Eat What You Want And Lose Weight (No, Really!)

Eat What You Want And Lose Weight (No, Really!)

If you’ve found your jeans getting a little tighter than you’d like over a summer of cocktails and barbecues, you’ve probably got that sinking feeling that it’s time to cut down this autumn. And you just know that’s not going to be fun…

Or is it? Losing weight doesn’t have to be all about lettuce leaves and sacrifice. While it’s true that no-one loses weight without making changes, it’s not true that those changes have to be all-out painful.

Here are our seven favourite simple tricks to help you lose weight while still tucking into a few of your favourites (and no treadmill is required).

    1. Work Exercise Into Your Routine

Finding time to get to the gym is tough. Pretty much all of us have, at some time, signed up for an expensive gym membership, gone a couple of times and then stopped (despite the monthly bill still coming in). After all, who wants to be sweating away when there are pizzas to be eaten and margaritas to be drunk?

Don’t make the mistake of kidding yourself that it’ll be different if you join a gym again. Instead, make small changes to your routine and you’ll find you burn off lots of extra calories with minimal effort (and for free). A brisk 30-minute walk can burn off around 200 calories - easy to do if you leave the car at home or get on the bus to work early and walk the rest of the way.

200 calories every day is 1400 a week - that’s enough to make a real difference.

    2. Drink Water

It’s boring, but drinking lots of water can make a massive difference to how much you eat. Why? Because lots of us mistake hunger for thirst.

This happens when you know you want something, but you’re just not quite sure what and you’re naturally drawn to all those tasty snacks.

If you get that urge to snack, try drinking a big glass of water and seeing what happens. You might just find that you’re not quite as hungry as you thought you were.

  3. Find A Sport You Love

Want to be able to indulge in a steak or chocolate cake? Then you need to ramp the exercise up a notch higher. This means finding a sport you love and sticking to it.

Think about what you enjoy doing day-to-day, or perhaps what you used to love as a child. If you’re naturally sociable, look for a team sport where you’ll have the bonus of pub drinks after training.

If you’re an outdoorsy person, look at trail running or mountain biking - anything where you can enjoy getting wet and muddy.

If you love speed and are always being told to slow your car down, think about road or track cycling.

Even one session a week of proper exercise is enough for most people to burn off a decent chunk of calories. But if you’ve found the right sport, you’ll probably find you want to do it much more than once a week. That’ll mean more fun in your life and a trimmer waistline. Winning.

   4. Make Your Portions Smaller

An obvious one, but it’s all too easy to get into the habit of eating portions that are much bigger than they need to be. Most of us were brought up to clear our plates and it’s really hard to get out of that habit. There’s a simple fix here - buy smaller plates.

   5. Cut Down The Carbs (but don’t cut them out)

Yes, a full-on Atkins-type approach to eating will probably help you lose weight, but not many people can stay away from chips forever. But here’s the thing - carbs are so yummy that it’s very easy to eat far too many of them without realising what’s really going on.

You need carbs in your life, but do you need them at every meal? Cutting them out of your evening meal, for example, will save you plenty of calories and help you keep your portion sizes down without needing to making any drastic diet changes.

   6. Limit Booze

It’s an unfortunate fact that alcohol is full of calories. They’re fun calories, but they’re calories all the same. If you want to eat more of your favourite foods, you might find you need to cut down on the booze that goes with them.

Think about when you really enjoy drinking - and when it’s just a habit you don’t need. That big glass of red you have after work has 200 calories in it. Cut that out Monday to Thursday and you’ll have saved 800 calories a week without damaging your weekend social life.

Cut the calorie count down even more by switching drinks. White spirits like gin or vodka with slimline tonic are the way to go. A double gin and slimline is just 112 calories.

   7. Try Fakeaway

Love sweet and sour? Sucker for fish and chips? Whatever your takeaway poison, it’s a pretty safe bet that you can make something at home that’ll satisfy your cravings for a lot fewer calories. There are heaps of fakeaway recipes online so just get searching rather than dialling for that takeaway. Paired with our Bikini Me kit, your cravings will be reduced and you'll suppress hunger.