Losing weight can take a lot of effort, especially if you’re working off the pounds at the gym. It can mean creating a weekly menu and shopping list, then making all the food on the weekend for healthy meals throughout the week. If you just know you’re not going to do that and don’t want to sweat off pounds in the gym, here are tips for weight loss for lazy people, not that you are. You can use some of these tips to supplement a program of weight loss.
Start with a planned mealtime and a sit down meal.
Eating at all hours isn’t always the easiest way to go. If you have a planned mealtime, it doesn’t take any effort, but can help you avoid snacking. When you know that dinner is in a half hour, you’ll be less likely to grab a snack from the cupboard. Sitting down at the table for all meals makes and not eating in front of the television can also make mealtime more mindful and let you watch portion control.
Fill up on water before a meal and make it cold water.
Drink an eight ounce or larger glass of water before a meal and you’ll find that you eat less. Water fills you up, not out, so you’ll eat less. One study showed that it lowered the caloric intake enough that if you just drank a glass of water before one meal a day, the number of calories you saved would cause you to shed about eight pounds a year! Cold water also makes your body burn more calories, so that can add to the loss.
Switch out that soft drink for a glass of water or unsweetened green tea.
If you drink one soft drink a day, you’re adding over 100 calories to your intake. Cutting it out and drinking water or green tea means you’ll consume 100 less calories a day and in 35 days would lose a pound. If you substituted with green tea, you’ll also be boosting your metabolism to burn even more and helping to burn belly fat. Don’t even consider diet soft drinks. Studies show they actually make you gain weight. Part of the reason is that the trigger the release of insulin, but there’s no sugar, so it disrupts the metabolic system.
- If you want your portion to larger, try smaller plates. That certainly doesn’t take any effort to use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate.
- Get out of sweatpants and into form fitting jeans. It’s easy to overeat in sweatpants. They kindly expand to accommodate our expanding belly. Form fitting jeans will tell you right away when you’ve eaten too much.
- Park further from the store or walk down the stairs. I know that taking the stairs, especially going up will burn more calories, but if you’re being lazy, just take the stairs down, where it’s easier and park a little further from the store. Moving a little more throughout the day adds up.
- When you’re ready to start a formal exercise program, try our 28 day jumpstart at Iron Fit. You’ll be amazed at how great you feel after a few workouts and never want to take the lazy person’s route again.