3 Keys To Losing Weight The Healthy Way

Cropped image of woman feet standing on weigh scales, on gray background. A tape measure in the foreground

Weight loss.

Isn’t it crazy how two seemingly harmless words have such an overwhelming grasp on society at large when they’re put together? 

Between 2017 and 2021 in the United States, 55 percent of adults vocalized a strong desire to lose weight. That’s more than half the American population! An even more noteworthy statistic shows that there was a 12 percent difference between men and women, with women claiming the higher rate when reporting their weight loss goals. 

For some, dropping 10 pounds is a walk in the park. For others, it can feel more like trying to teach an old dog new tricks: utterly frustrating and a lost cause. 

As tempting as it might be to give up, especially if you resonate with the latter group, there is immense value in fighting for your health. Continue reading to discover the clear, achievable steps you can take to feel good in your own body again. 

What Is Healthy Weight Loss?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the best practice for healthy weight loss involves losing one to two pounds a week. While you could successfully aim to lose a lot more than that, it’s not recommended if you’re in it for the long haul.

It’s important to note that accelerated weight loss may not always be the removal of body fat, but rather the elimination of water weight. Shrinking your fat cells typically takes weeks to months.

Slow and steady wins the race. Since there’s a strong likelihood you’re wanting the weight to stay gone, a gradual approach works best. Plus, it’ll prevent you from experiencing any complications. 

When implementing the quick weight loss tips you discover in this article, keep all of this in mind.

Benefits of Healthy Weight Loss

While attaining healthy weight loss can pretty much guarantee that you’ll live longer, studies have also shown that it can drastically improve your quality of life in the following ways:

  • Reduces your risk of life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and stroke

  • Alleviates chronic pain that is often derived from carrying more weight than your muscles and joints can handle

  • Improves mobility and athleticism

  • Works wonders for your immune system (be prepared to question where the heck your annoying allergies went!)

  • Lowers your triglyceride levels, which are directly linked to the onset of diabetes

  • Decreases blood pressure

  • Helps you sleep better and feel more energized throughout the day

  • Boosts your overall self-esteem and lifts your spirits

  • Clears your mind and enhances your memory

  • Improves better self-control and positively alters your food choices

  • Allows you to feel more confident wearing whatever your heart desires (so you can shop ‘til you drop!)

Woman doing a side bend during yoga

How Can I Lose Weight Fast?

Maybe you’re wanting to shed a few pounds for a special upcoming event like a wedding, or a dream vacay. You might also be feeling inspired to begin the journey towards a healthier, happier version of yourself.

Whatever the case may be, you can safely lose that stubborn weight — on your own timeline — by changing three key areas of your life: developing a nutritious diet, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and committing to frequent exercise

Nutritious Diet

Before opening up the fridge, or caving to the aromatic allure of a drive-thru (you’re daydreaming about fries now, aren’t you?), be mindful of your weight loss goals and how much they mean to you. 

It can be beneficial to remember this rule: When you eat good, you feel good, and when you feel good, you do good.

In short: Eat good, feel good, do good. 

Try repeating this mantra in your head, especially when you feel tempted to indulge in all of the “bad for your health, but good for the soul” foods. Doing this can keep you focused and disciplined when it comes to what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat it. 

Concerning what you eat, Dr. James DiNicolantonio shares some of the best fat-burning foods:

  • Steak, chicken, turkey, and fish

  • Eggs

  • Fermented dairy products

  • Asparagus and zucchini

  • Bell peppers and onions

  • Watermelon

  • Berries

In addition to these, drinking more water each day is essential to your success. Sufficient hydration has been proven to stimulate healthy weight loss. It will also help you feel fuller after meals and empower you to show your sweet tooth who’s boss!   

Fruits, scale, and a measuring tape

Taste tip: Try adding a spritz of lemon to your water. This makes it much easier to up your hydration. As a bonus, lemons can also speed up metabolism, burn fat, and promote healthy digestion — thanks to their rich antioxidants and abundance of vitamin C. 

There’s good news for all you coffee lovers out there: You don’t have to ditch the java while trying to lose weight. You don’t even have to drink it black unless you secretly dig that kind of thing. 

Instead, try replacing milk and creams with milk alternatives such as oat, coconut, or almond milk. If you want to sweeten your coffee, substitute artificial sweeteners with stevia. This zero-calorie product is all-natural and herbal, which is why many dieticians call it their top pick! 

