Lose Weight For the New Year: 5 Tips for Healthy Sustainable Weight Loss

One of the most popular new year's resolutions for 2020 was to lose weight. In fact not just 2020, losing weight has been one of most popular new year's resolutions for many years now. 

It's understandable why so many people want to loss weight for the new year, it provides a boost to your confidence and of course comes with an abundance of positive health benefits. But statistics show that most of the people that do succeed in losing weight in the first few months of the year gain that weight back in the second half of the year rendering their efforts fruitless.

Why? The reason is simple, their methods of weight loss were not practical for long term use, these methods usually include crash diets or overly rigorous exercise regimes. In order to lose weight and maintain that weight a change in lifestyle has to occur, these changes have to be comfortable and practical so that can you stick to them long term.

In this week's article, we want to share 5 lifestyle tips that are not only practical but will be more or less sustainable so that you can enjoy a healthy and long term weight loss journey.

1. Count Your Calories

If you're any way into fitness, you'll know that most professional and bodybuilders are counting their daily calorie intakes. Counting your calories lets you know how much calories to body needs to maintain it's weight, this is called your daily maintenance calories.

After finding your maintenance calories it becomes fairly easy to make adjustments, if you want to lose weight just ensure you are in a caloric deficit, which basically means to eat less calories daily.

Everyone's body & metabolism is different so maintenance calories you find for your weight online might not be what is best for you, we recommend experimenting with different numbers and weighing yourself daily to find that sweet spot and ensure more accurate estimations.

2. Do Not Skip Breakfast

You've probably heard a thousand times that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and yet there are a handful of people that regularly skip breakfast and swear that it helped them lose weight.

But usually the reason these individuals skip breakfast is not to lose weight, it is simply because of the fact that they struggle to fit breakfast in their day. Most of the time these people that skip breakfast are also not getting enough sleep and are either overweight or underweight, which all contribute to unhealthy weight fluctuations. So skipping breakfast might not really be the magical solution you're looking for.

Health experts recommend that you try to incorporate breakfast into your daily schedule, it will help you concentrate better in school or at work and increase your productivity. Eating breakfast also helps you have a more healthy diet overall, have better eating habits and are less likely to be hungry for snacks during the day which will help you easily keep within your target daily calories.

3. Fruit & Vegetables

We can confidently say that almost all articles & health blogs include the importance of fruits & vegetable in one way or another and with good reason, they are THAT important! Now we can go on about the health benefits they provide, but we'll narrow it down to how they can help you in your weight loss goals.

First of all, fruits and vegetables are usually extremely low in calories which means even if you consume them in large quantities, chances are you'll still be well within your daily target calories. And for the icing on the cake, they are generally high in fibre which helps you stay full for longer, which leaves you less room for snacks and other unhealthy options in your diet, not to mention they're packed with essential vitamins and minerals that your body need to stay healthy.

4. Use Smaller Plates

This might seem like an uncommon one, but hear us out. The human body survives by adapting to it's environment and habits, if you eat large meals everyday your body will become accustomed to this and may not be satiated if you give it smaller or even normal portions of food.

Now the opposite is also true, if you feed your body smaller portions of food daily, as time passes it will recognize that it only needs that amount of food to be satisfied effectively cutting your calories. With that being said, eating too little is also unhealthy so just don't go overboard and you'll be just fine.

Also, you don't really have to go out and buy smaller plates, it is usually just a term that is used to help people better understand how to portion their meals but it does help to have smaller plates in the house since you can't fit a huge amount of food on them anyway, but we'll leave that to your personal preference.

5. Don't be too strict with yourself

The key to a successful weight loss journey is to maintain that healthy lifestyle and diet for as long as possible. After all, there is no point in doing something if you don't enjoy it, you should accept that you'll be going out to dinner with your friends and family every now and then, you're going to have a few drinks and you'll want to eat whatever catches your eye on the menu.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying yourself and a healthy diet doesn't have to be a painful chore that you dread everyday. On days that you're not out try your best to stick to your diet plan and make healthy choices, when you do go out try enjoy everything in moderation. Make your healthy diet a lifestyle choice instead of just a short term plan and it will naturally become a daily routine that sticks.

Losing weight is a commendable task, but it also requires planning and discipline. However, we believe that having a healthier diet should not a dread filled task, instead it should be a positive and sustainable lifestyle change.

There is no secret plan to guarantee a sustainable weight loss journey, you can use these tips as a guide to find out what works for you, make some tweaks to help you sustain it and you'll be on your way to a healthier and more confident YOU.