The easiest and most effective way to lose weight and keep it off is to focus on what you’re eating instead of how much you’re eating.
Ditch the fad diets and calorie counting. A restrictive dietary approach decreases your metabolism, prevents your body from burning fat and creates an unhealthy relationship with food.
Fat burning starts with hormones and hormones are most affected by the types of foods you eat, not the amount of calories you consume. By eating better quality, more nutrient-dense foods, you’ll feel better, enjoy food more, support blood sugar levels and lose weight faster. Here are 30 effective fat loss tips to get the health and body composition results you deserve.
30 Effective Fat Loss Tips
1. Eat More Mindfully
When you improve how you eat, you’ll naturally improve what you eat. Start by creating a relaxing mealtime ritual. This can be as simple as taking a few deep breaths and giving thanks for what’s on your plate. Next, slow down, engage your sense, take smaller bites and chew each bite at least 20 times before swallowing. This will greatly improve digestion, increase nutrient absorption and help you feel full faster.
2. Hydrate With Water
All of your body’s chemical reactions, including your metabolism, depend on water. Stay hydrated by starting each morning with a large glass of water and pack a bottle to refill throughout the day. Add lemon wedges, sliced cucumber, fresh mint or frozen berries for variety.
3. Choose Whole Foods
Choose natural, whole foods (veggies and fruits) over man-made, processed products (cookies and pasta). Whole foods naturally contain more nutrients including fiber that help lower the glycemic load (GL) of a meal to prevent an insulin spike. In general, the less refined a food is the more nutrients it contains.
4. Read Food Labels
Make it a habit to always read food labels. Look for minimal ingredients. Avoid labels with refined sugars, flour, words you can’t pronounce, and anything listed as “low-fat,” “fat-free,” or “sugar-free.” Aim for less than 5 grams of sugar per serving.
5. Swap Your Salt
Replace table salt with a high quality, unrefined sea salt, such as Celtic or Himalayan. Unrefined sea salt has the opposite effect of table salt, helping to reduce fluid retention, increase hydration, balance electrolytes, nourish the adrenals and support the nervous system.
6. Plan Balanced Meals
Skipping meals or restricting calories can result in overeating and poor food choices. Instead, eat 3 balanced meals and 1-2 snacks that focus on quality protein, natural fats, and non-starchy veggies. This helps stabilize blood sugar levels so you can maintain consistent energy throughout the day. Plan meals and pack your snacks ahead of time so you don’t end up “starving” with lots of unhealthy temptations.
7. Start With Protein
Enjoy plenty of high-quality protein at the beginning of each meal, especially breakfast as this sets the tone for healthy choices the rest of the day. Protein promotes fat burning, reduces cravings, and provides high satiation. Protein-packed morning meal ideas include a protein shake, eggs with nitrate-free bacon and veggies, yogurt medley, cottage cheese or hard-cooked eggs with avocado.
8. Sweeten With Success
Avoid artificial sweeteners and refined sugars by choosing healthier sweeteners that help stabilize blood sugar levels, such as cinnamon and stevia. Cinnamon, a naturally sweet spice, can actually slow the rate carbs are digested by 29 percent! Stevia, a naturally sweet herb, contains zero sugar, calories or toxic ingredients and has zero effect on blood sugar levels.
9. Learn to “Lemonize”
Add freshly squeezed lemon to water, tea, salads, chicken, fish, and vegetables for extra flavor. Lemons pack in health benefits by supporting weight loss, improving digestion, balancing pH, aiding detoxification, and providing a decent amount of vitamin C and potassium.
10. Select Greens Over Grains
Most people eat twice as many grains as they do greens, which should be the other way around. Eating more veggies is a great way to increase fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants into your daily diet. Include more veg by juicing, adding to salads/snacks, and using for pasta, wraps, and rolls.
11. Befriend Natural Fats
Natural fats are your best friend for fat loss as they have zero effect on blood glucose levels. Fats also add flavor, decrease sugar cravings, promote satiation and increase nutrient absorption. Fats lower the glycemic load of any type of carb, meaning the sugar from that food enters the blood at a much slower rate. The lower the glycemic load, the better. Figure-friendly fats include avocado, coconut oil, walnuts, etc.
12. Favor Fruit For Dessert
Naturally sweet and packed with nutrients, antioxidants, and fiber, fruit helps reduce inflammation, curb cravings, and support weight loss. Try these delicious fruity dessert ideas. Dark chocolate is a good option, packed with polyphenols and magnesium. Highly recommended: Alter Eco dark chocolate bars.
13. Balance Hormones Naturally
Hormone imbalances make it difficult to lose body fat. Instead of dieting, taking a bunch of supplements or starting hormone replacement therapy, complete functional labs to identity underlying issues. Work with your practitioner on addressing these issues with a customized program.
