It’s a painful fact of life that some people can lose weight easily, while others really struggle with it and some just can’t lose weight at all. Whether or not you find it easy to lose weight has a lot to do with your health, age, gender, and genetics and not so much with your willpower.
That said, if you find it hard to lose weight, maybe you need to tweak your approach. Follow these tips to find success at shedding the pounds.
Stop Drinking Alcohol
While moderate drinking doesn’t seem to be connected to weight gain, heavy drinking can be. And if you’re trying to lose weight, alcohol is just empty calories. You’re getting seven calories per gram of alcohol in a drink, and that’s not counting the sugars and carbs in beer and many cocktails. It’s best to avoid alcohol altogether if you’re struggling to lose weight, but if you do choose to imbibe, go for a spirit mixed with a zero-calorie beverage and pace yourself to minimize your calorie intake.
Eat More Protein
Eating more protein and less carbs can help you lose weight. Twenty-five to 30 percent of your daily calories should come from protein if you’re trying to lose weight. A high-protein diet can boost your metabolism and the protein will keep you feeling full longer, so you’re less likely to snack and binge and you’ll naturally eat fewer calories over the course of the day. Eat plenty of protein at breakfast to stave off cravings all day long.
Count Your Calories
You don’t have to weigh your food and track every calorie you eat for the rest of your life to get a lot of benefit out of calorie counting. Most people are bad at estimating how many calories they’re eating, so you could be eating more calories than you realize and that could be why you’re struggling to lose weight.
Use an app like MyFitnessPal to track your calories, and buy a kitchen scale to weigh your food so you don’t have to guess at how much you’re eating. Keep a food diary and count your calories just a few days a month. It will give you more insight into how much you’re eating and make you better at estimating how many calories you’re consuming, so you can have more success at weight loss.
Drop the Fad Diets
Fad diets can make you lose a lot of weight quickly due to calorie restriction, but they’re terrible for your body. Most people who do fad diets bounce back and forth between eating too many calories when they’re eating normally and eating far too few calories when they’re restricting calories on a new diet. Restricting calories severely for fad diets puts your body into starvation mode, so your metabolism slows down. This can make it harder to lose weight in the long run. If you’ve been dieting for a long time, reset your metabolism by increasing your calorie intake to a normal level, getting plenty of sleep, and doing regular strength training for a couple of months.
Practice Mindful Eating
If you’re struggling to lose weight, chances are you’ve done some mindless eating in your life – zoning out in the front of the TV with a bag of chips comes to mind. Where mindless eating sees you stuffing your mouth without even paying attention to the taste of the food or your body’s satiation signals, mindful eating sees you focusing on the flavors, colors, and textures of your food as you eat slowly and savor it. Try to only eat mindfully, and you will naturally eat less. If you’re still struggling with hunger and food cravings, you can try a new medication like Ozempic for weight loss.
Strength Train
Strength training builds muscle, and muscle burns more energy than fat, so the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism, and the more calories you burn just sitting around. That’s why The Rock eats 5,000 calories a day. Strength train a couple of days a week, lifting weights or doing resistance exercises, to build muscle and burn more fat.
Raise Your Heart Rate
You need to get plenty of aerobic exercise if you’re trying to lose weight. Aerobic exercise burns fat, especially visceral fat that can cause disease. Any kind of exercise that increases your heart rate counts as aerobic. Jogging, swimming, and cycling all count.
Get Your Rest
If you’re not sleeping well, it’s going to be harder to lose weight. When you’re sleep-deprived, you’re more likely to crave junk food and less inclined to resist those cravings. A lack of good sleep is one of the biggest risk factors for obesity.
Sometimes, it can be hard to lose weight, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. With the right strategies, you’ll reach your goal weight soon enough.