Is your New Year’s resolution to lose a pound a week? If this year your goal is to attain a swimsuit body, you have to work hard enough to accomplish your dream. Some would ridicule you while others laugh off the idea of losing a pound a week. But keep reminding yourself that achieving a larger-than-life goal, like a celebrity body, starts with humble beginnings.
Once your weight loss approach becomes practical and calculated, it is easier to lose a pound a week in a non-depriving way, by substituting healthy vegetables and fruits in place of carb-loaded meals. Some of our suggested everyday goals may seem less important to you. However, when you start to follow them religiously every day, you will start observing how effective they are for your weight loss journey in the long run.
Substitute With Greek Yogurt
By doing this, you are saving 175 calories per every half cup. The next time you go to the superstore, buy the low-fat, plain version of Greek yogurt instead of sour cream to avoid excess calories and fat.
Opt for Hummus over Fattening Spreads and Dips
When you start having hummus in your salads, wraps, and sandwiches, you are doing your body a big favor by avoiding rich and fattening spreads and dips like mayonnaise and ketchup, which are high in sugar. On average, hummus will save you around 250 calories and will fill you up with its fiber content.
Go Back to Black Coffee
You may have enjoyed a cup of plain black coffee before you got used to dairy or sugary creamers for sweetening your coffee cup. By cutting down on your sugar and opting for non-dairy creamers in your coffee, almost 200 calories can be saved.
Eat at Home
When you eat at home, you prepare your own meals and can easily stick to the food substitutes you have to use for losing a pound a week. That’s why ordering Chinese deliveries and hamburgers will never help you achieve your goal. Try eating at home, at least for the most part of the week, and keep eating-out limited to special occasions. As restaurant meals are high in sugar, refined grains, and fat, they can never beat the taste of home-cooked foods.
Don’t Order Up-Sized Meals
If you must eat out, make sure you stick to regular portions and don’t fall for the “up-sized” meal traps. These are meant only to charge you more and rarely offer you anything worthwhile, except extra calories of course. When having ice cream, go for kiddie cups, as they can save you almost 500 calories. As for sauces and dressings, order them on the side and cut another 400 calories.
Use Small Plates for Eating
This is a no-brainer. With time, Americans have not only increased their waist sizes but also the size of their platters, eating more and hence consuming more calories. When you start eating your meals in a plate of a relatively smaller size, say 9 inches, you are saving from 300 to 600 calories. As a smaller plate gets filled up easily, your brain will register you eating a plate full of food and will send signals to your body that you have consumed enough food to remain satisfied for a long period of time. Of course, what you put on your plate also plays its part in your effort to lose a pound a week.
Starving yourself and making unrealistic goals will only make the matter worse. You may avoid your cravings or skip calories the whole day, but as soon as you retire to bed, that instant yearning for a large slice of cheesecake or a pizza can ruin all efforts that you put in during the day.
For this reason, it is extremely important to set goals that you can achieve every day without altering or bending them to please yourself. Take a moment and listen to your inner self. What can you avoid and what do you need to survive throughout the day? Adding small quantities of the foods you love instead of avoiding them completely will prove to be beneficial if you want to lose a pound a week.
