theyre often full of carbohydrates. Dont be fooled.

How about low-carb bread? Be careful: if its baked with grains its certainlynot low carb. But some companies still try to sell it to you as a low-carb option.

Low-carb chocolate is usually full of a kind of sugar alcohol maltitol that may actually be partially absorbed by the body, but which the manufacturer does not count as carbs. If the maltitol is absorbed, it is likely to raise blood sugar and insulin levels. The remaining carbs end up in the colon, potentially causing gas and diarrhea.

While low-carb chocolate made with erythritol or stevia is likely to be okay, you still have to consider that any sweeteners can maintain sugar cravings.

Two simple rules to avoid being tricked into purchasing unhealthy low carb products:

Focus on eating good quality, minimally processed real food. Ideally the food you buy shouldnt evenhave a list of ingredients (or it should be very short).

Read more about fake low-carb products

Read more about sweeteners

Finally you may want to forget about the old everything in moderation diet motto.It isnt necessarily helpful advice for people who struggle with weight in fact, it may be exactly the opposite.

Dont eat everything in moderation. Eat as much healthy food as you can, whenever you are hungry. Eat as little unhealthy food as you can if possible, none at all.

Unnecessary snacking can be a problem on a low-carb diet too. Some things are easy to eat just because theyre tasty and readily available. Here are three common traps to watch out for on a low-carb or keto diet:

Do you have to eat breakfast? Research has confirmed that the answer is no. Dont eat if youre not hungry. And this goes for any meal.

On a strict low-carb diet the hunger and urge to eat tend to decrease significantly. If this happens, be happy! Dont fight it by eating food you dont want. Instead, wait for the hunger to return before you eat again. This will save you both time and money, while speeding up your weight loss.

Some people fear that they will lose control if they dont eat every three hours. The concern that this urge to binge will blow their diets completely leads them to obsessively snack all the time.

This constant snacking may be necessary in order to control the hunger and craving that may arise during a diet high in sugar and starchy carbs, but itsusually unnecessary on a low-carb diet. Hunger will only slowly return and you should have plenty of time to prepare food or grab a snack.

Bottom line: To lose weight in a sustainable way, eat when youre hungry but only when youre hungry.Forget the clock and listen to your body instead.

MEMBERS ONLY

5. Measure your progress wisely

Tracking successful weight loss is sometimes trickier than youd think. Focusing primarily on weight and stepping on the scale every day might be misleading, cause unnecessary anxiety, and undermine your motivation for no good reason.

The scale is not necessarily your friend. You may want to lose fat but the scale measures muscles, bone and internal organs as well. Gaining muscle is a good thing. Thus weight orBMIare imperfect ways to measure your progress. This is especially trueif youre just coming off a long period of semi-starvation (which may accompany calorie-counting), as your body may want to restore lost muscle. Starting weight training and gaining muscle can also hide your fat loss.

Losing fat and gaining muscle means great progress, but you may miss this if you only measure your weight. Thus its best to quantify body composition as you lose weight. You can do this with a DEXA scan, hydrostatic weights, plethysmography scales and others. But if these are not available, it is smart to also track the disappearance of your belly fat, by measuring yourwaist circumference.

I recommend aiming for good but its not always realistic. Young people can usually achieve this, but for some middle-aged or older people, it may be a major victory to get all the way to decent.

I suggest measuring your waist circumference and weight before starting your weight-loss journey and then perhaps once a week or once a month. Write the results down so that you can track your progress.If you want, you can measure more areas: around the buttocks, the chest, the arms, legs, etc.

Please note that your weight can fluctuate up and down several pounds from day to day, depending on fluid balance and digestive system contents. Dont worry about short-term changes, follow the long-term trend instead.

These markers are frequently improved on a low-carb diet, even before major weight loss. Re-checking these health markers after a few months can be great for your motivation astheyll usually showthat youre not just losing weight, youre gaining health too.

PS:Dont have a measuring tape at home? Try these options:

200+ meal plans designed for results

With our low-carb and keto meal plans, we do the planning for you. All you have to focus on is cooking, eating, and enjoying healthy, delicious food.

It usually takes years or decades to gain a lot of weight. Trying to lose it all as quickly as possible by starving yourself does not necessarily work well in the long term; instead it may be a recipe for yo-yo dieting.

In addition, you need to set realistic expectations for health and weight loss goals. You can read more in our detailed guide on realistic expectations.

Its common to lose2-6 pounds (1-3 kg) within the first weekon a strict low-carb diet, and then on average aboutone pound (0.5 kg) per week as long as you have a lot of weight remaining to lose. This translates into about 50 pounds (23 kilos) per year. However, weight loss doesnt occur at this rate in everyone.

