How to lose up to 20 pounds gradually without having to count calories.
Let’s face it the vast majority of diets don’t work. Ninety five percent of people who lose weight on a diet put the weight back on over the next 12 months and 10 percent of these will end up heavier than before they started the diet. Many diets are too boring, too hard, too cumbersome, too emotionally demanding.
So if you are overweight, don’t want to spend time counting calories, and want to lose weight gradually without thinking too much about how and exactly when that’s going to happen, here’s an alternative approach.
Stop believing it’s tough to change your behaviour by just committing to 3 things you probably don’t do now. (Alright that’s four things!)
1. Pay more attention before you eat and while you are eating.
Why? Because unhealthy eating habits for many of us are mindless activities. The anecdote is to become more aware, that is really see what you are going to eat (the amount, portion size, plate size etc.) before you start eating. Not only become more aware of what you are eating at mealtimes but also what you eat between meals.
Paying attention for just 3 weeks could alter your automatic unconscious approach to food without having to commit to making any changes beforehand. Paying more attention to what we do habitually seems to be one of the reasons that the 5:2 diet works and why most people don’t binge on the non-diet days.
2. Give up something, even one thing, on a regular basis, which you really won’t miss.
Ideally this would mean giving up breakfast in the morning and eating for the first time at lunch time. Whist this is a really effective way of burning the body’s own calories stored as fat, most of us really would miss the ritual of ‘breaking the fast’ each morning, myself included.
An easier way is to give up just one thing that you consume on a regular basis each day: one sugary or one alcoholic drink, a pastry, a chocolate bar, crisps etc.. You might only have to do this for 3 weeks to make the new habit stick. As we shall see in the Habit for Habit series, what would make this even easier is to have a supply of a healthy alternative on hand, such as a fruit or a vegetable.
How do you know you won’t miss it? Because if you are eating unhealthily the scale of this reduction is small enough to be below the mind’s ‘radar’. Remember the best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on! Even if it only amounts to about 100-200 calories each and every day, that is equivalent to 10 pounds of weight loss over 12 months. If you stick to this plan, within 3 weeks you probably won’t even notice what’s missing!
3. Take an extra 2000 steps (about a mile) per day.
For most of us taking an extra 2000 steps over an average day is really not difficult. It doesn’t matter whether this is for exercise, household or garden chores, visiting friends or neighbours, or using the stairs instead of the elevator. This could potentially help you lose a further 10 pounds of weight over 12 months. Speed is not as important as the extra movement which is why it also helps if you move other parts of your body as well as your legs. More muscles moving means more calories being burned.
How do you know you’ve done an extra 2000 steps? Using the money you save by giving up the treats as in action 2, you could purchase an activity sensor or accelerometer (£50 -£100) which will not only help you to measure your baseline activity, but also find out how relatively little you would have to do to achieve the new target. It can also be a big help with motivation.
So when you practice these 3 actions and make them habitual you could potentially and easily lose about 20 pounds of weight over 12 months, look and feel amazing, and be physically fitter.
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