Losing weight is hard. Few people who have experience with weight loss would argue that point. The crazy thing is how we make something that is already plenty hard even harder. There are things that can be done to to make it a little easier, but lots of people don’t do them.
Maybe the reason why people don’t do what they can to make weight loss easier is because they didn’t know what to do. Maybe they didn’t believe these things could work or maybe they just think that the harder they make the process, the better the results. Trust me, making the process harder, only makes it easier to get frustrated and give up.
Here are 3 ways to make losing weight easier. Pay particular attention to number 3.
1. Get good quality sleep every night.
It’s been proven that sleep or rather, lack of it, affects your appetite. Two hormones responsible for making you want to eat and regulating how much you eat are disrupted with disrupted sleep.
Ghrelin is a hormone that makes you hungry. Research shows that even one night of sleep deprivation increases ghrelin levels. Leptin is the hormone that tells us we’ve had enough to eat. Sleep deprivation has be found to make us leptin resistant. In other words, leptin tries to tell us we’re full and we don’t get the memo. Easy, go to bed.
2. Avoid extended periods of sitting.
Exercise is good. Get lots of exercise, but don’t make the mistake of working out hard for an hour and sitting the rest of the day. Long stretches of sitting undo the good of your workouts. Sitting slows your metabolism. You burn fewer calories at rest. Just getting up and standing can restore it to higher levels. Try to get up and walk for 5 minutes for every hour spent seated. Easy, stand up.
3. Eat to stay satisfied.
This should be easy but when it comes to eating for weight loss too many people think that being satisfied prohibits weight loss. Not true. It’s easier to monitor and avoid overeating when you’re satisfied. Eating what tastes not-so-good and getting too hungry is a mistake. It makes losing weight hard, so hard in fact that it’s why many weight loss efforts fail.
I’m not talking about eating all your meals in restaurants and I’m sure not talking about frozen diet dinners or delivered-to-your-door freeze dried diet meals. I’m talking about one of the many, new services that delivers a box of fresh food to your door in the exact amount to feed a specified number of people and easy directions to create a fabulous meal.
My neighbor highly recommends Blue Apron. He gets 3 boxes a week to feed two people and it costs $60.00. That’s about what it would cost to buy food for 3 meals for 2 in the supermarket. He says he saves money because he doesn’t have to buy more than needed for the meal and there’s no waste.
The food is healthy and portion controlled. He says the variety is excellent. He says the directions are color coded and easy to follow. He hasn’t had a bad meal yet although he does report a few times his food never arrived. His girlfriend makes a call and they send out another box. His endorsement and his newly slimmer profile are enough to make me a fan.
The point is eating well and losing weight aren’t mutually exclusive. There is no need to eat diet food, fat free food or sugar free food or a bunch of chemicals. You really can eat real food and as long as you don’t have allergies, there’s nothing you can’t have. Easy, eat tasty food.