WEIGHT LOSS RULES FOR DUMMIES

So, I am here restarting my weight loss journey after losing and gaining it all back I asked a friend of mine for some guidelines to go by and keep in mind as "WEIGHT LOSS RULES." I thought I'd share:


Alright here are the rules for proper weight-loss. Keep in mind, new fad diets come out all the time, promising to help you lose weight without having to change what you eat or your lifestyle at all, and scientists are always "discovering" new things about the human body and create pills that attack your fat cells without you having to do a damn thing. Those diets and those pills work so well because people are lazy. They want to lose weight, but they don't want to have to change at all do to it. And people who market those things take total advantage of that.
The truth is that everybody knows what it takes to lose weight, they just don't want to try it. It's simple: eat healthy/less and exercise. While it's simple, it's not easy. Anything worth having takes work. But in the end, when you're staring at you body in the mirror in complete happiness and satisfaction, you'll not only love how you look, but you'll also feel better about yourself because you made up your mind to do something hard and your accomplishment. You'll lose weight and your self-esteem will grow like crazy. Let's do this!

Food:
Do -
•Be sure to eat three meals a day. Even if you're not hungry. The body processes food better when the supply is steady. When people try to starve themselves to lose weight, it tricks the body into going into hibernation mode, which makes it store fat because it doesn't know when it's going to get more food. Think of it like money. If you don't have a job and don't know when you're going to get money again, you save it, hold on to it. But when you have a job with a steady paycheck, you're more likely to spend money because you know you'll get more.

•Be sure to eat less/smaller portions. I don't know if you've ever heard of this scale before, but imagine a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means you're starving because you've been trapped in a cave for a week and haven't eaten, and imagine 10 is a full-on, belt-loosening, burp-creating, sleep-inducing, Thanksgiving dinner where you've eaten so much that even the sight of food makes you gain a couple of pound. Those are the opposite ends of the spectrum that you should never reach. You want to usually keep yourself at a six which means you're hungry, but you're not going to gorge yourself when you eat. And when you do eat stop at when you're about an 8. That means there's still space in your stomach, you're still a little hungry, but you're not going to eat any more.

•Eat your meals slowly. It takes about 20 minutes for your body to feel full. By that time a lot of people wolf down so much food that they don't even know that they stopped being hungry about 20 minutes ago. A good way to make sure that you're eating slowly is to only take one bite at a time and don't take another bite until you swallow the first.

•Always check the nutrition labels for recommended serving size and calories. Sadly, the people in charge of the serving sizes have decided to make them larger because they know people aren't even bothering to eat less. Also, this is just me, but I like to watch calories. A person is supposed to eat about 1,200 calories a day.

•Eat 5 servings of fruit/veggies a day. Sounds hard, but it really isn't. Hell, have some pineapple or a piece of fruit first thing in the morning, that'll count for breakfast and one serving of fruit. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but I'm often not that hungry first thing in the morning. So a couple of pieces of fruit gets the job done.

•Give yourself a cheat day, but make sure it's one specific day of the week. And that it's always the same day each week.

•Drink water. LOTS OF IT. Water will clean out your system and detoxify. It may be boring, but it has no calories, no fat and isn't bad for you. My secret has always been to just have water. Drinking water also helps you to fill full without eating. If you're ever hungry, have a glass of water.

•Feel free to have a snack everyday. But make sure it's healthy.

Don't-
•Stay away from fried foods. Thing that are fried or involve oil when cooking leave a lot of grease and fat in your body. That includes fried chicken, french fries, potato chips, tortilla chips, tacos (soft shell tacos are fine) egg rolls, etc. You can occasionally eat sauteed foods but keep that to a minimum.

•Eat a lot of salt or sodium. Those things are high in calories. They also absorb water and add to "water weight."

•Skip a meal. It'll make you hungrier later and could lead to eating more. It also throws off your system.

•Starve yourself. it never works and will leave you without any energy.

•Eat two hours before you go to bed. If you go to sleep too soon after you eat, your body doesn't have time to fully digest the food and it sits there and collects. That's literally how sumo wrestlers train to get big. You want to do the opposite of what fat Japanese dudes do.

Exercise:
•Try to find time to exercise *AT LEAST* 3 times a week. More is better. But do give your body and your muscles time to rest and develop. Feel free to combine your cheat day with a rest day.

•If you're in a building that has stairs, take them. Avoid the elevator. Of course, if you're going a trillion flights up, or if you're in an emergency go ahead and take the elevator. But if you're not, opt for the stairs.

•Park at the far end of parking lots. When it comes to exercising, it's the little things that add up. People always try to find the closest parking spaces they can. You should do the opposite. Park far away and take the extra time to walk.

•When you exercise, focus on cardio. 20 minutes of walking or running, (preferably running, but even if you walk, you're still exercising)

•Try to increase your pace, distance and time when you're running. Try to go a little faster, a little further, a little longer each time. Even if it's a minute longer.

•Be sure to include some weight training/non cardio stuff to your work outs. Push-ups, some light weight lifting, stuff like that. do small amounts of weight and a lot of reps. That'll tone without adding any kind of bulk. Working with weights is a great way to burn calories. Most importantly do a **** load of sit ups and other ab exercises. Go online and find all the ab exercises you can. If you have a couple of free minutes at work, try and find a place to do a little ab work. Why not?

•Get a good, full night's sleep. Seven hours should be good. You might not consider sleeping as exercise, but it's all tied in together. Try to have an uninterrupted night's sleep. It will give you energy.