The new year is here, we’re starting 2021 with our New Year’s Resolutions and so many of us would like to make this year, the year where we finally manage to achieve Long-Term Weight Loss. I’m going to share the 5 best long-term weight loss tips, that will allow you to achieve this goal. I see so many people not following these 5 weight loss tips. These 5 tips are really important and they make the difference between someone losing weight and regaining it after or losing the weight and keeping it off.
A Health Coach shares 5 Best Long-term WEIGHT LOSS TIPS for 2021!
Table of Contents
1 Long-term Weight Loss Tip
The first long-term weight loss tip is to choose a sustainable weight loss method. Always, when you starting a new diet, think, can you eat this way for the rest of your life? Do you feel satisfied eating this way? Do you get enough calories and nutrients? If your calories are really low, like 1000 or 1200 calories a day, there’s a high chance that this diet will help you to lose weight at first, but will end up making you hungry, tired, and will make you very likely to regain the weight.
The first long-term weight loss tip is to choose a sustainable weight loss method.
You probably heard like million times, that in order to lose weight you need to lower your calories as much as possible. Well, guess what? Too few calories are not healthy and not sustainable in the long term. Be reasonable with your calories.
2 Long-term Weight Loss Tip
The second long term weight loss tip is to not expect to permanently lose weight with exercise alone. Why is that? I’m not saying that exercise is useless or that it’s impossible to lose weight with exercise alone. However, when you look at the importance of diet and the importance of exercise for weight loss, you can see that these are not the same. Diet makes up around 85% of your weight loss results, while exercise makes up only around 15% of your weight loss results.
The second long term weight loss tip is to not expect to permanently lose weight with exercise alone.
Plus, many of us would go to the gym, do cardio for 30 minutes, get a huge spike in hunger and cravings, and then go to compensate with bad food. I would highly recommend you to not rely on workouts alone, focus on some muscle training, long walks, yoga, or Pilates, 2-4 times a week, and put your main focus on clean, healthy eating, with plenty of nutrients.
3 Long-term Weight Loss Tip
The third long term weight loss tip is to not use any Weight loss Apps. Why? Because it puts you in the wrong mindset. Where you’re obsessed about tracking everything, your calories, and macros, and meeting specific requirements. And this will very likely prevent you from truly enjoying your food and listening to your body. And that is really important for improving your health and losing weight long term.
The third long term weight loss tip is to not use any Weight loss Apps.
Also, if you use food tracking apps, you will be more likely to eat ready meals and packaged foods, as these often have labels with nutritional information, making them easier to track. And you will be more likely to avoid experimenting in the kitchen and cooking from scratch, as this would make recording all of the ingredients on the app more time-consuming.
So, in a way, weight loss apps, encourage you to remove the variety, and always prioritise less healthy lower-calorie, lower-fat options, that are now known to result in more hunger and cravings.
4 Long-term Weight Loss Tip
The fourth long term weight loss tip is to not overdo with drinking water. I know, it’s the opposite from what you’ve been told, drink 6 to 8 glasses or 2-2.5 litres of water a day. But drinking water to lose weight has no scientific basis behind it. No, water doesn’t make you full and satiated and no, it doesn’t help you to burn calories.
The fourth long term weight loss tip is to not overdo with drinking water.
And there’s no set amount of water that you must drink a day. The simple rule to follow is to drink when you’re thirsty. That’s why we have this feeling of thirst. There’s no need to down litres of water and hope that it’s going to help you to lose weight or be healthier. In fact, drinking too much water can result in flushing electrolytes out of your body. When they say, the body is made up of 60% of water, it is not really water. It’s fluids with various other elements in it.
So, instead of putting your focus on drinking enough water, you should focus on more useful things, such as eating natural whole foods and getting enough veggies, as this will provide you with your daily water needs. And drink water only when you’re thirsty!
I know, it’s not the most useful weight loss tip, but it’s a weird thing I keep seeing on weight loss/health support groups on Facebook! Someone says that they reached a weight loss plateau, or that they gained weight, and a bunch of people will comment – drink more water! Which doesn’t make any sense. So I thought I’ll mention it here.
5 Long-term Weight Loss Tip
And the fifth long term weight loss tip is to reduce the frequency of eating. That’s another important thing to focus on. The number of meals you have a day is really important. Let’s say you consume 1800 kcal a day. You could either have 5 smaller meals with 360 kcal in each or have 3 600 kcal meals.
And the fifth long term weight loss tip is to reduce the frequency of eating.
What’s the difference? Each time you eat, you elevate your blood glucose. This is followed by the release of the fat-storage hormone insulin. It comes to lower the glucose and help it to get to where it’s needed. And the excess is stored as glycogen and body fat. Which we should use when needed.
When you’re trying to lose weight, it is very very important, to try to keep your insulin low. It’s the time between the meals, and time during the night, that you don’t eat anything, and you can finally access your stored body fat and use it for energy because your insulin is low. We burn most of our body fat during the night when we sleep.
That’s because the hormone insulin, which blocks fat burning, is not elevated for a long time. We don’t eat while we sleep (at least I don’t) but we still require a lot of energy to keep us alive and for all reactions to happen.
Guess what happens when you don’t sleep enough. You gain weight! I worked with several women in the past, who were regularly sleeping for only 4 hours a night! This creates perfect conditions for weight gain. If you don’t sleep enough and you struggle with weight loss, make sure you increase your sleeping time to 7-9 hours a night.
Make sure you sleep enough!
Back to the frequency of eating, intermittent fasting, which is basically reducing the frequency of eating, for example, skipping your breakfast, is a very effective weight loss method. You can consume the same number of calories, but having that prolonged non-eating window, you tap into some serious fat burning! You would never be able to reach this fat-burning state if you would keep eating every 2-3 hours… “Eat 5-6 meals a day” is on the list of the top worst health tips I ever heard of.
And there are million other weight loss tips I could give you, but let’s keep it simple. If you want to lose weight and keep it off long-term, follow these five simple, but powerful weight loss tips. And let me know in the comments if any of the tips that I mentioned here are something new to you.
These were my 5 Long-term WEIGHT LOSS TIPS, go and implement them, and you’ll see some great changes! We’ve all been in these situations, where we have a plan, we have certain expectations, but the plan doesn’t go as follows. And aw well, we end up failing miserably! It’s the new normal. Regular weight loss methods such as overexercising and undereating don’t last, not because we don’t have enough willpower, but because it’s impossible to maintain it!
We’ve been told years after years to lower our calories, to eat less and move more, but I have to disagree with this method. It’s an unsustainable trap that makes you lose the weight and regain it back. As a health coach, I see a lot of women who were struggling with weight loss their whole lives, not being able to maintain permanent results, and having totally ruined their metabolisms with dieting! We deserve to have bodies that we love and feel comfortable in our own skin.
My most important long-term weight loss tip for achieving your goal in 2021 – instead of focusing on calories and avoiding high-calorie foods, eat natural whole foods, especially the ones high in healthy fat, as they keep you healthy and satiated, and forget about counting calories as your body can do it for you!
There are foods that you have to avoid if you want to achieve long-term weight loss – it’s all the refined foods, especially refined carbs! These are the foods that prevent you from losing weight and keeping it off long term. Long-term weight loss becomes easy when you get rid of these toxic foods!
I wish your dreams to come true in 2021!
Next, watch my YouTube video where I discuss why Eating More and Moving Less works better for weight loss.
Or, read my blog post about The Top 11 Weight Loss Myths.