In today’s day and age people are constantly looking for quick ways to lose weight and companies are taking advantage by marketing supposed miracle drugs, diet plans, or guides to lose an absurd amount of weight in small time periods for an expensive price. Here are some tips to improve your diet without expensive products and help you lose weight in a way that is natural, healthy, and sustainable.
Estimate Your BMR
Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the amount of calories you burn in a day to perform basic functions of life. While many factors affect your BMR, plenty of calculators are available online to help you estimate how many calories you burn on average per a day. Getting this baseline amount will help us determine how many calories we should intake a day to remain in a caloric deficit while still getting enough for basic nutrition.
Healthy Caloric Deficit
The key factor to losing excess weight is remaining in a caloric deficit or making sure that you intake slightly less calories than you burn in a day. For healthy weight loss your caloric deficit should be about 250-500 calories daily. This will result in about a 0.5-1 pound loss per a week. Losing weight in small amounts at a time helps to build healthy, sustainable habits that will prevent us from resorting back to old ways.
Eat Nutritionally Dense Foods
One of the big reasons Americans put on weight is due to an overconsumption of foods with high amounts of “empty calories”. Empty calories are foods that are packed with unhealthy fats and sugars and do not contain good amounts of protein or micronutrients. Nutritionally dense foods on the other hand give us healthy fats, proteins, carbs, vitamins, and minerals that will satisfy our needs. Some good foods that are nutritionally dense include:
- Fruits and vegetables
- Lean meats (Poultry, seafood, etc.)
- Eggs
- Nuts
- Beans
- Whole Grains
Eat a Big Lunch
One of the easiest ways to help with weight loss is to make lunch your biggest meal. Most Americans have their largest meal of the day for dinner and remain mostly inactive afterwards, converting the unused calories to fat storages. Switching up your meal habits to have a hearty lunch and light dinner simply helps us naturally burn more calories. Eating a larger lunch will allow us to passively burn off calories during the day while we are awake as well as provide energy for our day ahead. Dinner should be kept to a light meal that will simply help satisfy us until we fall asleep.
Written by GUADS intern Rob, with contributions from cancer.gov
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