How to Lose Weight Naturally

Have you ever wondered how to lose weight naturally? Natural weight decrease is the most simple and effective way for permanent weight loss. It’s not about dieting; it’s about making gradual changes to your eating habits that will help you lose the weight for good. See step 1 to get started!

Steps

Practicing the Right Weight Loss Habits

1. Set achievable goals. Once you have made the decision to lose weight, set some realistic and achievable goals that you can follow. Goal setting will help you to take action, and by taking that action you will start to see some weight loss results.
   
   
   • Don't get discouraged if you don't see an immediate change. Healthy, natural weight-loss that won't come back takes time, because it is about making new, healthier, habits.
2. Exercise. People don't get enough exercise and the U.S. leads a particularly sedentary lifestyle, but you don't need to spend hours at the gym to have a healthy, exercise program. Even doing things where you walk to the grocery store, or you take 15 minute breaks at work and go for a walk, can help with your weight-loss and your health.^[1]
   • Exercise boosts your mood because it releases mood-boosting chemicals, which help make you happier, healthier, and more confident about yourself, which helps regulate your eating, keeping your calorie intake under control, and helps you feel as though you are accomplishing your goals. ^[2]
   • Find exercise that you enjoy, that way you'll be excited for it rather than dreading it. Practice yoga, take dance lessons, go for a run in the prettiest neighborhood in your town or city. Don't think of it as a punishment, try and think of how you are benefiting your body and your health!
   • Get an exercise buddy. It is much more fun and easier to stay on track with someone else to help you monitor yourself and to talk to.
3. Get enough sleep. Not getting enough sleep worsens your overall mental and physical health and makes it harder to shed pounds and to keep them off. Most adults in this day and age do not get enough sleep, so try and make sure that you get about 8 hours of sleep each night if you're an adult (as a teenager you should get a bit more sleep).
   • Make sure to shut off all electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime. This means computer, iPod, cell phone, etc. The light from that messes with your circadian system, slowing your biological clock and making it harder to regulate your sleep appropriately.
   • The more sleep you get before midnight, the better rested you will be in the morning. 10 o'clock at night is a good time to go to bed.
4. Make slow changes. Trying to change everything at once is going to completely overwhelm your system and make it difficult to stick to the changes you're trying to make. That's why so many crash diets don't particularly work, or rather the pounds you shed come back when you're off them. Losing weight naturally and keeping that weight off means making total lifestyle changes.
   • Start off with smaller changes. Add a 15 minute exercise routine to your day, and switch from using butter to olive oil when you're cooking.
   • Start shifting how you think about food, so that you stop using it as a comfort routine (like you eat when you're sad, or bored, or upset, etc.). Start thinking about food as something you're putting in your body to fuel you, which means you want the best fuel possible and that means the healthier eating options.
   • Eat to satisfy your hunger. Don't eat when you're not hungry and try and make different comforting habits (like drinking tea instead of going immediately for the chocolate) or finding things to substitute if you like junk food.

Practicing the Right Eating Habits

1. Take an honest look at your eating habits. Chances are you don' realize just how much you actually eat during each day. Making simple changes and taking control of what you eat is crucial if you want to lose weight without dieting. Eating sensibly and having a healthy, balanced diet is the healthy way to lose weight naturally.
   
   
   • Safe natural weight loss shouldn't mean starvation; depriving yourself of food can have an opposite effect and it's terrible for your body.
2. Eat on a schedule. Instead of eating 3 large meals a day, opt to eat regularly throughout the day. Having 5 or 6 smaller (and healthy) meals can actually help you lose weight by boosting your metabolism naturally and it is easier to stick to your weight-loss plan.
   
   
   • Always, always, always eat breakfast. Skipping meals will not make you skinny, in fact it can have the opposite effect. Skipping meals makes your body store more calories, because you're going into "starvation mode." This also means that if you skip breakfast, you tend to eat more at lunch and dinner and have less time to work off the calories.
   • Start off your meal with soup or salad, as that way you'll fill up more on lower calorie food before you start your main course, and then you'll eat less of the main course.
3. Opt for balance and moderation. Don't start obsessing about counting calories and punishing yourself by never eating any sweets or fatty food again. Instead, opt to eat fewer of the less healthier things and less frequently. This will help keep you from obsessing over the food you can't eat.^[3]
   
   
   • If you eat a meal that's high in fat or sugar (like you go out for dinner, or go to a fast food place) simply compensate for that by eating meals that are low-fat and low in sugar for the next few days.
   • Don't make food "off-limits" because you will start craving those foods more. Instead, just limit your consumption of those foods. So instead of eating two slices of cake, just stick with one.
4. Eat mindfully. People who are distracted while they eat (they're watching t.v. or reading a book, or surfing the internet) report being less full than people who pay attention to what they're eating. Make sure that when you eat, you're really focusing on what's in front of you.^[4]
   • Make sure that you chew your food all the way and that you swallow before shoving more food in your mouth. Eat deliberately and slowly. It's not a race to get to the end of your meal before everyone else.
   • Pay attention to the food you're putting in your mouth: What is the temperature? The texture? Is it salty? Sweet? Spicy?
   • When you're full, stop eating. Overeating is not going to do you any favors in terms of losing weight.
5. Eat the right foods. You need to get more protein, lots and lots of veggies and fruits, the right amount of carbohydrates, and get the appropriate. You also want to limit the foods that aren't so good for you, like highly processed foods with lots of sugar and fat. Eating the right foods will go a long way towards helping you lose weight and keep it off.
   
