1. Eat Healthy The diet is the key to starting all this weight loss work because you can exercise every day, but if you are eating the wrong foods the weight will not change much. Eat healthily three times a day and try to include salad and some lean meats in your diet. Remember, calories count, so the basic formula of calories in / calories out still applies. Weight loss means achieving a net calorie deficit! 2. Snacking Snacking has to go but to get in the habit of not eating junk food, you need to empty the cupboards and bin it all. If the urge to snack is quite high you need to replace it with something such as cups of green tea, vegetables, or fruit. Vegetables are an excellent choice since they’re filling, high in nutrients and fiber while being very low in actual calories. 3. Working out? You do not need to workout every day but at least be active and that means going for a walk for thirty minutes with the kids, on your own or with the dogs. You need to break the habits of getting in from work and just watching the tv and then eating dinner. To be successful in actually losing weight, you need a sustained workout program ideally including 1 hr/day up to 7 days per week. 4. Workout Intensity When you do go to the gym, you need to workout intensely to shift weight quicker and so that means lots of cardio. Try and mix it up so do twenty minutes on the jogger, then the bike and then the cross trainer. This way you will get one hour of good cardio all over your body which is ideal for weight loss. 5. Keeping it fun? One of the main reasons people fail to achieve sustained weight loss is that they fail to maintain their workouts largely due to boredom. Try and keep it fun and original so at least once a week train in a different way such as skipping, boxing, outdoor running, outdoor biking or swimming, This way it can keep your workouts new and interesting while managing to workout different muscles. 6. Resistance Training Most fitness experts agree that combining cardio with resistance training is the optimal method to achieve sustained weight loss. Just because you are losing weight which in reality largely means losing fat, it doesn’t mean you can’t use weight to bulk up your upper muscle mass with resistance training workouts three days per week. Use the free weights and bench press to improve the upper body and if you want a health supplement to try to help give your muscles more energy, creatine tablets have had some good reviews on their effectiveness in this area. 7. Motivation Have small targets every two weeks instead of one big weight loss target as it makes it all seem much more achievable. Losing weight on a sustainable basis requires an enormous amount of motivation. Source
