Tips for Losing and Keeping Off Weight

September 26, 2024

Dope Doctors

Discover essential tips and tricks to keep those pounds off for good. Learn about healthy habits, lifestyle changes, and effective strategies to sustain your weight loss journey.

Weight loss tips

Staying in shape is very important for our health and wellbeing. However, as we get older and our metabolism slows down, it can be very difficult to eliminate extra body fat. GLP 1 medications such as semaglutide and tirzepatide have proven to be transformative when it comes to weight loss. These medications help to decrease appetite and allow patients to eat less. This leads to a decrease in the amount of total calories consumed, also known as a calorie deficit, which results in weight loss. While taking this medication, there are some additional methods you can use to increase your weight loss and improve your success. If you’re interested in some weight loss tips, here’s how to get started!

Start eating healthily

The best thing that you can do when focusing on weight loss is paying attention to your diet. Now that you are eating less, every calorie you put into your body should be intentional. In general, you want to start avoiding unhealthy foods, fast foods, and anything similar. Instead, you want to focus more on healthy foods that are rich in nutrients. These include veggies, fruits, fish, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

If you’re looking for the foods you want to avoid, those would be white bread, bagels, baked goods, processed foods, sugar, butter, foods with added oils, and so on. Talking with a nutritionist can help as well if you are looking for someone to create a fully customized diet to fit your personal goals.

Exercise often

Changing your diet can be transformative. But exercise will help to kick start your energy and metabolism. Even if you eat healthily, if you overeat, you can still accumulate calories and body fat in the long run. That’s why a healthy diet should always be combined with regular exercise and physical activity. It will help you remove body fat while also staying in good shape as well. We know that cardio is great for burning calories, but strength training allows you to increase your muscle mass. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body will burn in its natural resting state, leading to increased weight loss.

Stay away from liquid calories

“Liquid calories” entail things like soda, alcohol, or juice. The best thing that you can do is to replace them with healthy drinks, such as water or unsweetened tea. Even coffee (albeit in a controlled amount) can be good  for your health. It’s imperative to stay hydrated and maintain a healthy diet during this process.

Keep portion size small

In general, we recommend 5-6 small meals throughout the day. The reason why you want to have small portions is because it helps you eat fewer calories. Plus, you will have more control over what you eat. In general, smaller portion sizes are better for your health. While on this medication your appetite will not allow you to take on a full meal, so smaller meals keep your metabolism working throughout the day, keeping you out of weight loss plateaus.

Focus on meal planning

One of the reasons why many of us end up accumulating weight is because we eat randomly. We don’t have a set eating schedule, nor do we have a meal plan. And that’s the thing: once you focus on meal planning, that can make a huge difference. It allows you to optimize your meals better while also avoiding unwanted situations when you eat too much fast food.

Another thing you can do is to stop yourself from eating whenever you feel just a little bit hungry. The truth is that our brain makes us think that we need to eat at random times during the day, especially without an organized diet and meal plan. Also, it’s a lot more common to eat more when you’re in front of the TV. So, the best thing that you can do here is to stick with smaller portions, plan your meals beforehand, and focus on calorie counting. It might not seem like much, but this will allow you to improve your diet a lot more than expected.

Get enough sleep

If you want to stay in great shape, you should also focus on having a proper sleep schedule. The problem is that a lot of people go to sleep and wake up at random hours. That’s a problem because it messes up your body’s internal schedule. Plus, there’s a higher chance you will wake up sleep-deprived. The best way to avoid that is to figure out the right sleep schedule that fits your needs. Then you can stick with it. Not only will it regulate your metabolism, but you’ll also avoid health problems caused by insomnia and sleep deprivation.

Chew slower than usual

Another reason why many people accumulate body fat is because they want to finish their food as quickly as they can. The problem with something like this is it will end up leading to health problems down the line. Chewing slowly helps solve that problem, and it also makes it easier for your brain to register how much you eat. For the most part, people who chew their food slowly also tend to eat less food.

Avoid skipping meals

Some people are very busy, and they think it’s ok to skip meals. The problem is that skipping meals will tend to make you overeat when you get to your next meal time. The most common meal people tend to skip is breakfast since they think they’ll eat at noon. However, if you do this, it will affect your metabolism, you won’t concentrate as well, and your energy levels will be lower during the entire day.

Conclusion

These are some of the best weight loss tips to help you get started, that we have found to be most effective with our program. A GLP-1 weight loss medication can do a lot for you but you should also strive towards living a healthy lifestyle. Once you start tracking your calorie intake and incorporating exercise, you will notice your weight loss results increase even more.