10 Ways to Help You Lose Weight Quickly

People have been looking for weight loss shortcuts for ages. William the Conqueror became worried about his weight when he could not ride his horse and resorted to a liquid diet to get in shape. And there are other examples in history where people have tried all sorts of radical slim-down schemes to get quick results. The question is, “Do lose-weight-quick-tricks really work?” Yes, they may, but they are not worth the risk. It means you can lose weight by going on a cocaine binge, but that is never a good idea.

The truth is that you can only lose about 3 pounds a week in a safe and natural way. If you burn 500 calories from your total daily caloric intake and continue to do so for a week, you will end up losing up to 2 pounds. You can lose more weight by eating less and exercising more, but there is always a limit. Here are 10 simple yet effective ways to help you lose weight naturally.

Enjoy a Healthy Breakfast

What you eat will always have an impact on your weight, but no meal is more important than your breakfast. Get a good, nutritious breakfast and you will be able to start your day on a positive note.

Your breakfast should fill you up and keep hunger pangs at bay until your next meal. Ideally, you should be consuming no more than 400-500 calories in your first meal of the day.

Your breakfast should also contain lean protein and filling fat, such as unsweetened Greek yogurt, eggs, nuts, beans, or nut butter. Fibre should also be a part of your breakfast to keep you full for long.

Include Healthy Fat and Protein in Your Diet

You know the importance of building a good breakfast, but it is equally important to ensure that your other meals are nutritious too. To help lose weight, you need to ensure that each of your meals contain a fat source, a protein source, and low-carb veggies. This will help keep your carb intake within 20-50g range.

Protein is important for fat loss because your body uses calories in order to digest protein. It means that a high protein diet can shift your metabolism in top gear. It also promotes satiety and prevents late night snacking. You can get protein from chicken, beef, bacon, and lamb, whereas trout, salmon, and lobsters are some great protein sources for those interested in seafood.

You also need to get healthy fat, and an easy solution is to cook in coconut oil because it also helps boost metabolism. Limit your intake of animal fat though. While meat provides you with protein, you need to consume it sparingly because animal fat is stored on the body in no time. Instead, try to increase your intake of fat by opting for small amounts of nuts.

Use Salt Carefully

You need to limit your salt intake to be able to lose weight effectively. Excessive salt intake can lead to water-weight gain. You can reduce water retention by limiting your salt intake. Be very careful when buying snacks. Avoid anything that contains more than 140mg of sodium per serving.

Enjoy Your Cup of Joe

A cup of coffee may help support your weight loss efforts. Just have a cup of coffee when you wake up in the morning. It provides you with caffeine that reduces water retention, and provides you with several antioxidants as well. You can consume up to 400mg of caffeine per day without having to worry about any side effects. Caffeine also helps lose weight because it promotes thermogenesis. It means that it raises body temperature and burns fat in return.

After ingestion of 3mg/kg bodyweight caffeine, body heat was significantly elevated in the caffeine group and sweating induced from exercise occurred at a faster rate. Source

Caffeinated coffee may also help because it boosts your metabolism by up to 11% (Source). It means that regular consumption will uplift your metabolism and also help lower your risk of developing type-2 diabetes. But be aware, it is possible to build up a tolerance with continued caffeine use, so this strategy alone may be ineffective long term.

Opt for Strength Training

There are people who believe that cardio workouts are the best when it comes to losing weight. It is true that cardio exercise elevates your heart rate, which in turn helps you burn calories. However, there is nothing better than resistance training when you want to lose weight. Resistance training elevates your metabolism and keeps it up longer, even when you are resting. That post-exercise metabolic boost associated with resistance training is the reason why it is better than cardio exercise. Furthermore, strength training also provides you with benefits such as better muscle gain, improved strength, improved appearance, and better posture.

Aerobic exercise certain has its place, but it is not going to increase lean muscle mass. In fact, you lose both muscle and fat during aerobic training. Losing lean muscle is a surefire way to slow down your metabolism. Therefore, the best thing is to do both cardio and strength training. You can spend 45-60 minutes engaging in strength training about 3-4 times a week. You can perform some cardio work on other days to yield better results.

Get Enough Sleep

Spending a lot of time in the gym is not going to help you burn weight effectively so long as you get enough sleep every night. You will be putting your body through serious stress when exercising in the gym, and your body repairs itself when you are asleep.

Some studies have found that not getting enough sleep each night can slow down your metabolism. It means that if you skimp on your ZZZs, you are likely to find it difficult to shed those extra pounds.

• In a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, dieters were put on different sleep schedules. When their bodies received adequate rest, half of the weight they lost was from fat. However when they cut back on sleep, the amount of fat lost was cut in half—even though they were on the same diet.

There is some evidence that your body suffers from “metabolic grogginess” when you are sleep deprived, and you can experience this state when you fail to get enough sleep for four consecutive days.

This state actually affects the way your body uses insulin. In fact, some researchers have found that insulin sensitivity drops by up to 30% when you suffer from “metabolic

grogginess”, and when this happen, fat cells fail to remove lipids and fatty acids from your blood. This may trigger the release of insulin and excessive secretion may increase storage of fat in all the wrong places.

