10 Great Weight Loss Tips
It is not hard to find a long list of weight loss tips on the internet today.
One site I recently visited had a list of 100 weight loss tips.
Though a lot of what was suggested seemed like good advice, I felt somewhat disconnected from the article author because I never really had a chance to connect with him due to his terseness. I usually feel more at ease about accepting advice from an author who takes the time to explain the advice they offer from the perspective of personal experience.
Rather than try to do what had already been done before by compiling the longest list I could, I decided to share my thoughts on what were the 10 greatest weight loss tips for me when I first decided to pursue success in weight loss.
I hope these 10 great weight loss tips can help you as they helped me in the past.
Great Weight Loss Tip #1: Take pictures
This may be the most shocking thing you can do in order to gain the motivation needed for being successful at weight loss.
Before you begin you weight loss program, take pictures of yourself from the front, back and sides while in your underwear. I promise that you will be appalled by what you see.
We have a very difficult time seeing ourselves as others see us. Taking these pictures will allow you to evaluate your appearance objectively. The ultimate goal of any weight loss program is to make dieters feel good about the way they look, even in the nude. Taking pictures (which you do not have to show anyone else, EVER) of the way you look before you start your weight loss program is an excellent way of defining changes you would like to make in your appearance.
I recommend continuing to take pictures of yourself each week during your weight loss program. We all think the worst of ourselves when we look in the mirror, but since you have two or more pictures to compare, you can use them to easily see the progress you have made to date. Just as we do not notice ourselves getting older when we look in the mirror each day, we also cannot see the weight loss progress we have made. Your camera does not lie and should be used liberally.
Even bodybuilders have a tendency to be overly critical of their appearance when dieting prior to competing in a contest. I remember having only 8% body fat prior to a contest and still being concerned about the flaws I saw when I looked in the mirror. The pictures I took helped me to see things as they really were.
Great Weight Loss Tip #2: Pre-cook your meals
In order to not cheat on your diet and to reach the weight loss success you are striving for, it is necessary to create an intense feeling of self-imposed guilt when contemplating varying from your allowed food choices.
The easiest way to create this feeling of guilt is by taking one day to prepare all your meals a week in advance. Whatever you prepare can be stored in small Tupperware containers and either kept in the fridge or frozen.
When I first started dieting and trying to achieve weight loss, I used this weight loss tip with great success. I decided that I would only eat two solid meals each day, consisting of a 4oz boneless, skinless chicken breast and a cup of frozen vegetables. While this may not have been the best nutritional choice I could have made, it was easy to prepare in a short amount of time.
Regardless of what you do prepare ahead of time, the goal is to have no containers left at the end of the week. If you decide to cheat on your diet, you will have an extra meal left in the fridge. I never wanted to have to say that I was too weak to stick with eating only what I had prepared in advance.
If I had not consumed all of the proper meals I had made for myself, I would have been ashamed. This process helped me gain a strong sense of determination and avoid the guilt of giving in to the demands of my stomach.
Great Weight Loss Tip #3: Learn to read food labels
Why would I suggest learning to read food labels and nutrition labeling? The most obvious reason for acquiring this skill is so that you gain an intimate knowledge of exactly what you are feeding your body each day.
There are many hidden ingredients in prepared foods we buy at the grocery store that are not necessarily good for us. Though it goes beyond the scope of this article, I encourage you to do some research and find out more about the various unpronounceable items on your food labels.
The best reason for learning how to read food labels is so that you can know for certain how many calories are in the food you plan to consume. Food manufacturers have a sly way of deceiving the public where calories are concerned.
There is no standard serving size that can be applied to all the different foods we buy, so each product you pull off your grocery store shelf has a nutritional label that shows the number of calories contained in an arbitrarily assigned suggested serving size.
Some products make this process easy. For example, I know that a bag of reduced fat Oreo cookies has a nutritional label that shows me there are 100 calories in a serving of two Oreos. Other products make the process more difficult.
I recently bought a 796 mL can of stewed tomatoes. The nutritional label on the can showed that a ½ cup (125mL) serving of stewed tomatoes contained 25 calories. While this is good information if I am having a single serving, what do I do if I want to use the entire can of stewed tomatoes in a spaghetti sauce and I need to know how many calories there are in the whole can?
The process is the same, regardless of the product, serving size or calorie count you begin with. To know how many calories are in an entire package, you divide the total volume or weight of the package by the volume or weight of a single serving as defined on the nutritional label, then multiply the result by the number of calories a single serving contains.
In the case of my stewed tomatoes, 796 mL (total volume) divided by 125 mL (the serving size from the nutritional label) gives me 6.368 for an answer. I then multiply 25 (the number of calories in a 125 mL serving) times my previous result of 6.368, which gives me an answer of 159.2 calories. Now I know that my 796 mL can of stewed tomatoes contains 159.2 calories.
This process remains the same regardless of the product in question and becomes second nature to you the more often you perform the calculation.
Great Weight Loss Tip #4: Keep a weight loss journal
Nothing is as satisfying as having a written record of your weight loss results to look back on. During my bodybuilding days, and even more recently when I lost 40 lbs in 12 weeks with no exercise, I kept a daily journal of what I ate.
At the end of every day, I recorded exactly what I had eaten during the day and the exact amount of calories I had consumed. I looked forward to every morning when I would step on the scale and record my weight for the day.
Weighing yourself in the morning is always the best idea because it is when you are at your lightest. It is also important to weigh yourself at the same time each day because your weight can fluctuate by as much as 5-10 lbs during your daily activities.
Regardless of when you weigh yourself or what you eat, make sure to record it in a weight loss journal of some sort. The pen and paper method is fine. If you are a little more tech-savvy, you can make up a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet like I did. I found this method very useful, as I was also able to graph my calorie intake, weight loss results and body fat percentage.
I am not a big fan of exercise anymore and have proven through my own experimentation that it is not necessary for weight loss. However, if you do decide to commit to regular visits to your local gym then you should definitely write down everything you do.
Write down every last set and repetition of every exercise you perform. Having a written journal of your efforts in the gym will give you incentive for doing better the next time you go. I always tried to either increase the number of repetitions I did for a particular exercise while keeping the weight constant, or increase the weight while keeping the number of repetitions the same.
At the very least you will have something to show your friends or kids years down the road when they do not believe that you could actually bench 300 lbs at one point in time.
Great Weight Loss Tip #5: Drink plenty of water
Though the benefits of drinking a lot of water are too many to be listed here, there are a few points that deserve mention. Our bodies are made up of mostly water and it makes no sense whatsoever to deprive ourselves of it, yet most people you meet today are severely dehydrated and not aware of their condition.
Though modern day hunger pangs are due in part to the low quality of the average North American diet, there are many times where people mistakenly believe that they are hungry when they are actually just thirsty.
We would not get thirsty if water was not needed. Our bodies use water to drive all of their internal processes and lubricate our joints. Many health problems that exist today could be avoided if only we would consume more water on a regular basis.
Drinking water has more uses than just satisfying your thirst though. The act of drinking water throughout the day makes it easier for anyone trying to achieve successful weight loss to make it through between meals. It is also beneficial for weight loss seekers like us to have a full glass of water before and with our meals so that we end up eating less.
A diet that includes a lot of water has been proven to improve and maintain the condition of our skin and also improves our circulatory system, making it easier for our blood to transport needed nutrients throughout our bodies.
Great Weight Loss Tip #6: Count your calories
Do you know how many calories you consume in a day? You should. Getting to the end of a day while having no idea of how many calories you consumed can be likened to overfilling your gas tank.
When you fill up your gas tank, you pay special attention to when your tank gets full. Most of us know exactly what the capacity of our gas tank is, without having to check the owners’ manual. We would never think of just continuing to hold in the pump lever while letting gas spray everywhere once our tank reached its capacity.
We need to have this kind of knowledge of how many calories we eat in a day because as you will see later, your body also has a capacity that should not be exceeded.
Though the process of calorie counting can be tedious at first, it becomes a fun game to those who persist in maintaining an accurate record. It only takes a second to write down or mentally compute the calories in a given meal. Knowing the calorie count ahead of time can be helpful when deciding whether or not to have a particular meal.
Great Weight Loss Tip #7: Know your base metabolic rate
Remember when I said that your body has a capacity, just like your car’s gas tank? Well that capacity for food intake is your base metabolic rate.
Your base metabolic rate is the number of calories that your body would burn in a day if you did nothing but lay in bed for the entire day. It is the number of calories your body requires to keep its internal processes working and keep you alive, nothing more.
Though I tend to disagree with the results obtained from the various online BMR calculators due to personal experience in the weight loss arena, these tools are handy for giving you a rough idea of how many calories you actually need in a day.
The handiest formula you can use for determining your base metabolic rate is called the Harris-Benedict Formula. This manual method of determining your BMR consists of two formulas, one for men and one for women. They are:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x wt in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)
Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 x wt in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)
I worked out my own BMR using the men’s formula and found that it was slightly off. My result was a BMR of approximately 1700 calories per day, but I normally eat less than that and I am still walking around and breathing. At best, I would use this tool to obtain a rough BMR estimate.
Once you know your BMR, you have a good idea of how many calories you should consume in a day. Any activity you perform during the day that burns calories increases your allowable intake of food. This is why I said it is a good idea to keep a written record of your efforts in the gym. If you document the number of calories you burn off doing cardio, you can add that total to your BMR to find out your total allowable calories.
Great Weight Loss Tip #8: Plan your workouts
There is no point in going to the gym or starting any kind of exercise regimen without a clearly defined plan of activities for the time you will devote to your workouts. Though I do not promote working out to achieve weight loss, if you decide to hit the gym, you need a plan.
The method I most often recommend for planning out and keeping track of workout information is using good old graph paper. There are many pre-made tools you can buy that have charts and such for recording your results, but I always found them to be limiting.
Using graph paper, you can map out your own destination. When preparing for a bodybuilding competition, I always carefully laid out exactly what I would do on any given day when I attended the gym. I still have every workout plan I used during those days and it is fun to look back on them.
For any day on your schedule, write down exactly what you plan to accomplish when you go to the gym. Maybe you will only work your back and biceps. Perhaps you will only do cardio work. Whatever the activity, make sure you have thought it out in advance.
Too often, I have seen people wander into a gym and move aimlessly between machines and free-weights. They had no real direction to follow and their workouts and fitness results suffered as a result of their lack of preparation.
If you want to be successful in the gym, know in advance exactly which exercises you will do and how many sets and reps before you ever set foot through the door. Filling out your planned workout record completely will give you a sense of satisfaction and spur you on to greater results in the future.
Great Weight Loss Tip #9: Have a written weight loss goal
Perhaps even more important than tracking your food intake and workout results is having knowledge of why you are going to a gym or trying to achieve weight loss in the first place.
It is exceptionally important for your weight loss success to have a written goal you plan on achieving with in a specific time frame. Take some time to think about why you want to make a change in your physique. Maybe you want to compete in a fitness event, or perhaps you only want to look good for your mate.
Whatever your reason for desiring change, make sure to write it down along with the specific goal(s) you plan on achieving. Your reason for making a change should be emotional and powerful enough to almost bring tears to your eyes when you think about it. If your reason for chasing weight loss success does not stir any emotion in you, then find a different reason.
The goal you choose to achieve needs to be time specific or else it just turns into something that would be nice to do or have, not something you will do or have. A proper way to state a weight loss goal is to say “I will lose 40 lbs in 12 weeks” or “I will have only 10 percent body fat by the seventeenth of September.”
Once you define your reason and your goal, place both of them in a place where you will see them every day. Use multiple copies if necessary so that you are reminded of your path to success every day. When a goal is not written down and timely, it is out of sight and out of mind. You are much more likely to become the person you want to be if you apply specific, time-sensitive, visual goal setting to your self development process.
Great Weight Loss Tip #10: Find a weight loss mentor
The easiest way to achieve success in any area of life including weight loss is to find someone who has traveled down the path you would like to explore before you and has obtained the results you are seeking.
How do you find a mentor? A mentor can be a person or a resource. It should be fairly easy today to find someone who has achieved successful weight loss. All you need to do once you find them is ask them how they lost weight, then go out and duplicate what they did. They have already done all the hard work for you. It really is that simple.
That is why I am such a huge fan of books. I count myself very lucky to have had a love of reading instilled in me from a very early age. You can pick up in one afternoon what it took someone else a lifetime to figure out. In a very short span of time, you can find out how many people achieved successful weight loss and apply their methods in your own life.
You don’t need to know why their methods work. You only need to know that they work. In this world, seeing is believing. Therefore, go out and find someone who has lost a lot of weight and ask how he or she did it. If possible, get them to coach you personally. You don’t need to be a doctor or a celebrity to know how to lose weight. Someone down the road from you may be just the mentor you need.
Barring the ideal situation of working with someone in person, gather all the weight loss success manuals you can find and read every last page. Then, go out and apply the suggestions from these books in your own life. In the end, you may not only just end up achieving successful weight loss, but may also be inspired to go out and help others with the knowledge you have gained.
Final Point
There is no greater satisfaction or pinnacle of success in weight loss than when you can pass on what you have learned to someone in need and watch as they apply that knowledge and join you in the ranks of the over-comers.
If for no other reason, seek to be successful in weight loss so you can pass on the light of hope to others who have felt the same despair as you when facing the decision to make a change in their weight. I hope these 10 great weight loss tips have been helpful and I wish you all the success in the world. 
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[...] Watkinson presents 10 Great Weight Loss Tips posted at SaveYourSweat.com Blog, saying, “These are the ten weight loss tips that helped me [...]
[...] Watkinson presents 10 Great Weight Loss Tips posted at SaveYourSweat.com Blog, saying, “These are the ten weight loss tips that worked [...]
Good practical advice. Thanks for posting it. I’ve fallen off the wagon and need to inspiration to get back on. This helps!
Very Nice Post. People who want to loose will really be benefited.
Me also. Not having a weight problem but tummy is coming out. I guess your suggestions will help out.