Every 5 pounds of fat loss roughly equals 1 inch lost around the waist (1 kilo = 1 cm).

Young males sometimes lose weight faster than this, perhaps twice as fast. Post-menopausal women may lose at a slower pace. People on a very strict low-carb diet may lose weight quicker, as well as those who exercise a lot (a bonus). And if you have an enormous amount of excess weight to lose, you could start out much faster although initially, some of the weight you lose will be due to water loss.

As you get closer to your ideal weight, the loss may slow down until you stabilize at a weight that your body feels is right. Very few people become underweight on a low-carb diet as long as they eat when hungry.

Are you coming off a period of semi-starvation (which can occur with calorie-counting)? Focus on your waist circumference and health markers (see tip #4) at first, as it sometimes takes several weeks before weight loss is apparent.

Expect weight-loss plateaus: months where nothing seems to happen on the scale. Everybody hits them. Stay calm. Keep doing what youre doing and eventually things should start happening again (if not, check out the other 17 tips).

More: Top 10 tips top break a weight loss stall

Losing a lot of weight long term and keeping it off will likely not happen unless youchange your habits forever. If you lose weight and then return to living exactly the way you did when you gained weight, dont be surprised when the excess weight returns. It normally will.

Maintaining weight loss usually requires long-term change and patience. As tempting as it may be, dont fall forone of these magical diet scams.

Forget quick fixes:If you lose some weight every month, eventually you may get rid of all your excess weight.Thats inevitable progress. Thats what you want.

PS: Long-term change is hardest in the beginning, especially during the first couple of weeks. Its like quitting smoking. Once you develop new habits it becomes easier and easier every week. Eventually it may come naturally.

For inspiration and tips, check out some of our long-term weight maintenance success stories:

Keep reading!

7. Avoid overeating fruit

This piece of advice is controversial, as fruit has an almost magical health aura today. While fruit does contain fiber, antioxidants, and important vitamins, it also contains a fair amount of sugar around 10% by weight (the rest is mostly water). Just taste an orange or a grape. Sweet, right?

Eating whole fruits in moderation especially ones that are low in sugar, like berries can absolutely be part of a healthy diet. The soluble fiber in fruit can help with short-term satiety; it also reacts with water in your gut to form a thick gel that helps delay and reduce the amount of sugar absorbed from that fruit. In fact, up to 30% of the sugar from fruit may not be absorbed.

Larger quantities of fruit, however, will deliver a significant sugar load to your intestines. Even if only 70% of that sugar is absorbed, 70% of a big number is still a big number. For example, five servings of fruit per day can be equivalent to the amount of sugar in 16 ounces (500 ml) of soda 52 grams of sugar!

Most people believe that fruit is natural, but todays fruits in the grocery store have very little in common with what fruits looked like before they were cultured. Modern domesticated fruits are larger, less bitter, and have thinner peels and smaller seeds. This makes them tastier and easier to eat and because of their increased size, they may provide more sugar per piece of fruit than their earlier counterparts.

What fruits and vegetables looked like before

Beer contains rapidly digested carbsthat shut down fat burning. That may be why beer is sometimes referred to as liquid bread. Theres a good reason for the term beer belly.

Here aresmarter (lower-carb) alcoholic optionswhen trying to lose weight:

These drinks hardly contain any sugar or digestible carbohydrates so theyre better than beer. However, large amounts of alcohol might slow weight loss, so moderation is still a good idea.

Lowcarbalcoholthebest and the worst

9. Avoid non-caloric sweeteners

According to scientific studies,non-caloric sweeteners mayincrease appetite and maintain cravings for sweet food. And one recent independent study showed that switching drinks with non-caloric sweeteners to water helped women lose weight.

Study: Avoiding diet beverages helps women lose weight

This may be related to the increased insulin secretion seen with some non-caloric sweeteners. Maybe that is why something odd happened when I tested Pepsi Max.

If youre having trouble losing weight, I suggest that you avoid sweeteners. As a bonus, youll likely find it easier to enjoy the natural sweetness of real food, once youre no longer adapted to the overpowering sweetness of processed low-carb food products and diet sodas.

See more here:
How to Lose Weight Top 18 Simple Tips Diet Doctor

Related Posts

    Your Full Name

    Your Email

    Your Phone Number

    Select your age (30+ only)

    Select Your US State

    Program Choice

    Confirm over 30 years old

    Yes

    Confirm that you resident in USA

    Yes

    This is a Serious Inquiry

    Yes

    Message: