12 Helpful Tips From Women Who Have Successfully Lost Weight

Losing weight is no easy task. Significant weight loss, and the maintenance of that weight loss, takes focus and discipline. Time and effort saving weight loss hacks are everywhere and while you may already be employing them, we’d bet there are still a few places where you could ramp things up.  Whether you have a lot to lose, or just a little, these tips may be just what you need.

These tips come from 12 weight loss bloggers who have been where you are. They understand the struggle and have shared what worked for them.

Have a look! These tips might just work for you as well!

What you’ve been doing: Making Sunday meal-prep day.
Try this instead:  Add exercise planning to the mix.

“I jot down my workouts for the week on my calendar every Sunday. My exercise timing changes a little bit by the day (I have an 18-month-old, so childcare often dictates the schedule), but knowing in advance exactly when I’m going to fit workouts in helps me follow through. Sometimes last-minute plans get in the way, but I generally stick to my schedule once I’ve put it in ink. —Tina Haupert, Carrots ‘N’ Cake; lost 25 pounds

What you’ve been doing: Eating low calorie versions of the foods you crave.
Try this instead:  Have a snack on hand that is filling and nutritious.

“For me, cravings are rarely about the food—it’s often about what I’m feeling and my desire to escape that. I eat the same exact thing no matter what I’m craving because doing so is more utilitarian than emotional, and it helps me recognize what I’m doing—”I’m eating this because I’m having a craving that I need to shake” versus “I need to eat something because I’m feeling stressed/anxious/unhappy.” For me, it’s 2 percent Greek yogurt with honey and flax seed. A little protein, a little fat and a little fiber can make a huge difference.” —Erika Nicole Kendall, A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss; lost 170 pounds

 

What you’ve been doing: Shrinking your meals to cut down portion size.
Try this instead:  Load up your meals with vegetables.

“Add extra veggies to just about any dish you eat to volumize it. I tend to be a breakfast-on-the-go person, so I focus on doing this with lunch and dinner, adding at least 1 cup of vegetables each time. One recent dish I made included adding roasted cauliflower to a lighter version of macaroni and cheese. I’ve even added spiralized golden beets to a loaded baked potato. Not only do you make it a larger portion but you also add greater nutritional value while filling yourself up.” —Kelly Guy, No Thanks to Cake; lost 70 pounds

What you’ve been doing: Using willpower to ignore junk food at the grocery store.
Try this instead:  Grab what is on your list first,  then grab what you want.

“If I find myself with cookies or ice cream in my hand, I’ll put them down and tell myself that I’ll get them at the end of the shopping trip. Eighty percent of the time my cart is so full with other, healthier foods I like that I’ll be able to talk myself out of it—or I’ll forget it all together! If I feel like I want those foods so much that I can’t stop myself from buying them even at the end of the shopping trip, I try to work them into a social event so I don’t eat all of them myself, like taking them to my mom’s house to enjoy with the rest of my family. —Monica Olivas, Run Eat Repeat; lost 20 pounds

What you’ve been doing:  Being too rigid in your meal planning and never straying from what you planned to eat.
Try this instead:  Keep planning things but try to find a way to be flexible.

“Planning out my meals ahead of time takes away the stress of trying to figure out what to eat in a moment when I’m hungry. But last-minute plans come up, or sometimes I just don’t feel like eating the meal I’ve mapped out. So I use a white dry-erase board to write down meals for the next day. If things change, I can just erase what I had written and write in the new meal—it helps me be prepared but also flexible.” —Katie Foster, Runs for Cookies; lost 125 pounds

What you’ve been doing: Forcing yourself to do exercises you don’t enjoy.
Try this instead: Find a workout you love.

