In this day and age many people are working from home, and thus find themselves adding more pounds. With decreased activity and aimless eating due to proximity to the fridge, it can be difficult to prevent your waistline from growing. However it is possible to prevent the homebound pounds from adding up and even lose weight. If you want to learn how to lose weight while mostly confined to your home w/o dieting, this post is for you so keep reading.
Top 5 Tips To Lose Weight at Home Without Dieting
1. Eat Smarter, Not Less
People think you need to starve yourself to lose weight but this is not true. What you need to do is switch out high calorie junk foods and eat more low calorie nutrient dense food. For instance a fast food burger and fries has over 1000 calories, instead eat some lean meat and load up your plate with fibrous veggies like okra, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spinach, and green beans to save yourself more than 500 calories. You can essentially eat an unlimited amount of these veggies. You would need to eat over 30 cups of veggies at one sitting to consume 1000 calories. For breakfast if you eat a dunkin donut and large latte you would be consuming close to 900 calories, while instead if you ate a 3 egg veggie omelette with unsweetened tea, that would only be around 300 calories.
Another thing to consider when eating smarter, is to try and eat protein and high fiber foods at every meal. Doing this will keep you fuller longer and help stave cravings off, to stop unnecessary snacking. When you snack or "graze" all day long you could be unknowingly adding 100 to 1000s of excess calories. So stopping snacking all day is a good habit to kick if you want to lose weight. I recommend no more than one snack a day either before or after lunch depending on how you space your meals out. When creating your meals add 2 cups or more of fibrous veggies, and a lean meat as the focal point. When adding carbs to your meal I recommend 1 cup or less even 1/2 cup or less to start to prevent added weight. Look at carbs as fuel for movement, if you are not moving around much than no need to eat much starchy carbs. Once you get "smart" about how you eat the pounds will just start rolling off.
2. Move More
While working from home you have to be intentional about getting more activity. Take scheduled hourly work breaks to walk around the house and schedule a workout session which could also simply be a 30 minute walk outside daily. If you don't schedule the time to get active into your schedule you can easily get engrossed in your work and forget to move around. It may be a good idea to invest in an activity tracker like a Fit Bit or Apple Watch that can track your daily activity. A simple goal to set is a 10,000 daily step goal or to burn an extra 500 calories a day with movement. Your fitness tracker/watch will help keep you accountable to meet your set activity goals. With these activity trackers you can even join challenges from friends to encourage and push you further to meet your goals. If you are the competitive type it can be a fun way to challenge yourself to get more activity everyday.
Simply put drink more water and cut out all sugary drinks. Water is calorie free, while a 12oz soda or juice has close to 150 calories. This is probably the most overlooked way to aid in weight loss. Drinking more water has so many more health benefits as well like, improving skin, flushes out toxins from body, improves mental clarity, and improves metabolism to help you burn more calories. You can also help to control your hunger by drinking more water. Any time you feel hungry try and drink a glass of water first before reaching for food. I aim to drink 2 Liters or about 1/2 a gallon of water a day, and use a motivational water bottle to help keep me accountable. This water bottle has time markings and words of motivation to help reach your target of drinking enough water everyday.
4. Try intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting is where you give your body a rest from food for a period of time or hours. A lot of people try a 16:8 fasting schedule, where they have an 8 hour period where they can eat food, and a 16 hour period of fasting(no eating). A simple way to do this is to cut out breakfast. Eat from say 11 am and stop by 7 pm. While fasting in the morning you can drink water, black coffee, and unsweetened tea. Research has shown that intermittent fasting not only can help with weight loss, but in particular helps burn more fat, increase metabolism, decreases insulin resistance decreasing diabetes risk, improve cholesterol, decreases risk of heart disease, and decreases inflammation in the body.
5. Stop eating until you are stuffed
Listen to your body when your are eating. We have all done it. We eat and eat and eat until our stomach hurts. Some people do this at every meal. But this is not healthy and contributes to weight gain. Try and make it a habit to stop eating before you get to this point. You should never feel too full from eating that it makes you sluggish. This way of eating is a called intuitive eating. I think portion control goes hand in hand with intuitive eating. A lot of times we fill our plates with a lot of food out of habit, and many feel the need to eat all the food on their plate. There's nothing wrong with eating all the food on your plate when it is the right portion for you. Particularly limit starchy carbs on your plate to less than 1 cup. Portion control and moderation will always remain key when it comes to weight loss.
Conclusion
It is possible to lose weight without dieting. And you can lose weight even when not leaving your home much. You don't need to eat "less" to lose weight, but you do need to eat less calories and/or burn more calories putting your body in a calorie deficit to lose weight. While mostly at home you have to be more intentional about activity and schedule activity time like walking daily. Replace high calorie foods in your diet with low calorie filling foods like fibrous veggies and lean proteins to keep yourself fuller longer and cut out snacking. Portion control is always key and remember don't drink your calories. Try out these tips you've learned here and let me know how it goes. For one month no junk food, fast every other day, limit snacking, no drinks except water, cut back on starchy carbs and lastly fill your plate with mostly veggies like okra, leafy greens, broccoli, asparagus, or green beans paired with a lean meat. If you have to snack, don't snack more than once a day and eat fruit if you have a sweet tooth. Good Luck on your Wellness Journey!
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