Healthy Lifestyle

Embracing a healthy lifestyle has a greater impact on fitness than most people realize. If you want to look and feel your absolute best, prioritize getting a good night’s sleep, managing your stress levels, and balancing your hormones. 

Sleep

Studies have shown a direct correlation between sleep and weight loss. When you’re sleep-deprived, ghrelin (a neurotransmitter that makes you feel hungry) levels skyrocket. 

Too much ghrelin will encourage your body to crave foods that are loaded with calories, carbohydrates, and sugars to overcompensate for its lack of energy. Not only that, but sleep deprivation impairs your judgment. It’ll make you want to eat things that give you instant gratification, wreaking havoc on your health and fitness goals.

However, adequate sleep boosts your metabolism, regulates your appetite, and increases your energy, making it that much easier to get a quality workout in! 

Stress

This is a BIG one! Stress causes your system to release cortisol: a hormone that makes it harder for you to burn fat. Over time, this can lead to undesired weight gain — despite all those praise-worthy efforts at the gym.

To combat stress in your life, try focusing on things that bring you joy. This could mean listening to that favorite song on repeat, laughing more with your buddies, getting snuggle time with your pets, or even trying out a yoga class

On a deeper level, it could also mean learning how to say no, freeing up time to spend with people you love, eradicating toxic relationships, or quitting an unhealthy habit. 

Hormones

Hormones play a vital role in your physical and mental well-being. Unfortunately, there are a plethora of environmental elements — such as exposure to certain chemicals — that can mess with your hormones. Whenever your levels are disrupted, it can throw your normal bodily functions out of whack. 

To balance your hormones, take care of your gut health and restrict your alcohol consumption, as well as consult with your doctor. Vitamins and supplements are another effective way to not only fix your hormone levels but to also speed up healthy weight loss:

  • Vitamin B promotes energy.

  • Vitamin D helps with regulating your appetite and losing weight.

  • Magnesium activates lipolysis, a bodily process that targets and removes stored fat from the body.

Man runs along the beach

Frequent Exercise

The most important key to losing weight fast is to burn more calories than you consume in a day. This phenomenon is known as a caloric deficit, and there are two ways to achieve it. 

The first option involves cutting your daily calorie intake. This doesn’t mean that you have to eat less or starve yourself. Instead, it simply requires you to find low-calorie foods that will fill you up faster. 

Veggies are a great choice because not only are they loaded with fiber and water — which speed up satiety — but they’re also very nutritious. 

The second option entails drastically increasing the calories you burn through rigorous exercise like cardio or resistance training. If you’re looking for the most intense calorie burner there is, then cardio is going to be your best friend! 

Whether you decide to try walking, running, jumping rope, swimming, cycling, playing sports, or dancing, workouts like these will have you sweating buckets and feeling like you just conquered a marathon!

For those of you who felt a massive pout coming on when you saw that you’d have to do cardio to lose weight, here’s something that’ll make you feel better: Strength training is also crucial for weight loss! 

The more muscle you build, the more metabolism your body will generate, which means you’ll burn more calories by having extra muscles to flex and admire. Feel free to alternate back and forth between the two exercise types.

If you’re looking to incorporate a little bit of both — cardio and strength training — you should add HIIT (high-intensity interval training) to your daily routine!

Woman stretches after waking up

How Can I Track The Calories I Eat + Burn?

While there are many ways to track your progress, the easiest route is with technology most folks can access.

You’ll need two items to successfully gauge your daily caloric deficit: a smartphone and a smartwatch. Using your smartphone, download a food tracker app such as “MyFitnessPal” or “Lose It!”. 

Next, you’ll want to snag a smartwatch or heart rate monitor that will accurately calculate the calories you burn during a sweat sesh. After your workout, you will input the number of calories burned into your fitness tracker app. The app will work its measuring magic and provide you with your caloric deficit for the day.

Tada! 

To achieve that rapid transformation, aim to exercise at least four to five days a week — but no more than six! Yes, you need off days. Rest and recovery are imperative. They grant your body the necessary time to heal and get stronger. 

