Beginner's Fitness Programs

Every dieter faces several challenges: hunger, impulsive eating, maintaining motivation, and keeping weight off after losing it. I introduced a few tips before, but here are a few more tricks you may want to use:

1. Drink water.

This is a well-known trick for dieters, but it was finally proven by a scientific study. According to a study at Virginia Tech, people who drank two cups of water before every meal lost 25% more weight than people who did not. Another study done in 2007 showed that people drinking water 30 minutes before a meal felt less hungry and reduced food intake, especially those older than 35.

2. Eat soup.

Another trick often used is to make soup. It is well-known that for the same amount of calories, people feel more satisfied by eating food in a soup than eating it in solid form and drinking water at the same time.

3. Read food labels.

Avoiding high-calorie junk food is quite hard. However, according to a School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University study, people who read food labels but didn’t work out lost slightly more weight than people who worked out but didn’t read food labels. Of course, if you do workout AND read food labels, you should lose more weight. Yes, read food labels – they are actually quite disgusting. Common examples include “saturated fat 5 g, sugar 20 g, salt 5g…”, plus tons of unpronounceable chemicals…

3. Use cash while food shopping.

According to the State University of New York, if people use cash when they are food shopping, they do less impulsive buying, and tend to buy more healthy food compared with people who use a credit card or debit card.

4. Keep a log

According to the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, people who keep a record of their weight regularly reach their target weight much easier than people who do not. They recommend interactive web sites, such as Weight Watchers ©. (In their study, they used their own.)

Source:
Water consumption increases weight loss during a hypocaloric diet intervention in middle-aged and older adults: Obesity 2010 Feb;18(2):300-7
Pre-meal water consumption reduces meal energy intake in older but not younger subjects: Obesity 2007 Jan; 15(1):93-9.
Use of Food Labels as a Weight Loss Behavior. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 2010
How Credit Card Payments Increase Unhealthy Food Purchases: Visceral Regulation of Vices. Journal of Consumer Research, 2010
The more frequently you log on, the more weight you can keep off, study finds: Journal of Medical Internet Research Dec 2010.

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