   
   • Protein is incredibly important to maintain the right diet. You'll need to focus on the leaner meats to build your immune system and assist with weight loss. Go for fish, meat, poultry, eggs, cheese, as well as different kinds of seeds and nuts.^[5]
   • Try for at least 5 servings of veggies and fruits. These will provide you with all the nutrients you need for fewer calories. Some of the really top greens and fruits are: watermelon, avocado, raspberries, broccoli, onion, blueberries, Kale, mustard greens, sweet potatoes.^[6]
   • There are lots of good carbs, and you'll want to get about 45% of your calories from the right carbs. Right carbs include ones that are nutrient rich like: whole grains (such as brown rice, whole wheat, millet, quinoa, etc), fruits, vegetables, and legumes (like peanuts). Don't get them from things like pastries, candy, chips, cookies, and things made with refined white flour.^[7]
   • Foods that are high in salt and sugar are things like canned soup, ketchup, pasta sauce, fast food, frozen dinners, and fruit juices (among the obvious like pastries and cakes, etc.). Look for sugar hiding under these names beyond the usual (honey, maple syrup, cane sugar, brown sugar): corn sweetener or corn syrup, maltodextrin or dextrin, or dextrose, fructose, glucose, maltose, or sucrose^[8]
6. Incorporate weight-loss "superfoods" into your diet. While there is no food that can magically bust that weight, there are foods that can help keep it off and help you lose that weight.^[9]
   • Green tea has lots of great health benefits, and a study found that people who drank green tea lost more weight than those who didn't.
   • Soups that are broth or tomato based can also help with weight-loss. People who eat a 300-calorie serving of soup before their meals, eat less and therefore consume fewer calories, while still feeling full.
   • Grapefruits have also been shown to help you lose weight, as well as reduce your risk of developing type-2 diabetes. It may, also reduce blood sugar and insulin levels.
7. Make specific meal plans. When you're trying to change your diet and eat more healthily and with an eye towards losing weight, you're going to want to plan out your meals, so that you aren't tempted to grab a quick bite at a fast food drive through, or so you don't find yourself somewhere where you don't have those healthy options.^[10]
   • So for breakfast you might have 1/2 grapefruit, a bowl of oatmeal with a little honey, or you could do 1/2 grapefruit with two pieces of whole wheat toast covered with peanut butter.
   • For lunch you could have a large salad with lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, a handful of walnuts, 1/2 avocado, and beans (black or garbanzo). Pour a little balsamic vinegar over the top.
   • You'll need 2 snacks, 1 between breakfast and lunch and 1 between lunch and dinner. Go for heavy protein and some sort of pick-me-up like a hard-boiled egg and an apple for the first and a goat yogurt with blueberries and ground flax seed for the second.
   • For dinner you might go for grilled salmon (with a little dill and lemon), a serving of brown rice, and grilled zucchini.
8. Drink water. Keeping hydrated has many benefits when it comes to losing weight. Water is a natural weight loss drink. Drinking the recommended 8 glasses a day will boost your metabolism, speed up weight loss, and make you feel energized. Drinking water helps flush out the toxins in our bodies that slow down weight loss.
   
   

Avoiding Common Weight-Loss Mistakes

1. Avoid feeling like you have to completely give up on treats. Again, putting all things "bad" on some off-limits list isn't going to help you avoid it. Instead you'll spend a lot of energy thinking and craving those foods that you've made yourself avoid. So instead of doing that, limit yourself to one thing per week.
   • Don't punish yourself (especially during the holidays) if you slip up and eat more unhealthy options than you know you should. Instead, learn from the slip up and eat healthier from there on out.
2. Remember that calories are calories. There is no magic food that increases your metabolism and a calorie from one thing is the same a calorie from another thing. What's different is what you get from those calories.^[11]
   • For example eating empty calories from a pastry can give you the same amount of calories as a salad, but what you're getting from that salad in terms of nutrients means that you won't have to eat as much as if you're getting calories from the pastry and then have to go eat other things to get the proper nutrients.
   • There is no food that speeds up your metabolism, unfortunately. The only thing you can do is make sure that you're eating the right foods to g the appropriate amount of nutrients with fewer calories.^[12]
3. Be skeptical of new dieting fads. There are literally hundreds of diets and weight-loss schemes to wade through, but the thing you have to remember is that there is no magical diet that's going to wipe away those pounds and keep them away once you're done with the diet. True, healthy weight-loss requires a lifestyle change and hard work.
   • This doesn't mean there aren't good things to be gleaned from certain weight-loss programs. Many of them emphasize healthy eating and exercise and that's all to the good, but not many of them discuss real and continued lifestyle change.
   • Also diets like single-food diets don't work because the premise around them is flawed. They say that proteins and carbs "clash" and therefore shouldn't be eaten together, but that's simply false. A lot of the foods that you eat work together to maintain a healthy digestive system and weight maintenance.
4. Don't crash diet. Crash diets affects your mental, emotional, and physical health in a bad way. Also, since crash diets don't change how you eat and approach life, most people who use them gain back that weight within 5 years. The only way to have a real and lasting weight change is to change your lifestyle, adding exercise and healthy eating.^{[13] ]} 

   Tips

   • To achieve successful natural weight loss you will need to stay positive and committed, you are making changes to your lifestyle that will help you maintain your weight for life.
   • Patience is the key to realizing your weight loss goals.

   Warnings

   • Do NOT starve yourself. Not only will your body go into starvation mode (so it'll be harder for you to lose weight), but starving yourself leads to things like hair loss, health issues, and death, if it goes on for to long.
   • Remember that being skinny is not the most important thing in life. If you're naturally curvy, or heavier, there may be no diet in existence that can take off those pounds. Stop worrying about it and embrace your natural weight.