Weight-loss diets have what they call good food and bad food. Some suggest that we should eat raw food while others emphasize specific food types like fruits and seafood, which may be hard and expensive. This prompts us to ask the question ” how can I lose weight if I don’t diet”.
As a team, we are not against weight-loss diets, and in fact, we even wrote an article reviewing popular weight-loss diets. Therefore, if you are on a weight loss diet, stick to it because these diets have positive results only that they come along with health risks, hard to follow, and have short-term weight loss results.
In this article, we are going to look at how we can lose weight without sticking to specific weight-loss diets.
How can I lose weight if I don’t diet
losing weight without dieting is a matter of doing certain weight loss-friendly activities such as regular body exercise, having plenty of sleep, and more. let us look at these weight-loss diets in detail below.
1. Eat breakfast every day.
Skipping breakfast is a bad idea. Skipping breakfast induces unhealthy food choices and may result in binge eating on your next meal.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day as it revs up your metabolism, gives you energy for a quick morning workout and you will eat less on your next meal compared to those that missed breakfast.
Eating a healthy breakfast with enough proteins and fiber will keep you satisfied for longer, help you overcome cravings, and eventually reduce calorie intake. With such an approach, you are liable for losing weight even when you are not exercising.
2. Choosing whole grains over processed or refined foods.
Whole grains are far more nutritious and full of fiber compared to processed foods. The fiber in whole grains will make you feel satisfied for longer, add bulk to the food, and ease digestion. All this aids weight loss.
3. Do weight loss exercises.
To lose weight, one must burn more calories than he or she consumes. Doing exercises is one of the best ways you can keep your calories in check. These include walking, jogging, lifting, and more. Most of your outdoor sports hobbies are also calorie burners, for instance, swimming, soccer, running, and many others.
4. Choose water over sugary drinks.
Water is calorie-free and has a lot of weight loss benefits. Water is a natural appetite suppressor as it makes the brain sense the feeling of fullness thereby notifying your body to stop taking in food.
Additionally, drinking water increases fat burning as it also boosts metabolism. Most importantly, drinking water can help you replace high-calorie drinks.
Sugary drinks are linked to weight gain and other related conditions such as diabetes. These drinks are also usually of less nutritional value and don’t fill you up as solid food does.
Therefore, replacing the sugary manufactured drinks like soda, energy drinks with water can help you lose weight even when you aren’t dieting.
To learn more about the drinking water for weight loss, read the article here about Interesting facts about drinking water for weight loss.
5. Get enough quality sleep.
Sleep has a very powerful effect on weight loss. Good quality sleep can enhance physical activity, increase your resting metabolism, help fight cravings, and reduce your appetite.
While sleeping, you can burn between 40-120 calories per hour depending on factors like metabolism, body weight, and quality of sleep. Therefore, if you happen to be burning 60 calories per hour for 7 hours of sleep, the total will be around 420 calories burned by just sleeping.
In order to lose weight even when not on a diet, one requires between 7-9 hours of good quality undisturbed sleep.
6. Manage stress levels.
Stress leads to emotional eating which is a type of eating aimed and relieving stress other than hunger. With this type of eating, you can lose count of what you eat making you overeat.
Therefore, in order to lose weight even while not dieting, manage stress levels by doing stress-relieving activities like yoga, outdoor hobbies, and many other activities that can keep you happy and occupied.
7. Keep unhealthy foods out of sight.
By the term unhealthy foods, I mean foods that are high in calories with less or no nutritional values. These are mainly out of refined flour or have been processed. Foods with lots of added sugars are also considered unhealthy.
Generally, these are foods termed as empty calorie foods for example pizza, fries, cakes, sugary beverages, candy bars, alcohol, and many others. To learn more about empty calorie foods read the article here that talks about Empty calories and why you should avoid them.
Unhealthy foods will cause weight gain, nutrition deficiency, increased risk of type 2 diabetes, and more as you will see from our article about empty calories.
Therefore, staying away from such foods will help you lose weight even when you aren’t dieting.
8. Practice mindful eating.
This involves eating slowly without distractions, eating with an aim of overall body health, focusing on the effect of food on your feelings, and more as discussed in the article here.
Mindful eating can help you overcome eating disorders and get better control of the food you eat. By practicing mindful eating, you will be able to lose weight even while not dieting.
To learn more about mindful eating for weight loss, read the article here. In that article, you will be able to learn to practice mindful eating, how to lose weight with it and it can help you overcome eating disorders.
9. Eat more proteins.
Eating proteins has effects on reducing hunger, increase the feeling of fullness, and help you consume fewer calories. Eating more proteins increases the hormone leptin which is a hunger reducing hormone that makes you eat less food.
