Losing weight can be tough for some people, but could it be that they are simply trying too hard? Our list of healthy weight loss tips aims to get you shedding the pounds without too much effort, and make you healthier into the bargain!

Diets are big business these days and there is a seemingly endless supply of new fads to follow. However, many of these diet plans are simply useless because they leave you hungry and unsatisfied.

After all, who wants a constantly rumbling stomach, dizzy spells and headaches? No wonder people reach for the nearest snack!

These healthy weight loss tips will keep you satiated, improve your wellbeing and put you on the right track towards your target weight. And, here’s the best bit, there’s no strict diet to follow either.

So, shall we begin our list of healthy weight loss tips? Let’s go!

Bulk up on the good to phase out the bad

Diets generally fall down simply because they encourage you to starve yourself in order to shed weight. This is a sure fire way to increase irritability and frustration, not exactly ideal when you are trying to achieve something that you are already convinced is difficult!

The truth is that you really don’t need to starve yourself at all to lose weight, especially if you want to do so in a healthy way. In fact, we’d encourage you to eat as much as you want when you want to lose weight – providing its the right stuff, of course.

Whenever you feel hungry, reach for something healthy. Grab an apple or an orange, munch on a handful of nuts, or indulge in a snack of homemade hummus with some crispy, crunchy veg. These will give you more of the nutrients that you need, making you feel satisfied faster than junk food ever will.

It’s all about changing your mindset, not the amount that you eat.

Eating more of what grows naturally and less of what food technicians have conjured up in a laboratory somewhere is one of the best healthy weight loss tips we can give you. Processed foods are killers, period (even the vegan ones are far from great!).

Start a weight loss journal

Believe it or not, keeping track of what you eat is a great healthy weight loss tip. Why is it so great? Because it’s proven to work, that’s why!

Grab yourself a small notepad that you can keep with you at all times, or better still download a food diary app onto your phone so that you can make entries as you go. Waiting until the end of the day will likely mean that you’ll forget stuff that you had along the way.

Be specific with portion sizes and, most importantly, don’t lie to yourself. If you have something that you probably shouldn’t, write it down. It’s all part of the process and will help you in the long run.

Use the journal to monitor other things, too. Keep track of what exercise you’re doing, even if it’s only a 5-minute walk. If you were doing nothing before, 5 minutes is a step in the right direction (if you’ll pardon the pun!).

Even keeping a note of how you felt when you resisted a temptation will reinforce your resolve – so write it down!

Keep the journal regularly and you’ll be ahead of the game when it comes to weight loss, FACT!

Check out DIETMINDER for improved focus and goal setting

Set specific (but realistic) goals

Setting goals, much like keeping a food journal, is a proven way to help you get to where you want to be.

Taking the time to physically write down what you want to achieve will help focus the mind and keep you on track if you review them regularly.

The key to successful goal setting is to really break down what you want to achieve and put some numbers to the goal so that it is actually measurable.

Simply saying that you want to lose weight isn’t good enough. You need to set a target to work towards, so go for something along the lines of:

I am going to lose 15 pounds of fat and knock four inches off of my waistline by New Years Eve.

By spelling out your goal in no uncertain terms you have something concrete to work towards, and if you review it every day you’ll remain focused on achieving that goal.

Also note that the goal states fat, not weight. Lots of people make the mistake of aiming to lose weight rather than fat, and they simply shed water and muscle. Aiming to lose fat drills down the goal even further, making it more worthwhile and better for your health.

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Talk to those closest to you

Speaking about what you want to achieve is a great healthy weight loss tip for two reasons.

One, it will reinforce the goal that you have already set for yourself. By telling others about your specific goals, you’ll be committing yourself to achieving them far more. After all, no one wants to say that they’ve failed, do they?

Two, it’ll give you the opportunity to talk about your habits as a family. Changing your diet for the better can be easy, but you will need support along the way.

This can obviously come in terms of emotional support, but there are other ways that your immediate family can help – and they’ll be helping themselves, too!

Talk to those that you live with about removing the snacks, animal products and processed foods from your home altogether and explain exactly why you think it will be beneficial to your family as a whole. If you need some pointers, see this article on the advantages of switching to a plant-based whole food diet.

Removing temptation from your home environment is a huge step, and it’s one that will make your quest to lose weight infinitely easier to achieve. If it’s not there, you can’t have it. Simple!

Plan ahead

Planning your meals in advance is another way to lessen the amount of temptation that you will incur throughout the week.

Set up a 7-day plan and fill in everything: breakfast, lunch, dinner and even your favorite vegan snacks (remember, you’re allowed as much as you like providing it’s a healthy plant-based whole food).

Set out the shopping list and go hit the grocery store. Remember not to do this on an empty stomach, though. Otherwise you might just find yourself in those deadly middle aisles where all the bad stuff lives!

TAKE YOUR LUNCH TO WORK THE ECO-FRIENDLY WAY – USE A STAINLESS STEEL LUNCH BOX

Get to know yourself

Now this may sound a little out there to some of you, but getting to know yourself can really help when we’re trying to lose a few pounds, which is why we’ve included it in our list of healthy weight loss tips.

What do we mean by getting to know ourselves? Well, it’s really all about recognizing our own bodies and knowing exactly when we are feeling hungry rather than simply letting things go too far. Many of us don’t even think about just how hungry we are, especially when we’re bored or busy.

We like to use a scale to make judgement on our hunger levels. A simple one to 10 works fine. If you are bored, it can often be the case that your brain will tell you to go and eat something when you really don’t need to. Having the scale to fall back on will make you think about just how hungry you really are.

