Weight Loss Tips: Weight Loss the Healthy, Natural Way

Eat a big salad daily.  Include dark leafy greens and lots of colorful vegetables every single day.

Drink at least one green smoothie daily. This along with the salad will really add a lot of nutrition to your body and will stave off unhealthy cravings. You can add some protein, flaxseeds, spirulina, coconut oil, and bee pollen to it for an extra health boost.

Choose nutrient-rich foods, not empty calories. Eat foods high in vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber, and omega-3 fatty acids. Junk foods contain only nutritionally empty calories. You want your calories to provide you with nutritional benefits that will help you heal your body and maintain a permanently healthy weight.

 Eat protein with every meal.  Eat the protein before the carbohydrates or fats. You can also eat protein by itself. Protein-rich foods do not cause insulin spikes, and so are important clean and balanced foods. Whenever you eat a carbohydrate, eat some protein along with it. As a general guideline, the protein should be about half the amount of the carbohydrates. For example, if you have 30 grams of carbohydrates, then eat about 15 grams of protein along with it to prevent insulin spikes that cause excess fat to be stored in the body.

Avoid sugar, salt, and trans fat.  These are the top three ingredients that cause weight gain. Try to avoid them at all costs. They have no nutritional value and are simply bad for your health. Salt causes bloating, swelling, and fluid retention. The good news on trans fat is that the FDA regulates it, and food manufacturers now have to list how much is in each serving when trans fat exceeds 0.5 grams per serving.

 Limit red meat to two or three times per week. Red meat contains a lot of saturated fat, so try to limit your intake to two or three times a week. Instead, eat more protein from fish, poultry, and vegetables, such as brown rice, beans, and nuts, which contain good essential fats.

Eat at least 30 grams of fiber per day. Numerous studies have shown that high- fiber diets help you lose weight and protect against heart disease, stroke, and certain kinds of cancer.

Eat four to five times a day. You will lose weight more quickly if you eat four or five times a day as opposed to only three times. Try to eat every three to four hours and think in terms of three meals and two healthy snacks. Each time you eat, you stimulate your metabolism for a short period of time; thus, the more often you eat, the more you speed up your metabolism. Eating every two to three hours feeds your muscles and starves fat.

Buy organic as much as possible . Buy organic foods, which don’t have chemical preservatives, food additives, hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics. Fresh organic foods are far less toxic than highly processed and packaged/frozen foods and leave less residue and waste in the body.

Drink more pure water . Water does an amazing job of detoxifying your body. The trick though is to not drink water with your meals. This will dilute your digestive juices and make digestion less efficient. Do not drink anything thirty minutes before you eat a meal, and then wait two hours after a meal to have a drink. It is amazing how much energy you will get from doing this. Also, sometimes thirst is disguised as hunger. So there is a good chance that when you drink water, that hungry feeling will go away.

Drink green tea.  Try to make the switch from coffee to green tea, ideally a non- caffeinated brand if possible. Green tea is particularly helpful for reducing body fat and weight, stimulating digestion, and preventing high blood pressure. There are many wonderful benefits of drinking green tea, but as far as weight loss goes, it simply helps the body burn fat faster and more efficiently. Green tea is better than black tea or coffee because its caffeine works in a different way. Green tea makes the body’s own energy use more efficient, thereby improving vitality and stamina without your having to experience the up-and-down effect typically experienced with caffeine. This is due to the large amount of tannins in green tea that ensure that the caffeine is taken to the brain in only small amounts, which harmonizes the energies in the body.

Don’t give in to emotional hunger. You have to learn the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger. If you feel the desire to eat, but you have just eaten within the last two hours, you may actually be looking for a way to change your mood. See if you can find something to occupy yourself for at least one hour. Set a timer and drink some water. Tell yourself that you will eat in one hour. This will set your mind at ease. Then find a way to stay occupied or a way to feel fulfilled for that hour.