Do Not Skip Your Meals

Some people are under the impression that they need to limit their caloric intake to lose weight, and that is true as well, but that does not mean you start to cut your calories by skipping meals. Not eating anything for a long period will eventually slow down your metabolism and may also make you overeat when you eventually get a chance to eat something. Therefore, never skip a meal. If you are running late for work or think you do not have time for a sit-down meal, stash a piece of fruit or an energy bar in your car or bag and eat when you feel hungry. Ideally, you should be eating three males every day with two snacks as well. Do not let 3-4 hours go by without eating anything.

Increase Your Intake of Water

There are many reasons why you need to drink more water to help lose weight. First up, water helps reduce the amount of salt in the body, which in turn will discourage water retention. Moreover, studies show that drinking water can help burn more calories.

• Drinking water increases the amount of calories you burn, which is known as resting energy expenditure (Source).

Some studies have shown that increasing your intake of water increases your resting energy expenditure by 24-30% within 10 minutes of drinking. The effect may last up to an hour or so.

• A study of overweight women examined the effects of increasing water intake to over 1 litre (34 oz) per day. They found that over a 12-month period, this resulted in an extra 2 kg (4.4 lbs) of weight loss (Source).

You can also drink water before meals to help reduce appetite. You will be eating less and eating fewer calories means that you will find it easier to lose weight quickly. Furthermore, you can actually reduce long-term weight gain by drinking an additional cup of water every day. And of course, you can control your caloric intake by replacing high-calorie beverages with water.

Interestingly, you do not always need to drink so many litres of water every day to get its benefits; in fact, you can also opt for high-water content foods to reach your daily water goals. Some good options include celery, grapes, asparagus, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, artichokes, cranberries, and pineapple.

Know How Much of Healthy Food to Eat

What it means is that you need to understand that a calorie is a calorie irrespective of where it comes from. In other words, you can eat too much of a healthy food because it still contains calories. Some studies have shown that you can lose weight while eating junk food so long you know how many calories you are eating on a daily basis. Ideally, you should be going for foods that are more nutritionally dense and less calorie-dense – these foods are less energetically rich, have higher quality protein, contain more fibre, and are low on the glycemic index.

Understand the Role of the Brain

When it comes to losing weight, you need to understand what role your brain has to play in the whole thing. Some researchers believe that your body and metabolism are not responsible for creating obesity… it is all because of your brain. Those poor decisions you make are responsible for weight gain. What many people do not know is that those poor decisions can also change the way your brain responds to the satiation and hunger processes.

It implies that if you continue to overeat for years, it will lay down neutral tracks and make it extremely difficult to control hunger and manage weight.

The good thing is that it is possible to switch to new behaviour patterns for long enough to help brain fix those older neutral tracks associated with overeating. However, you need to bear in mind that you actually need to rewire your brain. It is going to take time, but it will happen if you practice hard.

The fact of the matter is that while everyone wants to lose weight quickly, there is no quick fix to obesity. You need to change your behaviour towards food and sometimes, you also need to change your lifestyle. All this is going to take time. The above mentioned ways will certainly help manage things better, and you can improve your chances of getting a leaner body by limiting your intake of added sugar, avoiding liquid calories, supplementing with glucomannan, drinking green tea, eating more slowly, and using smaller plates. Just remember that you are not going to experience significant changes overnight.

Some Additional Ways to Lose Weight Quickly

As mentioned already, it is better to stick to natural ways to lose weight, but if you really want to lose it quickly, you may want to take advantage of some technologically advanced options. For instance:

• Ultrasound Melting: The process involves using ultrasounds to kill fat cells. Your doctor will check your weight and BMI first and then confirm if you are a good candidate for ultrasound melting. The treatment may cost you a lot but you may be able to reduce your waistline in no time.
• Digestion-Mimicking Pills: By taking this pill, you will trick your body into thinking that you are eating something and it should start the process of digestion. This in turn may lead to greater fat burn. The pill is more like an imaginary meal. Animal studies show that digestion-mimicking pills may also help control blood sugar levels, curb weight gain, and reduce bad cholesterol in the body.
• Gene Suppression: A study on worms has shown that the presence of a specific gene can help them consume a diet high in sugar and fat without gaining any weight. Humans also contain the same gene and pharmaceutical companies say that certain drugs can cause genetic mutations and make those genes active in humans. It can be quite risky though, so it is better to wait and see how things improve regarding this treatment.
• An Ice Pack Vest: Some studies have found that you can improve your metabolism by staying submerged in cool water for several hours a day. Since it is not possible for everyone to find a pool of cool water, you can now get an ice-pack-laden vest to produce the same effects. Combined with a healthy diet, using this vest may help boost weight loss.
• Stomach Draining: It is a rather weird way to help lose weight, but it may work for some. It involves inserting a tube into your abdomen with a port valve staying outside your body and flushing against the skin. After 30 minutes of eating your meal, you can open up that tube and eliminate a third of the contents. Some clinical data suggests that it does work; in fact, the FDA has approved the method for people with BMIS above 35.

Overall, the best way to lose weight is to pay attention to your diet and burn more calories in the gym to lose weight. This approach saves you from dealing with any side effects. However, there certainly are some newly introduced ways to lose weight quickly, but those options come with pros and cons. So, be sure to talk to your healthcare provider before taking the plunge.

About the author: Rachel Butler

Rachel has been with us since we launched back in 2012.

Rachel has reviewed countless products over the years, and has written many articles offering sound advice. Her professional opinions are widely respected.

Rachel graduated a BSc in Clinical Science from the University of Leicester, U.K.

She lives in York with her husband and young daughter and their dog, a little terrier named Betsy.