Habits For Weight Loss Success

As a Registered Dietitian in private practice, I counsel many patients on healthy eating for weight loss. It breaks down into six core habits that will help you not only to lose weight, but to keep it off permanently.

1. Eat small frequent meals. A lot of people think skipping meals will help them lose weight but that is to the contrary. When you skip meals, the body goes into starvation mode to and slows down to compensate and as a result you burns less calories. Over time, you teach your body to become less efficient at burning calories at rest. It is much better to eat frequently every 4-5 hours to keep your blood sugars up and your body using food for fuel.
2. Take a pass on the junk food. Junk food has barely any nutrition and is usually laden with excess fat, excess calories, and excess sugar that translate into a pound of fat around the belly. Try to incorporate more whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that is not only healthy but that feels you up.
3. Balance your meals with adequate protein, a healthy carbohydrate, and vegetables. Filling half your plate with vegetables is a great habit to incorporate into your daily life whether you’re trying to lose weight or stay healthy. Vegetables are full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. And because of their fiber content, vegetables will help stabilize your blood sugars so that you can fill full and satiated longer. So don’t skip the veggies.
4. Avoid excessive carbohydrates. The three worst culprits are sodas, juices, and refined carbohydrates. You will be doing your body a huge favor just by limiting the sugar in your diet. Excessive sugar leads to sugar cravings, which not only set you up on a roller coaster for failure, but it throws your body out of balance. White bread, white pasta, white potatoes are high on the glycemic index — a measure of how fast a carbohydrate is broken down and absorbed into the blood. The faster it enters the blood, the greater the secretion of insulin — the fat storing hormone. Instead choose foods with low glycemic index like sweet potatoes, beans, lentils that are absorbed more slowly. Only eat carbohydrates that have at least 3 grams of fiber per serving.
5. Choose lean proteins. Lean protein sources include lean cuts of meat, chicken, pork, turkey, and fish. Limit processed meats since they tend to have nitrites and other additives that increase the risk of cancer. Other protein choices include low fat cheeses, cottage cheese, eggs, peanut butter, and nuts. You should include protein with every meal and snack.
6. Lift weights. Muscle burns fat and consumes calories. Cardiovascular exercise is important for overall health and fitness, but weight lifting is the single most efficient way to lose body fat and keep the weight off permanently because it increasing your resting metabolic rate (the calories your burn) during and hours after you exercise. So work those muscles, because the more your muscles work, the easier it is to lose weight.