The success or failure of your weight loss journey is directly linked to your diet. While exercise will help you to shed the excess weight, ultimately it’s your eating plan that decides if the weight actually comes off.
If you’re at a daily caloric deficit of about 500 calories, you will lose weight. If you’re training 4 hours a day and giving it your best, but your calorie intake is at a surplus, you’ll not lose a single pound. You might gain weight though.
While you’ll become fitter and stronger, your weight will remain the same. This is one reason why so many people who exercise get confused. They know that their stamina and strength has gone up, but the weight on the scale has not gone down.
Most of the time, they’re either eating too many calories or at maintenance level. You must be at a caloric deficit to see weight loss. This is the cornerstone of all weight loss.
That said, if you’re at a caloric deficit, there are two tips that can help you to lose the excess weight even faster. Let’s look at what they are.
Increase Your Fiber Intake
Fiber refers to vegetables such as broccoli, collard greens, beetroot, carrots and so on. When your diet consists of a lot of fiber, you will feel ‘full’ faster when eating. The fiber takes up space in your stomach and your hunger is sated.
The fiber is also calorie negative. What that means is that your body burns as much calories as the vegetables contain to digest them. You’re burning calories in order to digest the food.
This doesn’t apply when you consume oily or sugary foods that the body can easily digest, which results in a surplus.
Your liver also needs fiber to flush out the fat in your system. So, when you’re trying to lose weight, consuming foods such as broccoli will help the body to flush out your excess fat more efficiently.
Reduce Your Carb Intake
This second tip is one of the most effective ones when it comes to losing weight. Most people are addicted to carbs. They do not realize it until they try giving up carbs and realize just how difficult it is.
Carbs, in this case, refers to carbohydrates that come from bread, pasta, cookies, rice, etc. These are simple carbs that cause your body to have a blood sugar spike.
When that happens, your body secretes insulin to manage the sugar. This is normal, but when you consume carbs in excess over long periods of time, your body becomes insulin insensitive.
It then secretes more insulin than required to process the same amount of sugar. The excess insulin ends up being stored as fat, which is just stored energy.
To prevent this from happening, reducing your consumption of processed carbs and simple carbs will help to keep your blood sugar levels stable. This is the key to preventing weight gain and accelerating fat loss.
Get your carbs from vegetables as mentioned in the earlier point. Those are the best type of carbs.
On cheat days, it’s recommended that you only have carbs for one meal. If you find it extremely difficult to give up simple carbs, you’re better off not indulging on your cheat day. It’s akin to giving a drug addict a quick fix for just one day.
The cravings will begin after that. So, you should either carry on with your diet, or just have one small cheat meal and not an entire cheat day.
Give these two tips a try and you’ll notice that your weight comes off much more easily.
