No matter what everyone says, it is essential to maintain a calorie deficit in order to lose weight, which means you consume lesser calories than you can burn. When a calorie deficit is created, our body starts to burn stored fat to derive energy, to run all its functions smoothly. When calories are skimped from daily diet and food, gradually the fat deposits get used up and that’s how you lose weight. And more than exercising for hours together, you can do some easy adjustments to daily diet to cut down a whole lot of calories, and that too without breaking a sweat. So, in this post, we list down 17 Easy Ways To Reduce Calories For Weight Loss.
1. Avoid Liquid Calories: Packaged juices and liquid beverages with artificial flavours have loads of sugar that carry hundreds of extra calories into the body, and keeping a track of these calories and burning them off would become difficult because they are in liquid form. So, to get into calorie deficit easily, reduce consumption of liquid calories that packaged juices and beverages.
2. Fill Half the Plate with Veggies: Keeping veggie portions bigger, and covering half of your plate with vegetables will help cut down a lot of calories in that particular meal. Not to mention loads of nutrition that you get from low-calorie veggies such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, okra, tomatoes, spinach, and all other green leafy vegetables. Also check out – “12 Top Vegetables To Include in your Diet To Reduce Tummy Fat.”
3. Avoid Jam and Chocolate Spreads on Toasts, Breads, and Rotis: Jams that claim to have the goodness of fruits also have loads of sugars and empty calories in them, same for chocolate spreads that have heaps of sugar – all leading to weight gain. Avoid jams and chocolate spreads – your breakfast will be better off without these sweet treats. In fact, we would suggest checking out healthy breakfast meals on Rati Beauty diet that would help you lose weight.
4. Avoid Candies, Cookies, Pastries, and Cut Down Chocolates and Ice Creams: When you cut down candies, cookies, biscuits, pastries, and chocolates (dark chocolate is an exception), you also get to eliminate empty calories from sugar and refined food too.
5. Switch to Cooking Oil Spray: When you use oil in a spray form, you can cut down excess calories that pile up when you are pouring it from a bottle.
6. Cut out Mayonnaise: No doubt mayonnaise makes sandwiches and dips taste so better, but mayonnaise is made with egg yolk, vinegar/lemon and loads of oil whipped in, and as we all know, oil brings along high calories, so cut out mayonnaise and switch to hummus, mustard paste, mashed avocado, almond butter or even Greek yogurt to add flavour to the above-mentioned food.
7. Skip Added Sugar in Tea/Coffee: Every time you add in a spoon of refined sugar to your regular cup of chai or coffee, you are also increasing the calorie count. Switch to stevia leaves or these “8 Best Healthy Replacements for Refined Sugar.”
8. Chew Slowly: When you eat too fast, your brain doesn’t get the signal to stop once you are full. This means that you often eat more than you actually require, and more calories make their way into your body. Another interesting fact is that the brain takes about 20 minutes to register that you have eaten food and by slowing down, you can actually reach satiation point during the eating process itself and stop yourself from piling on extra pounds.
9. Practice Water Preloading: Water preloading is an effortless way to boost weight loss. In this strategy, experts recommend to consume 500 ml of plain water half an hour before each meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Such a quantity of water before the meal will significantly stretch your tummy and as a result, there would be lesser release of the hunger hormone “ghrelin.” This means you would feel full with less food and fewer calorie intake. It is an effective strategy to tackle overeating and can apply the same technique while heading out for brunch, lunch or dinner.
10. Drink a Bowl of Vegetable Soup Before Every Meal: Having a bowl of salad or homemade soup will stretch the tummy, satiate hunger, and help trim significant calories from the main meal.
11. Snack on Nuts instead of Packaged Chips: Packaged chips and snacks contain “hyperpalatable” ingredients (high in fat, sodium, sugar, etc), that affects the “reward center” in the brain to keep the cravings on, so that you never feel satiated even after consuming multiple packets, and still want to have more. For snacking, switch to nuts and say no to packaged chips.
12. Eat Desserts and Sweet Treats Slowly: Yes, in fact, it’s a common habit of people who are slim. They tend to show restraint around sugary delights and usually savour every bite and by the third bite, they are usually satisfied and want to eat no more, so push the dessert plate away. Try it for yourself!
13. Cut Down Frequent Snacking: Every time you eat food, the insulin levels get raised in the body and apart from regulating blood sugar, the hormone insulin has another function – it tells the body to store fat and also prevents breakdown of fat. Frequent snacking every few minutes will also increase the calorie count, so restrict snacking to just twice a day, and that too on healthy options like apple and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, peanuts, etc.
14. Have a Control on Cooking Oil: Cooking oil adds a lot of calories to the body and it would be prudent to cut down on cooking oil, even if it’s olive oil. That’s why Rati Beauty diet recipes use minimal oil to make tasty dishes.
15. Increase Fiber in Daily Diet: Fiber-rich food helps to reduce appetite to a great extent by regulating the production of hunger hormone “ghrelin.” Fiber content also reduces one’s appetite by slowing the movement of food through the gut. Since fiber has low glycemic index, it also does not spike up insulin and thus reduces the chance of extra calories getting stored up as fat in the body. Increase the amount of fiber in your diet and here are “12 Handy Tips To Add More Fiber to Diet for Weight Loss.”
16. Cut out Refined Foods: The first thing you need to create a calorie deficit is to give up on processed and refined foods that are loaded with sugar, salt, and transfat which have insane amount of empty calories in them.
17. Swap Potato Chips with Vegetable Chips: We agree potato chips are the perfect snacking option when you are chilling out with friends or even plain bored because you are alone, but potato chips are not good news for your weight loss journey. They are high in calories, usually have transfat, and it’s hard to stop at just one packet. They also light up the reward center of the brain, increasing further cravings. If you absolutely love chips, here are “12 Healthier Alternatives to Potato Chips.”
Most importantly, to lose weight, Follow Rati Beauty Weight Loss Programs that help you eat the right kind of nutritious food and engaging in optimum physical activity, you would feel sufficiently full without starving or crash dieting, and lose weight consistently on these programs, without depriving your body of essential nutrients.
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