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The 7 Best Weight Loss Tips

We scoured scores of weight loss tips and found the cream of the crop to help you shed that flab for good.

If you’re reading this, you probably want to lose a few pounds yourself or help someone you love lose weight — and this is certainly not the first list of weight loss tips you’ve stumbled upon. With obesity now epidemic in our country, there is no shortage of advice, programs, and products designed to help people who are overweight. This makes it difficult to weed out what’s really useful and effective. And who isn’t sick of hearing that the way to lose weight is to reduce calories and increase activity?

Good news: We dug deep to find the best weight loss tips for people who want to lose weight. Print this page, put it on your fridge, and get going!

1. Stick to measuring tape. When it comes to shedding body fat, the scale is not always your friend. Consider this: The best way to slim down is to simultaneously change your eating habits and increase physical activity. Exercising, however, builds muscle mass –– which is a good thing. Muscle tissue is more metabolically active than other body tissue, so the more you have, the more calories your body burns at rest. However, you have probably heard that muscle weighs more than fat. So, if you seriously increase your weight-bearing exercise, your weight could actually go up! The measuring tape, on the other hand, can’t lie. As you lose body fat, you lose inches around your waist, hips, thighs and your upper arms. Eventually, you won’t even need the tape. Your skinny jeans will tell you all you need to know.

2. Choose soup. Ever notice how surprisingly full you feel after a bowl of soup? This is one of the best weight loss tips. A bowl of any broth-based soup, especially one with veggies and beans — try kale, onion, and white beans — can be a great strategy for weight loss. Make soup a habit for lunch or dinner every day, adding a piece of whole-grain bread every other day. You can get in a lot of healthy ingredients and find yourself so satisfied you don’t even need that mid-afternoon or late-night nosh. Do be careful, though--the high sodium content of many canned soups may be too much for those concerned about their blood pressure.

3. Learn from former smokers. Changing your eating habits to lose weight can be a lot like quitting smoking. It’s all about dodging those cravings instead of indulging them. So when you’re considering that pasta dish or some mouth-watering dessert, try these craving busters smokers use:

• Count to 30 … In a very short time, a craving will usually subside.
• Visualize … your thinner, toned body, looking great in a pair of shorts and a form-fitting tee shirt.
• Adopt a substitute habit … Of course, make it a healthy or at least neutral one, such as drinking tea (use the loose-leaf kind for the ceremony of it), chewing sugarless gum, etc.
• Change your routine … Fill your time differently so you’re more aware of eating. If you’re a TV-time muncher, put on exercise clothes when you get home, and do stretches, leg lifts, and crunches while you watch TV.
• Just say never … Smokers have to commit to never, ever taking another drag of a cigarette. Although we can’t give up eating entirely, for some people, it is helpful to “just say no” to one unhealthy food or ingredient that is a significant contributor to their weight problem.
  

>>Next: Read About More Weight Loss Tips!>>


Reviewed by Susan Weiner, R.D., M.S., C.D.E., C.D.N. 3/08