Swimsuit season might be over, but it’s never too late to lose some excess weight and keep it off. Yes, nutrition, diet, exercise, cleansing and detoxification are the major ways to reach your ideal weight, but there are some rules of thumb that can be easy boosters to any excess weight loss plan. Here are seven:
- Eat More Protein: Protein is arguably the most essential macronutrient. Oftentimes, people overeat because they’re in need of protein, but aren’t getting enough from the food they’re consuming. As a result, they end up eating much more than they normally would, only to feel hungry again later. If you’d like to see for yourself, drink a good-sized serving of a protein supplement thirty minutes to an hour before a meal, and then see how much you eat. It’ll almost always be less than you would have otherwise.
- Drink Water Upon Rising: Drinking at least a glass to preferably a liter of clean water immediately upon rising kick-starts your metabolism for the day. If you don’t, your body will have a harder time digesting your next meal and up storing a greater amount as fat than expending it as energy.
- Eat Hot Peppers: Eating hot peppers with meals turns up the metabolism and can help you lose excess weight.
- Don’t eat after 5pm: When you eat a large meal, it normally takes three hours to four hours to fully digest. Your metabolism slows to a snail’s pace after 9pm, which is why when you eat late at night, you’ll still feel the food in your stomach the next morning. Improperly digested, and therefore unable to be properly broken down, food is a key factor in adding pounds to your waistline.
- Take Digestive Enzymes: For a variety of reasons, most people after their late twenties are no longer able to produce a sufficient amount of digestive enzymes, resulting in digestive difficulties. Supplemental digestive enzymes can help your body digest your food more fully.
- Avoid Liquids with Meals: Don’t drink liquids, including water, twenty minutes before to at least two hours after eating. Liquids like water change the pH level of the digestive fluids in your stomach and wash away digestive enzymes, making it all but impossible for your body to properly break down foods.
- Make Sure You’re Nutritionally Saturated: When you’re deficient in micronutrients like minerals and vitamins, you’ll feel hungrier as your body signals its need for them. But if your meal isn’t providing enough, you might end up eating more than you normally would. To remedy this, try drinking two or three glasses of freshly made vegetable juice, or some green superfood powders, with a pinch or two of sea salt (for minerals), half an hour to an hour before your next meal. You’ll probably end up eating less than you otherwise would.
