5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot May 10, 2007
This post is part of Darren Rowse’s “Top 5″ group writing project over at Problogger.
Weight loss is not about dieting, denial, punishment, guilt and sweating. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to modify your ‘default’ daily habits and adopt a healthy lifestyle.
If the habits you currently have are making you fat, you can’t expect to lose weight without changing them!
The good news is that you don’t need to make drastic changes to begin having an effect on your weight. Just a few simple changes, which you can phase in gently using my 30 day trial technique, will make a good start.
1. Eat Breakfast
Start your day properly. Get in the habit of having a good, healthy, satisfying breakfast that won’t leave you feeling hungry by 10 o’clock.
I usually have a bowl of oats topped with a handful of chopped dates for flavour. You can make it up using hot water or milk - I use water, just to reduce the calories a little more, but low fat milk would be fine too. Honey works well if you want to sweeten it, although the dates do a pretty good job of that by themselves.
Oats are a classic ‘low-GI’ food, meaning they take a while to digest and will deliver energy over a longer period than high-GI foods. This means they’ll fill you up, and you won’t feel hungry again in an hour.
If you have juice with your breakfast, make it a small glass. Drink a large glass of water if you’re still thirsty. This leads into my next habit…
2. Avoid Drinking Calories
It’s easy to slip hundreds of extra calories into your daily intake through poor drink choices. A can of Coke has 155 calories. One cup of orange juice, although seemingly healthy, has 100 calories. One cup of whole milk has 150 calories, while a cup of fat-free milk has around half that (85 calories).
Make a simple rule for yourself to avoid drinking calories as much as you can.
Drink a lot of water. This is good for you in many ways, besides just quenching your thirst. As you lose weight, the breakdown of your bodyfat will release toxins into your blood which are filtered out by your kidneys. Drinking lots of water ensures these toxins are flushed away efficiently rather than concentrating and causing problems.
You can drink as much black coffee or tea as you like. If you’re used to having cream and sugar, try reducing them slowly over time. I used to have coffee with milk and two sugars; I cut out one sugar, then a few weeks later cut the other, and some time later was able to get rid of the milk as well. I do still enjoy a latte occasionally, but my everyday coffee is now black.
Diet softdrinks are fine, if the chemical cocktail they contain doesn’t bother you.
3. Reduce The Junk Snacks
I used to eat a lot of cakes, biscuits and muffins during the day. If you read the packets, you’ll probably be surprised to see how many calories are slipping into your mouth when you’re not paying attention!
Just one Tim-Tam (my favourite chocolate biscuit) has over a hundred calories! And who eats just one anyway? 
Cut out the junk snacks and you could remove hundreds of calories from your daily intake. Instead, eat fruit and raw vegetables (carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, etc are great). Popcorn (without the butter!) and pickles are two very low-calorie snacks.
4. Don’t Get Hung Up On Daily Weight Measurements
Measure your weight every day, but focus on your 10-day moving average rather than your daily measurements.
I use PhysicsDiet.com to track my weight. They also have great forums where you can swap tips with others.
5. Pay Attention To Calorie Labels On Your Food
Have a look at the back of the packet on all the foods you eat. Take note of how many calories various foods contain.
For my height and weight, I burn roughly 100 calories for every kilometer I run. So if I eat 3 Tim Tams, I have to run 3 km to burn off the calories. A can of Coke would mean another 1.5 km. It adds up quickly!
Read about about how many calories various foods contain, and then read about how many calories various exercises burn.
While you’re looking at these numbers, bear in mind that 1 pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. So if you can remove 500 calories per day from your intake (or burn 500 extra calories per day), you’ll lose around a pound per week. That’s a good, healthy, sustainable weight loss goal.
Just being aware of how easy it is to eat hundreds of calories, and how hard it is to exercise them off, made a big difference in my attitude to eating.
Summary
You don’t have to dive in boots-n-all to start losing weight. Ease into it by taking on a few of these daily habits. It really doesn’t have to be painful!
If you can make your everyday habits healthy, you can enjoy the special occasions without guilt. You’ll be confident in the knowledge that the consequences of any dietary ‘lapse’ will be corrected within just a few days once things get back to normal.
- Posted in : Diet, Motivation, Weight Loss Tips
- Author : admin
Comments»
Mountain Dew is my problem. I just can’t stop drinking it!
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
These are really good tips and a helpful reminder. I like how you put it “Avoid drinking calories.” This is something that I thing a lot of people don’t realize they are doing. Just my fat free half and half in my coffee has calories!
I get sleep after eat, thats my main problem
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot, I like autopilot term […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
I lost almost 20 pounds over a year just by giving up sodas except for a few occassions when out.
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
I completely agree–changing the little daily habits is what will end up making a difference not only in weight but also in general health. Great tips
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
Drinking water seems to be the biggest help for me. I flavor water with lemon or lime. I’ve heard that carbonated waters should be avoided, but drink them anyway. I’ll have to search your site to see if you’ve talked about that. Good post.
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
Thanks all for the positive comments!
Eclectic - water certainly seems to help me lose weight too. I’m not sure if it’s the carbonation or the sugar that usually goes into carbonated drinks that’s the problem. Carbonation is just carbon dioxide bubbles, so I don’t think that’d be a problem. I often order plain soda water with a slice of lemon or lime instead of a softdrink when I eat out.
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
I have found that the easiest way to achieve fat loss is to reduce portion size and eat several smaller meals throughout the day. Obviously exercise increases the effectiveness of this program, but if you can’t exercise, this is an easy way to lose some weight.
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]
[…] 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit […]