Diets abound, but which is the best? If you want to lose weight naturally, you need to have a weight loss plan that suits your lifestyle and personality. Many weight loss plans work well in the short term, but for long term health and to keep your weight where you want it, your ever day diet needs to be something that works for you and allows you to enjoy your food as well. Natural remedies for weight loss can be your most important daily tool.
Apple cider vinegar is perhaps the best natural cure for helping you lose weight and burn fat. Our video will show you the best way to take ACV for weight loss and fat burning. Also, some side effects to look out for.
If you like grapefruit, you will be delighted to learn that a half a grapefruit before meals can promote weight loss.1
There is no way around it; exercise matters if you want to lose weight and keep it off. But take heart, exercise will make you feel better and improve your overall health as well. Find something you like to do. It may be as simple as a daily walk. It could be jump roping or rebounding on mini-trampoline for 10 minutes each evening while watching tv. Meeting a friend at the gym can provide accountability and recreation.
Cinnamon is not only a tasty spice, it can lower blood glucose levels and be a part of a weight loss lifestyle. Add some to your oatmeal at breakfast. Sprinkle it into your coffee or tea.
Ground flax seeds contain plenty of nutrition and fiber. Adding flax seeds to your diet helps your digestion to work well as well as giving a full feeling in the stomach to help reduce overall calorie intake. Add a spoonful of ground flaxseed to your salad, smoothie or oatmeal. Flaxseed can also help to balance hormones, making weight loss easier.
Chronic mild dehydration is common. Consuming quality liquids will improve your health and skin tone. More liquid in your stomach will leave less room for food. Aim for 8 glasses of pure water a day. Herbal tea is great, too. Green tea contains catechins, which promote weight loss. Green tea does contain caffeine, so don’t drink it in the evening!
Instead of soda pop with caffeine, sugar and artificial sweetener, try carbonated water instead. It will give you the fizzy mouth feel and can even be helpful to your digestion.
Foods that contain a lot of water can help with the hydration and will fill you up with fewer calories. It is easier to overeat on dry snack type foods like pretzels an crackers. Reach for watermelon, berries, applesauce or yogurt instead.
Coconut oil is a healthy fat that can be helpful to weight loss. Substitute coconut oil for butter and hydrogenated oils. This oil is also a great natural antiviral and anti-inflammatory.
Intermittent fasting diets are often successful and allow you to eat what your family and friends eat, you just end up passing some meals by. “Window diets” encourage you to eat only within an 8 hour period each day. You will naturally eat less over time. You won’t feel deprived during those 8 hours each day either.
Diets where you fast or restrict calories to under 500 once or twice a week also reduce your average calorie intake without any special planning, except for planning which two days you can do without a lot of food!
Avoid eating large meals late in the day. Make dinner your lightest meal. Eat a larger breakfast or lunch while you still have most of the day to burn off more of the calories eaten.
Having a friend with whom to share your weight loss journey, trials and victories can be a great help in achieving your goals. If you friend is in it with you (don’t pick a highly competitive or cut throat friend), even better.
It may surprise you. This list of what to avoid if you want to lose weight is not a list of foods or restaurants. It is a list of ideas that will keep you from having long term success.
If you live on cabbage soup the rest of your life, you may just reach your goal and stay there, but you are not going to have any fun or friends in the long run. It will just be you and your cabbage soup.
Be suspect of a diet that will get other people rich. These trendy diets come and go. Meanwhile, one or a few have become rich selling their books, products, programs and supplements. Often these diets provide short term success. Over the long haul there are usually nutritional deficiencies that surface causing new health problems.
Diets that require you to eat foods prepared a special way with special ingredients can become expensive, boring and lonely. A special smoothie each morning is one thing, but not being able to eat out with your friends or enjoy dinner with your family ruins food. For human beings eating together is often an important aspect of relationships. If you must spend each meal evaluating each food that crosses your lips, you will not be enjoying people anymore, and you won’t be enjoying your food either.