14. Improve Your Digestion
No matter how stellar your nutrition is, you’re not going to get results if you’re not digesting food properly. To support digestion, focus on eating more mindfully, chewing food more, optimizing HCL/enzyme/bile production, improving stool transit time, and identifying underlying issues with functional labs.
15. Strengthen Gut Health
Good gut health is essential for overall health and fat loss. Create a better balanced internal environment by strengthening your gut with probiotics, cultured foods (kefir, kraut, kombucha, etc.), and homemade bone broth. Complete functional labs to identity underlying issues.
16. Include Fat-Burning Foods
Eat more foods that boost metabolism, curb cravings, and support fat loss, such as apple cider vinegar, avocados, blueberries, broth, chili peppers, cinnamon, citrus, cacao, coconut oil, coffee, green tea, salmon, walnuts, and more. Coconut fats, in particular, are an excellent source of MCTs that support fat burning.
17. Eliminate Inflammatory Foods
Avoid eating inflammatory foods such as processed foods, refined sugars, artificial ingredients, man-made fats, gluten/wheat, non-organic, GMOs, excess alcohol, excess caffeine, and any food sensitivities (dairy, eggs, nuts, etc.). Work with your practitioner on addressing food sensitivities to support fat loss.
18. Detox Your Body
A congested liver makes it difficult to lose fat. First, get your bowels moving to prevent toxin reabsorption. Next, nourish your liver by consuming plenty of antioxidants, bitters, and detoxifying foods. Support gentle detoxification with detox baths, infrared saunas, customized supplementation, and coffee enemas.
19. Reduce Toxin Exposure
Toxins are major fat loss inhibitor and can wreak havoc on the body. Reduce toxins by filtering water, eating organic, passing on plastics and selecting more natural beauty, hygiene, and household items. Read labels and use EWG’s app to find healthier products. Lastly, use functional labs to identify internal toxins.
20. Address Underlying Issues
Functional labs help identify root causes and eliminate symptoms, such as weight gain, at the source. Although testing requires spending more money initially, taking out the “guess work” can save a lot of money, time and sanity in the long run. Invest in your health and get results now.
21. Supplement More Effectively
Are you wasting money on supplements that do more harm than good? Most supplements don’t work. They’re made from poor quality ingredients and are poorly absorbed. Read this article to learn how to buy and take supplements to save money, and get better health and weight loss results.
22. Get Better Sleep
Boost fat burning by going to bed by 10 pm and aiming for 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Promote restful sleep by creating a relaxing, clean, cool, comfortable and dark sleep environment. Wind down an hour before bed by relaxing, reducing artificial light, and minimizing EMFs (cell phone, wireless internet, etc.).
23. Soak in Sunshine
Getting adequate sunlight is helpful for overall health and fat loss. Depending on skin tone, age, diet, susceptibility to sunburn and sun intensity, a healthy dose of “D” is 15-60 minutes daily. Once you start turning pink, consider reinforcements such as shade, protective clothing, and non-toxic sunscreens.
24. Reduce Stress Levels
Prevent stress-eating and reduce stress by planning daily relaxation such as yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, journaling (gratitude), nature walks, lavender baths, or anything else you enjoy.
25. Exercise More Efficiently
Sit less and move your body more throughout the day. Listen to your body to find the right amount, intensity and variety of movement you need. Proper movement leaves you feeling renewed, not ragged. Try high intensity interval training to boost fat burning.
26. Try the Potato Hack
Try Tim Steele’s Potato Hack: Weight Loss Simplified plan. Potatoes contains natural compounds that affect inflammation, hunger, insulin, gut health, and body weight. Simply eat nothing but plain potatoes for three to five days.
27. Narrow Down Your Diet
Eat only 3 foods for 2 days to help reduce inflammation, ease digestion, and promote fat loss. Choose whole, balanced foods, such as a steak with red potato and broccoli. Cook everything with a small amount of unrefined coconut oil and add a touch of sea salt. Keep it simple.
28. Incorporate Intermittent Fasting
Fasting is by far one of the best things for improving health, reducing body fat, and increasing energy. Most people do well starting with a 12 hour overnight fast, such as from 7 pm to 7 am. Work with your health practitioner on incorporating a safe fasting routine into your schedule.
29. Get Grounded Daily
Take off your shoes and sit, stand or walk barefoot outside on the bare ground (grass, sand, dirt, etc.). Grounding helps recharge your internal battery to support weight loss by decreasing inflammation and pain, reducing stress, and improving circulation.
30. Use Cold Therapy
Cold therapy is extremely effective for reducing inflammation, improving overall health and reducing body fat. The easiest way to use cold therapy is by taking cold showers and working your way into ice baths or cold plunges. Learn more at the Wim Hof Method. Cryotherapy is another option but can be expensive.
