I've never had a weight problem but some of my friends have, so here's 5 years of research and tons of practice helping friends...this is what I've come up with.
Some tips to lose weight....
1. Fix yourself what you consider a normal sized meal. Look at it--make sure you memorize it. Then cut everything in half, just eat half of it and save the other half for leftovers. If you're still hungry, drink some water until you're full. Basically, think of it like this. If you want to drop weight, and you have half the calories, you may "think" that's not enough, but if your body isn't satisfied energy-wise, once it's done with what you give it, it's going to start snacking on the excess fat in your body. Period. It won't be easy at first. You'll occasionally get dizzy, your stomach is going to be ticked off for a while, and you'll get the occasional headache, but once you level out and your body understands what you're doing, things will take care of themselves like they're supposed to.
2. Ditch any soda, coffee, tea, and chocolate you have in the house, and this includes supposedly "diet" drinks as well. Period. Not only is caffeine bad for you, but it sucks the water out of your system and is bad for your kidneys. If your body is deficient in water, it's not only going to crave water, it's also going to crave food because it knows food contains water. Trust me on this. Also, the calories lost due to eliminating soda from your diet is uncanny. As for supposedly caffeine-free diet drinks, the artificial sweeteners they add are actually carcinogenic after time and can screw up other things which can, ultimately, not only affect your weight, but also your ability to fight off cancers in the future. If you want something to drink other than water, you have three options. Drink 1/2 a glass (And I do mean 1/2 a glass--from now on that's all I want you to fill your drink glass up with) of orange juice or 1/2 a glass of unsweetened grape juice or 1/2 a glass of some other kind of UNSWEETENED ALL NATURAL fruit juice (No blends of "drinks"! They often add sugar or high fructose corn syrup to those!). Make sure the grape juice or any other kind of juice says no sugar added--you want the natural sugars (Which will be included on the label under the sugar content but not in the list of ingredients) that is in the fruit and that your body knows what to do with, not the white stuff that can cause weight gain and other health problems)
3. Ditch alcohol. It's not a health food. The term beer gut was invented for a reason.
4. Every other day eat 1/4th-1/6th of a cup of pistachio nuts. Pistachio nuts have the highest concentration of phytosterols of any nuts, and these are the things that take the "bad" cholesterol out of your system. Disregard the fact that they have a little saturated fat in them, because this nut is pretty much self-cleaning and takes that out via the phytosterols. Keep ingesting these every other day, and only in minimal amounts because they're high in calories, and your body will get rid of a LOT of fat, especially around the mid-section. Occasional almonds to mix it up from time to time is okay, too. Unsalted and un-oiled is better for any nut. If you can't find that, what I do is shell the pistachio nuts, put them in a strainer, rinse them off extremely well with water, then let them sit for two days and stir them with my hand as they air dry. Once all dry, put them in a sealed container and there you go.
5. Try and eliminate as much sugar and high fructose corn syrup and things that say "Partially Hydrogenated" in their ingredients as possible. An occasional snack is fine, but only once a day, and something VERY small at that. As time goes on, you won't need that snack a day and instead will start to snack on fruit and nuts. But at first you probably will need that once-a-day small "bad" food.
6. Eat lots of fruit--it gives you energy, your body actually knows what to do with the natural sugar content as opposed to cane sugar or beet sugar, it has fiber to help you go to the bathroom, and the amount of antioxidants are uncanny.
7. Eat vegetables for the vitamins, but please note--although they are good for vitamins and antioxidants, most supply minimal calories, so don't think you're going to be able to just eat vegetables and have any energy whatsoever. You won't.
8. Remember--corn is a GRAIN, not a vegetable. If you're having a small amount of carbs every meal (And I do mean small--refer to portion sizes above) corn counts as that carb, not as a vegetable. This is one misunderstood thing--and people often end up having two carbs by having corn with their meal as opposed to "just" corn for their carb.
9. Fish is the best meat, chicken and turkey are a close second, pork is next, and beef is pretty much the worst. These should be eaten in very small portions. Even the Okinawans in Japan, who have some of the longest-living "healthy' 100 somethings in the world, only eat meat a few times a week and not every day.
10. Dairy isn't the greatest for you. Don't be fooled by the dairy industry. Those who eat or drink the smallest amounts of dairy products in the world, usually the Asians, actually have the LOWEST amount of osteoperosis in the world, so don't believe that dairy is the only way to get calcium and the other minerals that go along with it to make it work properly in your system. By eating occasional nuts and fish, you're going to get all of the calcium you need. Also, cow's milk wasn't meant for human consumption. Milk was meant to fatten up baby cows. Period.
11. Exercise, but if you start to feel a burn, cramping, or pain, stop. When you overdo it, and lactic acid builds up in the muscles, not only do you get hungry because your body wants to try and repair itself, but when your body becomes more acidic it wants something, aka food, to try and get something "potentially" alkaline into it so it can balance itself out. If you exercise just a little each day, but not too much, that's going to be a lot better on your body and cause a lot less cravings than trying to really hit the gym hard.
12. Only eat until you're about 70-80 percent full but not stuffed. It's hard to determine at first, but once you realize how to do it and the feeling you get when you're "satisfied but not full" you'll start to stop yourself and lose weight in the process, not to mention shrink your stomach if you have a poochy gut.
13. Ditch all of the bad foods you want out of your house NOW so you won't be tempted--give it to someone whose body you know for a fact that stuff won't affect.
14. Only go the grocery store full. Otherwise you're going to impulse buy.
15. Avoid eating out as much as possible. Not only are the portions huge, but it's rare to find something that's actually not loaded with saturated fats and calories. If you travel, take nuts, raisins, and other healthy snacks with you. By the way, granola is often loaded with high fructose corn syrup and other bad things, so don't instantly think granola is a health food--it's not.
16. Remember, it's not going to be an overnight transformation. And at first you're going to be very pissy, emotional, and it's truly going to take 3-5 weeks before you've adjusted to it, but in the long run it'll be worth it--not just for your weight, but for your future health as well.
