The Top Five Techniques to Losing Weight Fast...

Looking to lose weight fast? If so, you aren’t alone. As more and more people grow overweight in a society that stresses extra-large portion sizes and inactivity, more of us are starting up diets each and every day.

The problem?

Most people who begin a diet either don’t finish it or are unable to lose weight fast enough to suit their preferences. Hence, they fall off the bandwagon, gaining any weight they did lose back almost instantly.

So what can you do to change this? What steps should you be taking to guarantee that you will successfully lose weight fast – and keep that weight off for good?

Let’s walk you through five techniques that you absolutely must know about if you hope to succeed in your mission to obtain your leanest body ever.

Pump Up Your Protein

If there’s one thing that you can do that will instantly enhance your chances of success with losing weight, adding more protein to your diet is it. Protein is the most satisfying nutrient of the three and is going to take a long time to break down in the body. Thus, after a meal containing a solid source of protein, your appetite will be satisfied for hours.

What’s more is that protein has the highest ‘thermic effect of food’, as it’s called, which refers to the fact that the body will expend a high amount of calories simply breaking protein-rich foods down.

In fact, for every 100 calories consumed of pure protein, you’ll burn off about 25 calories through digestion. Carbs and fats only require around 5 and 2 calories per 100 to digest, so you can see the difference a higher protein intake will make.

Eat more protein and you’ll net fewer calories overall. If you want a way to instantly boost your metabolism, this is it.

Don’t Shun Dairy

A second must-do tip if you want to lose weight fast is to make sure that you aren’t avoiding all dairy products in your diet. Many people get stuck on the notion that eating dairy is going to cause them to gain body fat rather than lose it.

Stop thinking like that.

The truth of the matter is that when chosen correctly, eating dairy products can actually help you lose fat faster, especially from the stomach region. In fact, one study indicated that dieters who were on a high-calcium diet lost 64% more fat than those who ate a low-dairy diet and more of the fat they lost was from the abdominal region.

Obviously you can’t sit around feasting on bowls of ice cream or eating blocks of cheese and expect to lose weight, however. Choose wisely. Go for skim milk, low-fat cottage cheese, or Greek yogurt. These are high quality, low fat sources of dairy that will supply you with the protein and calcium that your body needs.

Stagger Your Calorie Intake

The next great technique to consider if you want to lose weight fast is to stagger your calorie intake. While it may be tempting to adopt a very low calorie diet to try and shed that excess fat as quickly as possible, the problem with doing so is that as time goes on, your metabolism is going to come to a crawl.

Your body will sense that it’s not getting enough fuel on a regular basis and will start to think it’s nearing starvation. In an effort to stay alive, it’ll slow down its metabolic rate so you’re conserving fuel 24 hours a day.

While this is good news if you were actually facing a famine, it’s not good news when you’re just on a fat loss diet. Your body could care less about your desire to squeeze into your ‘skinny jeans’.

To overcome this natural reaction, intermix higher calorie days with lower calorie days. This technique will allow you to maximize your rate of fat burning on the low calorie days and then shock your body with the higher calorie intake so it doesn’t believe it’s starving.

The end result?

You maintain a faster metabolism throughout the entire dieting process and never suffer the dreaded fat loss stall. Plus, you’ll find the diet a great deal more enjoyable as well.

Go Low Carb – Not No Carb

Another big mistake some dieters make in their attempt to rush to the finish line too quickly is to cut out all carbs entirely. They’ve heard that low carb diets work great, so their mission is now a zero carb diet.

Big mistake. There’s a certain hormone in the body called Leptin that monitors incoming fuel intake along with current body fat stores. When your calories start to go down along with your body fat, this hormone starts to shift and causes a number of reactions to occur.

These reactions include increasing your hunger levels dramatically, slowing down your metabolic rate, and generally just making you feel miserable. The end result is that you fall off the diet and fill your plate with as much food as you can handle. Leptin is a very powerful hormone and for many dieters, what throws them off course.

This hormone is also most influenced by your carb intake. The lower your take your carbohydrates, the more likely and the faster the above situation is going to occur.

By using a lower carb but not low carb approach, you’ll keep your Leptin levels normalized longer and also have more energy as well. Carbs are, after all, the primary source of energy for the body so as soon as you cut them out, you’re going to feel it.

Just be sure to choose wholesome varieties of carbs including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Base Your Exercise Habits Around Your Diet

Finally, the last must-do tip if you want to lose weight fast is to make sure you structure your exercise around your diet plan.

Avoid using a much lower calorie diet along with a very demanding workout plan. You must choose one or the other. Since exercise requires additional fuel, if that fuel isn’t being provided, you’re setting yourself up for disaster.

You’ll find your workouts are extremely difficult to get through because you’re sapped for energy and then you’ll be so ravenous throughout the day from that exercise that sticking to your diet feels like mission impossible.

Either diet intensely and keep your workouts more moderate or perform harder workouts but make sure that you’re adding a few more calories to your day to support them.

In the end, fat loss is about creating that calorie deficit, so either approach will get you to your goal weight. Which you use should be based around personal preferences.

So there you have five great tips to remember to help you achieve success. Use these and you’ll be on track to being able to lose weight fast and keep it off for good.

Reference:

Campbell, P. et al. (2004). Calcium and Dairy Acceleration of Weight and Fat Loss during Energy Restriction in Obese Adults. Obesity Research. Vol. 12, 582-590.