When you begin a new diet, it can seem daunting and difficult to lose any excess weight. But, with the right strategy, weight loss with diet and exercise can become achievable. Here are three tips that can help you reach your weight loss goal.
Include Treats with Your Healthy Eating
When you start a diet, it can be daunting to consider eating healthy food every day if you are not allowed any sweet treats. By depriving yourself of treats and sweets completely during your diet, you will be more likely to quit your diet and go back to your unhealthy eating habits. When you can add in a small piece of chocolate, cookie, or scoop of ice cream every now and then, you will be more able to continue eating healthy.
Jillian Michaels from Biggest Loser recommends to use the 80/20 rule. This rule recommends you to eat healthy food 80 percent of the time and leave the remaining 20 percent for treats you crave. For the 80 percent, be sure to include a healthy diet of lean meats with plenty of fruits and vegetables with a limited amount of whole grains. It is recommended for healthy eating to fill 1/4 of your plate with proteins and 1/4 with whole grains. The other half of your plate should be filled with a mixture of fruits and vegetables, with a little more than half of this portion of your plate being filled with vegetables.
Drink Coffee Before You Exercise
If you drink coffee in the morning, try exercising right after you drink it. A study recently found that trained athletes who took in caffeine pre-exercise burned about 15 percent more calories for three hours after their exercise. The equivalent amount of caffeine to see this kind of effect would be a 150 pound woman taking in 300 mg of caffeine, about 12 ounces of brewed coffee.
Besides giving you more energy to burn more calories during your workout, drinking coffee before your workout can improve your circulation and reduce your muscle pain. If you consume two to three cups of coffee an hour before a 30-minute high-intensity workout, you will feel less muscle pain during the workout. With less muscle pain during your strength training working, you will be able to push yourself a little harder and see better improvements in your muscle endurance. Then, drinking coffee before your workout can also offset any loss of muscle strength as you age so you can keep the extra muscle strength you are building.
Include Strength Resistance Training
When you include strength training with your cardio, you are building a bigger engine to burn calories. Your body's muscles are the engine and when you have more muscles, you will burn more calories. Strength training combined with cardio and a healthy diet will burn more calories than just a healthy diet with cardio.
Strength training workouts that take large muscles groups to a state of burn will increase the amount of hormones your body releases that help to reduce your body fat. And studies have shown that a well-designed strength program can raise your metabolism for up to 38 hours after your workout, so you continue to burn calories even after your workout is completed. Whereas when you stop your cardio workout, your calorie burn stops as well.
If you have never done strength training, you can learn how to safely strength train by taking a class at a local community college. You can also join a gym and hire a personal trainer or take some of the gym's strength training classes. Most gym resistance weight machines include instructions and diagrams for their proper use, which can make it easy for you to get your strength training in with your exercise.
If you need extra help managing your weight, consider a weight loss clinic; check it out to see if this might be the right option for you.
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