So, you want to lose weight? You don’t want to go to a gym or join a membership with meetings? We have just what you need – 4 great tips to lose weight at home.
Losing weight does take time, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.
How do I know this? Because I’ve been there. Several years ago, I had 25 pounds to lose. It took time and effort. It was worth it! I adopted some simple non-food strategies at the very beginning to help me reach that goal.
These four tips will help you get a great start on her weight loss journey. The best news is that you can do it all at home.
Losing Weight is not all about Food.
These are not tips about food. It’s normal to think that food is the culprit when we gain weight, but in reality, it requires more than eating less to lose weight. If you understand this in advance, it will make the losing weight journey easier, and hopefully faster, for you.
Having a good dietary plan is excellent and will help you lose those extra pounds. But, there are other things you need to do if you wish to lose weight and keep it off.
It is not necessary to join a gym or a weight loss membership club. Those are great, but they aren’t an absolute necessity. So, if funds are low, these tips will be helpful to you.
Tip #1 – Add Cardio to your Daily Life to Lose Weight
If you want to lose weight, you’ll need to get more active. In addition to reducing the calories that you are taking in, you will need to increase the calories out.
The best way to do this is by adding some physical (cardio) action to our daily life. Thirty minutes a day is a perfect place to begin. If 30 minutes is just too much for you, then you can start with 15. Just be sure to increase the time as soon as possible.
Here are some at home ideas for adding cardio to your life:
- Walk (brisk pace) 30 minutes every morning around your neighborhood or around your yard
- If you have a treadmill or elliptical machine at home – use it for 30 minutes
- Ride a bike around your neighborhood for 30 minutes
- Walk (brisk pace) around your office building (inside or outside). If you can include stairs, that’s even better.
- Take a 30-minute walk (brisk pace) with your family or friends after dinner every day
- Do an easy 30-minute low impact workout program (dvd or available online)
- Try a walking program (dvd or available online)
These are just some ideas for beginning to add a little cardio to your daily routine. Adding some cardio is important as you begin trying to reach your weight loss goal.
Tip #2 – Set a Goal to Lose Weight
Speaking of goals, be sure to set a goal of what you want to accomplish as you try to lose weight. Is there a specific number of pounds you wish to lose? Is this a specific outfit that you want to wear?
Whatever your goal is, write it down.
Write it down. Write it on post it notes (I love these bright ones). Place the notes in different places where you’ll see it several times a day. You can even make it a wallpaper on your phone.
Seeing your goal front and center throughout the day will help you stay positive and focused.
Tip #3 – Track your Food to Lose Weight
If you really want to lose weight, one of the best things you can do is track the food that you eat. This will make you aware of how much you are eating each day. Plus, it will help you make better food choices.
Whenever you want to make a change in your lifestyle, tracking is a good thing. Just as tracking helps you learn to stick to a budget; it can help you eat healthier and lose weight.
You need to know where your problems are coming from. You can track on paper, in a special food journal (this one is awesome!), on your computer in a simple spreadsheet, or on an app on your phone.
As you begin to track your food intake, you’ll begin to identify your problem areas. Are you eating too much bread? Too many sweets? Perhaps you aren’t eating enough food, or not enough of the right foods.
Are you skipping meals? In the scheme of losing weight, skipping meals is not a good idea, as this causes your body to save what you do eat as fat. That is definitely not what you want.
As you track your food, here is the additional information I recommend tracking:
- Which meal is it
- Time you ate
- Specify the food (and anything you added to it such as butter and jam on a slice of toast)
- Calories (there are numerous calorie calculators available online)
- Include your beverages
- Add your activity minutes to your tracker
If you don’t want to track on paper or a spreadsheet, there are apps available for your phone. One of them is the My Fitness Pal app. You begin by providing the app will information as to where your weight is now and what your goal weight is and in what timeframe you want to reach it.
Then you will simply enter what you ate at each meal and what activity you have done. It automatically notes the calories for those foods. It will also show you how many calories you have left to eat for the day to reach your goal. The app also breaks down what you’ve eaten into the carb/protein and fat categories so you can identify if there’s one you’re eating too much of, or one you’re eating too little of.
My Fitness Pal has a free version and can easily be used to help you lose weight at home.
Tip #4 -Discipline is necessary to Lose Weight at Home
The last item on the list of top four things to lose weight at home is developing discipline. Discipline is always important for losing weight, but it’s especially important if you are trying to lose weight at home. This is because gyms and memberships provide regular encouragement and you may not have that when you are trying to lose weight on your own. Some people think they don’t have discipline, but I expect they do.
It takes discipline to do things habitually every day. For example, you may brush your teeth after breakfast and before bed each day. That is a habit, but it requires discipline.
Discipline for the purpose of losing weight relies greatly on the goal you’ve set for your weight loss. You may learn from your tracking that you will you need to eat only 1200 calories a day in order to lose weight. Your tracking may show that you are regularly eating 1500 calories a day. That’s 300 calories more than you want to be eating. As you identify where your overage is, you’ll use discipline to change that.
For example, your tracking shows that you are eating 1 ½ cups of chocolate ice cream each night. That adds up to 429 calories. However, if you change the amount and eat only ½ cup of chocolate ice cream each night, that would be only 143 calories. That’s where you can cut 286 calories from your daily food intake. It would be just what you need to do in order to only eat 1200 calories a day. Changing from 1 ½ cups to only ½ cup of ice cream each night will require discipline.
You can discipline yourself to eat less of something. You’ll still get to enjoy the taste, but just won’t eat as much.
If you enjoy reading, this is an excellent book on building discipline in your life.
Discipline helps in so many ways for losing weight.
Here are some examples of things you might use discipline for in your weight loss journey:
- Eating 3 meals a day
- Eating 2 simple snacks a day
- Not eating after 7 P.M.
- Planning your meals in advance
- Making sure you eat fruit each day
- Making sure you eat several servings of vegetables each day
This list could go on and on. Discipline is key in helping you lose weight.
Summary
If you want to lose weight at home, be sure to set a goal, practice discipline, track your food and do 30 minutes of cardio each day.
When you are successful in these four skills, you’ll have a great head start in your weight loss journey. Without a doubt, changes to your food choices will be necessary as well but starting with these four practices will help you successfully reach your weight loss goal.
Here are some other posts that may interest you:
10 Changes for a Healthier You
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