“It took me doing 5K’s and a half-marathon to finally admit that I never got a runner’s high and that I’d rather use that ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to get out of bed and exercise’ energy on activities that I look forward to. That meant trying Spinning, heavy weight lifting, Zumba, swimming, hot yoga and more. So many people start out walking and running because it seems like that’s what everyone does. Then they groan about how they don’t like it, and dread doing it, but do it anyway. It’s great to find that persistence, but it takes less mental energy in the long run to find something you really like. It shouldn’t be a struggle.” —Emily Ho, Authentically Emmie; lost about 100 pounds

What you’ve been doing:  Looking at drool worthy food on social media when you know it likely won’t fit your diet.
Try this instead: Filter out tempting images.

“I don’t need constant, delicious dishes in my social media streams, so I’ve learned to carefully curate the Pinterest and Instagram accounts I follow based on the food they pin or post. There’s no hard-and-fast cut-off rules, but if you’re always posting indulgent food, I have to get rid of you. Instead, I find funny or inspiring accounts that lift me up instead of pull me down with temptation.” —Rebecca Regnier, one of the bloggers behind Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat?; lost 15+ pounds twice

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What you’ve been doing: Silently stewing about how unfair the weight loss journey can be.
Try this instead: Remind yourself that the decision is yours.

“Pay attention to thoughts like ‘Why do I have to do this?’ or ‘It’s not fair that I can’t have that.’ Both suggest an external force pushing you to make certain choices. There is no external force; it’s all coming from within you. This simple but profound mental shift can free you from resistance to change. Once you have that energy freed it up, you can use it resist more important things, like those chocolate donuts that someone just put in the office lounge. —Michelle Funez, Diary of an Aspiring Loser; lost 85 pounds

What you’ve been doing: Reaching for food at the first sign of hunger.
Try this instead: Let yourself get a little hungry from time to time.

“So many times we hear ‘Don’t let yourself get too hungry.’ But I’ve found that feeling true hunger helped me learn when my body needed food and when I just wanted to eat for eating’s sake. Stop eating because the clock tells you to and learn to feel and trust your own hunger signals by allowing yourself to get hungry in between meals. Hunger is not an emergency, and feeling that growling stomach before filling it with nourishing foods will help you learn what foods satisfy you longer and which ones cause cravings later.” —Roni Noone, Roni’s Weigh; lost 70 pounds

What you’ve been doing: Trying to eat everything in moderation.
Try this instead: Make your own rules.

“People say not to exclude any one food or food group, because it will just set you up to go overboard once you do have it. For me, it was the opposite. I’m a total all-or-nothing person, so it was easier to say I wasn’t going to eat specific foods (for me, it’s grains and dairy) at all than to have them sometimes. I’d tried to do that during previous weight-loss attempts and I’d find ways to justify eating them more often than I should. Cutting them out completely was the better option.” —Theodora Blanchfield, Preppy Runner; lost 50 pounds

What you’ve been doing:  Automating breakfast.
Try this instead: Automate lunch, too.

“I found that lunch could be a challenging time of day for those of us who struggle with making healthy food choices. So I almost always have a salad. I get creative with toppings and mix-ins to keep me from getting bored, and I’m ensuring that my meal is vegetable-packed, filling and generally pretty reasonable in terms of calories. Making this meal a routine means that I save time and energy and don’t have to test my willpower.” —Andie Mitchell, Andiemitchell.com; lost 135 pounds

What you’ve been doing:  Spending all of your gym time on the cardio machines, trying to burn as many calories as possible.
Try this instead: Hit the weight room and add some muscle building to your regimen.

“Strength training accelerated my fat loss and boosted my metabolism—I found that I was able to eat more of the foods I love while still losing weight. Using weights and doing body-weight exercises like push-ups felt like a chore at first, but once I realized how effective strength training is at transforming the shape of the body, I got on board and really began to love it. I couldn’t even do one push-up when I started—now I can barrel through them. And we’re talking about full-body push-ups, not the modified ‘girl’ kind that you do on your knees.” —Josie Maurer, Yum Yucky; lost 40 pounds twice—first after having her third child and again after her fourth

Have you successfully lost weight? What worked best for you? Share your tips with us!

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Source: Huffington Post

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