Prescription diet pills may work in the short term, but often come with long term side effects. Consider that someone is making money from your use of these medications.
You really can’t get something for nothing. Chemical substitutes come out for foods and appear to be the solution to weight problems. However, as time goes on, it is discovered that “artificial fat” and “artificial sugar,” turn out to have terrible health consequences.
Health problems can make it difficult to lose weight. Hormonal problems, candida infections, or a chronic state of acidity can make your body hang on to the pounds even when you are careful about what you eat. If you have known health issues and work on solving them, you may start losing pounds without even trying. Consider simple wellness remedies to promote overall health.
Estrogen dominance or low thyroid can have a terrible effect on your metabolism, causing weight gain and difficulty losing weight without heroic efforts. Natural remedies to balance your hormones will make you feel better and make weight loss easier.
You body will not work well if it is sick. Due to diets that lack nutrition and overuse of antibiotics, chronic candida problems abound. Solving this problem is a first step in making weight loss easier.
If your body is in an acidic state, your health will not flourish and weight loss will be hard. Fortunately, most will be able to restore their bodies to a more balanced state with good nutrition and some alkalizing remedies.
Constipation can make it harder to lose weight. Keep your digestive system moving along to absorb the needed nutrients and get rid of toxins and waste on a regular basis. If constipation is an issue for you, our page of remedies for it should get you going!
Moderation
Enjoy your foods; just enjoy less of them. Using a smaller plate, or filling your plate with less food and eating slowly will help you to enjoy food, be satisfied with less food and lose weight.
Thankfulness
Instead of wolfing your food down, take time to enjoy each bite. Chew slowly. Put your fork down and enjoy the people with whom you are eating. You will eat less and be more satisfied with what you do eat.
Be grateful for a smaller amount of food. Enjoy your first thoroughly so you don’t need to go back and get seconds because you hardly tasted your firsts.
Balance
Long lists of “I Can’t Have” foods makes them all the more desirable and your sense of deprivation stronger. If you should indulge in one of those foods, then you have guilt. Food is a good thing. Allowing food to make your feel guilty is a way to get on an eating disorder path.
Instead, focus on enjoying more whole foods and fewer processed foods. Instead of ultimatums, just balance out your foods differently. “Never” can leave you feeling deprived. “Some” or “later” allows you to feel good about exercising self-control.
Say NO to Guilt
Do not allow yourself to feel guilty for eating food, whether you ate more than you thought you should or you ate something you count as a “no-no.” It is not a crime to eat. Free yourself from false guilt.
Be Content with Who You Are
Make sure your weight loss goals are reasonable for you. People come in all shapes and sizes. How boring the world would be with only one type of flower. Be your own kind of beautiful. Your contented smile contributes more to your beauty than you realize.
Find Substitutes for Boredom Eating
Sometimes you eat because you are bored or lonely. Have a ready list of alternatives to keep you from eating when you don’t need to and for the wrong reasons. Take a walk. Get something done on your to do list. Communicate with someone who needs encouragement. Drink a glass of water. Sing a song. Go for a drive (but not to the drive through!)
Enjoy Good Foods:
Enjoy These Foods Infrequently:
To get started with weight loss, pick a positive change you can start practicing today. Then reread this article next week and make another change. Keeping tweaking your practices until they are habits. This is the best solution to getting unwanted weight off and keeping it off in the long term. Fast weight loss plans usually back fire. Yo yo dieting only makes it harder and harder to lose weight. Enjoy your food and make productive changes to get to a comfortable weight for you and stay there!
If you have health problems or are diabetic, get your doctor’s okay before making significant changes to your diet. It is also recommended to get a doctor’s okay before beginning a strenuous exercise program, especially if you have a history of heart problems.
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Scroll down to read the trials and victories of our readers in their weight loss journeys.
Also check out our Apple Cider Vinegar Weight Loss Diet page.
Sources:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16579728