Be Aware: Potential Setbacks

It’s no secret that every human being is different — what works for one person might not work for another. In the same sense, what doesn’t work for one person might be the saving grace for another! Because of this, you must be aware of seven factors that could hinder your ability to lose weight:

  • Genetics

  • Medications or supplements you’re taking

  • Hormonal imbalances

  • Metabolism

  • Disease or illness

  • Food intolerances

  • Stress 

Daily calories tracking app on table with food, juice, veggies, and a fork

How Can I Lose 10 Pounds in a Week?

If you’re seeking to accomplish a noticeable transformation in record time, make sure you fully understand what you’re in for. You’ll be required to make short-term sacrifices, such as heavily restricting foods that contain certain macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) and performing intense aerobic exercises. However, if you stay determined, it’s possible to lose 10 pounds in a week.

Here’s the science: You will have to burn up to 5,000 calories per day to lose 1.4 pounds per day, or approximately 10 pounds in seven days. This means you’ll need to count the calories you consume from meals and track the calories you burn during exercise. By the end of each day, you need to be in a state of caloric deficit, also known as a calorie gap.

Note that you also burn calories during everyday activities like climbing the stairs, doing laundry, walking, eating, and breathing. You won’t have to get it all done at the gym!

Since celebrities like LeBron James, Kim Kardashian, and Vanessa Hudgens all rave about the keto diet, you’ve likely heard of this option and the quick results it offers. In short, the keto diet urges your body to rely on stored fats for fuel instead of its normal energy source: glucose from carbohydrates. 

To achieve this “fuel transfer,” you’ll have to switch to a low-carb, high-fat, and moderate-protein diet each day. For the average person, this usually means reducing your carbohydrate intake to roughly 20g to 80g per day

You can expect to mainly eat foods such as avocados, lean meats, fish, eggs, cheese, olive oil, nuts, and seeds while doing keto. On the flip side, avoid — or at least severely restrict — grains, bread, potatoes, starchy vegetables, beans, milk, the majority of fruits, and sugar. 

If you decide to go this route, bear in mind that medical professionals heavily warn against following keto for longer than six to 12 months. While short-term use can produce the results you’re after, the long-term application will likely lead to headaches, brain fog, nausea, constipation, fatigue, insomnia, nutrient deficiency, and liver or kidney issues. 

What Is Belly Fat?

Bothersome belly fat arguably belongs to the most stubborn family of fats. This is probably why it’s the most gratifying kind to get rid of!

Belly fat, also known as visceral fat, resides just below your abdominal muscles. It’s often confused with subcutaneous fat, which is the loose skin around your tummy area. Belly fat surrounds your vital organs, which means that it can pose a detrimental risk to your health — if it’s not kept in check. 

How Can I Lose My Belly Fat?

Whether it’s your dream to have a beautifully-sculpted stomach or to attain a slimmer waistline, it is possible to eliminate belly fat. By strategically implementing fast weight loss tips including diet, lifestyle, and exercise, you’ll be one step closer to a flat tummy.

Although there are very effective belly-blasting exercises out there, remember this: Washboard abs might be made in the gym, but they are uncovered in the kitchen. Also, contrary to popular opinion, you can’t “spot reduce” belly fat. You can, however, incorporate full-body workouts that will minimize fat everywhere–including your midsection.

Woman wraps a tape measurer around her waist

Things To Consider On Your Weight Loss Journey

Weight loss is tough, but keeping the following in mind will help you stay on track:

  • Alcohol and sugar are two of the biggest hindrances to losing weight, so you’ll want to ditch (or highly limit) them. 

  • Skipping meals is counterproductive and leads to binging later on, so don’t do it!

  • Diet pills and laxatives are not the answer to your problems.

  • Eat until you’re satisfied, about 80 percent full. 

  • Having people who support you is invaluable.

  • Set realistic, achievable goals for yourself.

  • Tracking the foods you eat, your workouts, your sleep patterns, and your overall progress will help keep you accountable. 

  • It’s okay to indulge every once in a while (you’re human, after all), just try not to splurge!

  • Choose workouts you genuinely love so that your participation remains habitual

Final Thoughts on Healthy Weight Loss

While the pursuit of quick and healthy weight loss can feel trying at times, the vast benefits far outweigh the struggles. In all the ways that matter — mentally, physically, and emotionally — you’ll feel like a brand new person. 

By incorporating the necessary modifications to your diet, lifestyle, and exercise regimen, you’ll put yourself on track to burning fat, hitting your weight loss goals, and enjoying all of the wonderful things this life has to offer that much more.

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