Equally, when you are busy, you can sometimes forget about food altogether until you are absolutely famished, which then leads to overeating. Set alerts in your phone’s calendar when you are at work to remind you to eat, but check in with yourself and ask the question, “On a scale of one to 10, how hungry am I really?”

Aim to eat something when you genuinely feel that you are around the seven to eight mark. This will make sure that you are not eating for the sake of it, but it’ll also make sure that you never get to the point where you’ll demolish everything in sight!

Cook from scratch

Forget takeaways, ready meals and TV dinners – cooking from scratch is one of the best healthy weight loss tips to follow, and it needn’t be as difficult as you think.

There are numerous fantastic, and fast, vegan recipes online these days, so there really is no excuse, no matter how busy you are.

Cooking at home means that you’ll know exactly what has gone into your meal and you’ll have the satisfaction of creating something yourself, too.

Getting into cooking is a rewarding experience and it can be one of the key factors in transforming both your health and your waistline.

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Be adventurous

Now that you are moving over to more plant-based whole foods, it’s time to branch out and be a little more adventurous when you hit the grocery store.

Try fruits and vegetables that you haven’t had before. Make up smoothies of all different types and start to experience all of the wonderful new flavors that are now available to you. Keep track of what you try and what you think in your food journal.

This may sound nuts at first (I would have agreed with you a few years back), but trust me, you’ll begin to relish the taste of all these marvellous fresh and natural foodstuffs.

Trying new things all the time helps to keep your mind focused and away from the unhealthy foods that you are trying to get rid of from your life. Deep down, your body knows what’s good for it, and it will begin to thank you for the changes you are making far faster than you think.

Your taste buds will begin to change and you’ll start to feel lighter and have a clearer mind. Energy levels will rise and before you know it you’ll be in the habit of eating in way that will encourage your metabolism to work towards your optimum weight all by itself.

Remember that not all calories are the same

Another area that often lets people down is calorie counting.

Calorie counting doesn’t work simply because not all calories are the same. For example, if you were to consume 500 calories of sugary beverage, your body takes in the fiberless sugars fast and your blood sugar goes through the roof – not good.

Why? Because the increased insulin that results will kickstart your body’s ability to store belly fat. There are a whole host of other bad things that happen as well, but as we are concentrating on healthy weight loss tips, we’ll single out the belly fat issue.

Compare this with, say, 500 calories of almonds. Five-hundred calories is 500 calories, right? Wrong.

The almonds will not cause such a massive spike in insulin as they are a whole food and you are getting a multitude of other nutrients along with the calories that you are ingesting.

Their glycemic index is far lower than that of the sugary beverage, so their release is a lot slower, meaning that your body will also feel satisfied for longer on the same amount of calories. Plus, with all the fiber included in whole foods, your body will actually absorb less calories anyway.

So, remember, quit the calorie counting and concentrate on eating better food, not less.

Cut back on oil

Who’s chopped up a load of veggies, smothered them in oil and put them in the oven for roasting? Or, maybe, made a big bowl of vegan salad and liberally doused the leaves with a load of dressing? We’ve all done it at one time or another, but that doesn’t mean that its a good idea!

Oil can dramatically alter the amount of calories on a seemingly healthy dish. While the previous healthy weight loss tip stated that calories shouldn’t be your main concern, avoiding empty calories like oil should be on your mind at all times.

We’re not saying that you need to throw them all away, but cutting back is advisable if you are looking to lose weight. Check out our article on lowering your oil intake to find out how you can lessen the amount that you have each day.

Be mindful when eating

When we say be mindful, we are not talking about thinking of what you are going to eat.

What we mean by this is that when you having a meal or a snack, you are actually focused on eating rather than being distracted by your phone, tablet or any of the million and one things that are clamouring for our attention these days.

Slow down when you eat and really take time to enjoy the flavors. Savor every second and use your senses as you chew and swallow, doing so will bring an awareness that will make you appreciate your food more and make you satisfied a whole lot faster, too.

Up the activity levels

This may make you groan if you are just thinking about losing weight.

However, I’m going to promise you something right now. Once you ditch animal products and processed foods, something weird begins to happen – you’ll actually want to get up off the sofa and do stuff!

That’s right. Your energy levels will become such that your body will begin urging your brain to get things into gear, you simply need to burn off the extra energy that you are getting from your healthier diet.

Obviously, you need to take things easy at first – no one wants an injury – but it shouldn’t be too long before you can begin to gradually increase the amount of physical activity that you are doing each and every day.

The amount of exercise that you are taking is another excellent thing to monitor in your food diary as it will give you a great sense of just how far you have come when you review your progress at a later date.

Don’t beat yourself up

The last of our healthy weight loss tips is simple – don’t worry if your weight loss doesn’t happen straight away.

Just because your friend lost five pounds in a fortnight doesn’t mean that you’ll follow suit, we’re all different, after all.

Remember, when carrying out tip number three especially, to be realistic and make things achievable. You can always re-evaluate your goals when you hit them.

Being good to yourself will get you where you want to be a lot quicker, and that means both mentally and physically. So, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ll get there!

Sum up

There you have it, our 13 healthy weight loss tips that will help you reach a healthier weight in less time than a fad diet ever will.

There really are no tricks involved, it’s more about taking a step back from our busy lives and focussing on what we want to achieve.

Removing animal products and processed foods from our diets can really help us not only lose weight, but also lessen our risk of contracting some of the biggest killer diseases blighting the human race today.

Oh, and you’ll be doing a great service to the environment and our animal friends, too.