Little Tips For Big Weight Loss

-Eat whole grain foods.

Lance and I have been buying 100% whole grain wheat bread and we recently bough wheat blended pancakes. Once we have a little more in our budget, we're actually looking into buying some whole grain flat bread to make some tasty sandwiches at home. 

Pros of Whole Grain Foods:
-stroke risk reduced 30-36%
-type 2 diabetes risk reduced 21-30%
-heart disease risk reduced 25-28%
-better weight maintenance

-healthier blood pressure levels

-Replace soda with water

Soda is full of calories and sugars and things that your body simply does not need. Let me give you a brief idea of how terrible soda is for you. On the application, My Fitness Pal, it presets amounts of things I need per day based on my weight and height. My daily goal for sugars is 24 grams if I don't exercise at all. In one 20 oz bottle of Mountain Dew, there are 77 grams of sugar. That is more than 300% of what my daily intake of sugar is supposed to be. HOLY JESUS! I can't believe that some days Lance and I would each buy a 2 liter of Mountain Dew and drink it throughout the day. In one 2 liter bottle of mountain dew there are 1,020 calories (my daily net goal is 1200 calories) and 276 sugars. That the amount of sugars that I'm allowed to have in 11, almost 12 days. Are you hearing me, now? Give up the soda. Instead, replace it with water. Lance and I drink water day and night. It's good to make sure that you get at least 64 oz of water a day. Of course, we couldn't just quit soda cold turkey. We did begin replace our soda cravings for 0 calorie rip-its and they have worked wonderfully (and they're only 99 cents). 0 calorie rip-its can be found at your local gas station (We always find them at Rhodes and C-Barns). They have 0 calories, 0 carbohydrates, and 0 sugars. It is chalk full of vitamins though. It have 200% of your daily vitamin C, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin B12. The only downside to these tasty drinks is that it does contain 220mg of sodium, which is 12% of the daily recommended amount (based on a 2,000 calorie diet). 

How does water help you?
-Transports nutrients and oxygen into cells
-Helps with metabolism
-Helps our organs to absorb nutrients better
-Detoxifies
-Protects and moisturizes our joints

-Eat every 3-4 hours

If you don't eat every 3-4 hours, your body can throw itself into starvation mode causing it to hold onto the food that you most recently ate in fear of how long it could be until it gets anything else. The best way to do this is to have a healthy, filling breakfast. Eggs are always a great start to the day; They're full of protein and extremely filling. A few hours later, eat a small snack. Lance and I usually stick to semi-healthy breakfast bars. A couple of hours later, lunch. There are no specific guidelines on this, just eat what you know is healthy. Don't go to McDonalds and get a Big Mac with a large order of fries. A few hours later, eat another snack. Try something along the lines of raisins or soy nuts. Then eat a nice dinner at home. Also, Don't eat anything 2 hours before bed. Eating right before bed time gives you calories and energy that you don't intend to burn off and your body will just hold onto. Eating sugary foods can revive your body and cause you to stay up while spicy foods can cause heartburn and prevent a good nights sleep.

-Portioning!

Portioning is a large part of what Lance and I have dedicated our weight loss too. When you buy food, look at the serving size and the number of servings you get per container. You know when you sit down to watch a movie with a family sized bag of chips and by the end of the movie you look down and realize you've eaten half of the bag? That can be prevented. Instead of bringing the whole bag to the movie, count out the chips to one or two servings and put them in a plastic baggie. This will stop you from eating half the bag and quite frankly, save you a fortune. Lance and I used to spend over $3 on a bag of Doritos and two days later they would be gone. Now we can spend $5 with us getting our individual boxes of wheat thins ($2.50 a piece) and make them last a week minimum. We used to get foot long sandwiches at Subway and would fight our bodies to eat the last few bites. Then we would feel terrible for the next few hours for overeating. We used to spend at least $15 at Subway every time we went, which meant that it was an expensive meal and we were rarely ever allowed to get it. Now we get 6 inch oven roasted chicken breast subs at pay $6.48 every time. It is tough at first because you won't feel full, but the more you work on portioning, the more your body will recognize that what you're giving it is enough and you will feel content instead of bloated and wondering where all of your money went when you have nothing to show for it.

Pros:

More $$$$$

Less fat to jiggle on your belly

-Eat high protein foods

Getting plenty of protein is will allow you to replace fat with muscle. If you aren't getting a lot of protein, your body will burn both fat and muscle. It will also give you that melted look when you do begin loosing weight instead of getting things firm like we all want our bodies to be.

-Start Exercising

I feel like this probably should have been first on the list, but I really wanted to save it for last. Exercising is a lot easier than people make it out to be. A lot of people try making the excuse "I don't have the time to exercise." You know what I have to say? You're a dirty liar. You do too have the time. Lance and I get in more exercise than some people are able to. I get that. We do P90X when we have the time as well as walking and hiking for hours on end on nice days. When we work from 12pm-9pm, it can be hard to find time to do those other things. So we make time. We get two 15 minute breaks at work. You know what we do? We walk around the building 10 out of those 15 minutes. In our normal work day, that's 20 minutes of walking. We do have an hour lunch, which I understand not all people are lucky enough to get, but during that hour lunch we eat our food and then walk around our work place for the remainder of the time. We can usually get anywhere between 15-40 minutes of walking in during this time. That means that on a day where we work at 8 hour shift, but are at the work place for 9 hours, we are still able to get in 25-60 minutes of walking in. That's a piece of cake. There is no reason you can't do it too. Is it a lot? No, but every little bit helps. 

Pros:

It will help you lose weight and achieve a healthier lifestyle. That's why you all are here, aren't you?

Following these tips will allow you to make this kind of progress.