Getting fit without trying is easier than you may think. There are numerous things you can do to trick your body into becoming healthier without changing much of your daily habits and avoiding long, boring trips to the gym that take up a great deal of your schedule.
Water
Drinking water has many benefits, including curbing your appetite. Staying hydrated will help stave off hunger by allowing you to feel full. Additionally, if you drink a glass of water before each meal, you’ll feel fuller faster which means you’ll eat less than you normally would; thus, cutting your caloric intake overall.
Healthy Snacks
When you make your weekly trip to the grocery store, stock up on healthy foods and snacks. By reducing the amount of chips, cookies, and other junk foods on hand, you’ll be more apt to grabbing an apple or banana to snack on. Foods, such as apples, that are high in fiber will help you feel full and curb mindless snacking.
Sleep
It has been scientifically proven that getting a good night’s rest is essential to weight loss. If you’re skimping on your rest you’ll feel tired, which signals your body that you need energy. Where do we get energy from? Foods.
Skip The Sugar
Order your drinks with no sugar. Unsweetened drinks tend to have fewer calories because they aren’t full of sugar, which is high in calories. Cutting calories at every corner adds up to quite a bit within a week’s time which can aid in weight loss.
Low-Carb Options
Foods high in carbohydrates, such as processed foods, are usually higher in calories than low-carb foods. This kind of goes back to the calorie thing, but if you can order grilled chicken instead of fried chicken, you’re cutting out unnecessary starches that are unhealthy and just add filler to your food that your body doesn’t need.
Avoid Electronics While Eating
Studies have shown that most people tend to consume more foods, whether healthy or junk food, while mindlessly eating in front of tablets, computers, and cell phones. If you’re eating while doing another task, your mind doesn’t get to concentrate on the food that you’re eating and you don’t realize how much you’ve already eaten so you’ll continue to eat. Overeating leads to weight gain.
Portion Control
An obvious, but often overlooked, diet aid is portion control. You can eat the cleanest, healthiest food in the world but if you have too much of it, it can have counterproductive result. One example is grapes. Grapes are healthy because they’re low-calorie and dense in nutrients, including water. However, if you eat the whole bag of them, you can easily turn a 100-calorie snack into a few hundred calories.
Avoid The Wrong Fats
Avoid high-fat foods such as certain red meats, especially if it has marbling. Marbling is animal fat that is distributed within the cut of meat. This isn’t to say that all red meats are bad. There are leaner cuts of red meat such as strip steaks and lean ground beef. Opt for lean meats such as fish, chicken and turkey. Avoid saturated fats and replace them for healthier fats, such as foods that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and natural fats found in nuts and seeds.
Skip Dessert
Those yummy desserts can lead to an expanded waist and pant size. You may think that it’s only a small brownie but a 1-ounce brownie is packed with more than 130 calories. Drizzle a little caramel or some powdered sugar on top of it, and you add even more calories. To avoid temptation, skip it all together and tell yourself that your reward will be a smaller dress or suit size.
Join A Sports Team
Trick your body into exercise by doing something fun. Volleyball, basketball, and softball are popular in today’s society so it’s easy to find a local sport within your community. More and more adults are seeking ways to relieve stress, and playing sports is a great way but it also has other advantages, such as burning extra calories. If there are no local teams that you can join, you can do independent activities such as biking, hiking, swimming, and roller blading. Another option would be to sign-up to a road race or something similiar to give you that extra motivation to get out there and train. All of these things, and more, are a great way to workout your muscles and improve bone density.
Keep A Food Journal
It’s easy to forget how much you’ve already eaten on a given day. Keeping a food journal is a quick, easy way to keep track of what you’re putting into your body which will help you find out where all of your calories are coming from. Maybe you only eat twice a day but if those meals are over a thousand calories each, it’s easy to gain weight. By tracking your foods, you’ll have better control over what goes into your body.