10. Eat on smaller plates.
Large food plates encourage people to eat more than they would have eaten. Serving yourself on a large plate will set the mind to finish the food making you overeat.
In order to lose weight without dieting, choose your serving plate wisely that is to say; select a small shallow plate. With such a plate, you will serve yourself less food thus fewer calories consumed for weight loss.
11. Cut on your calorie intake.
Managing your weight gets easier when you limit your calorie intake. Eating fewer calories which you can easily burn can get you weight loss even when you aren’t dieting.
Eating weight loss-friendly foods can help you keep the calorie intake in check. Weight loss-friendly foods are usually high in fiber, low in calories, and are often nutritious.
12. Plan your meals.
If you want to lose weight without dieting, always plan your meals, and always eat planned meals. With such a strategy you will be able to stick to healthy food choices as well as easy counting of calories.
Planning meals can help you set a calorie target and meet it if the plan is followed. With such a strategy, dieting is not needed.
13. Choose healthy snacks.
Instead of snacking on French fries or candy bars, choose healthy snacks that are in the form of whole vegetables and fruits.
Examples of healthy snacks can be apples, carrots, mangoes, vegetable salads, and many other whole fruits and vegetables.
Will I lose weight if I only drink water?
Drinking water is linked to many health benefits towards weight loss and they include,
- Water is a natural appetite suppressant: when you drink water, the brain senses fullness and notifies your body to stop taking in food. This helps you cut or reduce your food intake thus consuming fewer calories.
- Reduces liquid calorie intake: every other drink or beverage has got calories. By taking water, you will be able to reduce or cut consumption of those high-calorie drinks like soda.
- Drinking water increases calorie burning especially when you drink cold water.
- Water increases fat burning.
- It’s essential for physical exercises as to hydrate the body and energize you during workouts.
To begin with, let us hope you don’t mean taking water alone without food. By doing that, you will lose weight as well as muscle mass, get weak, and eventually get hospitalized after only 3 days.
It is never a wise decision to drink water only in chase of weight loss. Water is calorie-free yet our bodies need calories for energy and of which calories are got from the food we eat every day.
However, adding drinking water for weight loss among your weight-loss strategies can add many benefits and make weight loss much easier.
It is therefore unrealistic to try losing weight by drinking water alone.
How can I get motivated to lose weight again?
Many people may fail along the way due to different circumstances. I wrote an article on how to get motivated during your weight loss journey. Read the full article here.
To begin with, let’s look at why somebody may lose interest in losing weight;
Weight loss plateau: When many people hit a weight loss plateau, they often get discouraged from losing weight. A weight-loss plateau is not the end mark of your losing weight, with some strategies like calorie rescaling, you can lose weight again. Here is an article I wrote about overcoming a weight loss plateau; read it here.
Can’t stick to a weight loss diet: Some diets require the elimination of your favorite foods or recommending foods that are hard to keep up to. I would say trash a diet that makes you feel uncomfortable and choose a weight loss diet that is convenient for you.
I wrote an article about weight loss diets, with it you can learn about various weight loss diets and choose one that works for you.
Expensive weight loss: When you choose an expensive weight loss plan that involves subscriptions or foods you can’t afford; you will easily lose motivation. Instead of quitting weight loss, sit down and lower your subscriptions and the diet. If the gym is expensive, try home workouts.
Difficult goals to achieve: When people are starting their weight loss journey, they often expect much and always set unrealistic weight-loss goals. These goals may be hard to keep up to. Learn how to set realistic weight loss goals that will not break your spirit by reading the article about How to set realistic and achievable weight loss goals
To summarize, to find a solution for loss of motivation, read the full article here about Reasons why you should lose weight.
Why can’t I lose weight with diet and exercise?
Sometimes, we give in much by dieting and exercising but not losing weight. There may be various reasons and things you might be doing wrong and some of them are;
- Not doing the right exercises or enough workouts.
- A slowed metabolism due to age or loss of muscles.
- Not getting enough sleep.
- Drinking too much alcohol.
- When you don’t drink enough water.
- Following a poor quality or fad diet.
- Pregnancy.
- Genetic conditions.
- Consuming sugary drinks and refined foods.
- Stress.
- Monotonous workouts that may no longer challenging to the body.
- Skipping meals.
- Impatience when you expect to lose weight in a very short unrealistic time.
- Being less active.
To learn more about reasons you may be exercising and dieting without losing weight, read the article here.
The bottom line:
It is possible to lose weight without following a specific diet if you follow weight loss-friendly habits. It should however be noted that in order to lose weight, you should burn more calories more than you consume.
Additionally, it is also important to limit the number of calories you eat by following weight-loss strategies that limit food intake.
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