Calorie deficit is the strongest key to unlock the door to weight loss and it is absolutely essential to maintain a steady calorie deficit for the body to tap into stored fat to use as fuel source when it exhausts calories made available through dietary source. When people take in more calories than they require, the surplus calories are stored as fat in the body, and when that happens on a daily basis, you tend to put on weight. Since calorie deficit occurs when someone takes in lesser calories than those burn, if you are someone trying to lose weight, you should aim to keep the calorie intake at an optimum level, cutting down 500 calories ideally. For women, the number of calories must not drop below 1200 calories per day, and for men, it should not fall below 1500 calories per day. Since weight loss is all about creating calorie deficit, we should be looking at ways to lower calorie intake without really compromising on nutrition and health. But we all would agree that it can get a lot stressful and extremely exhausting when your mind is always busy scanning and calculating each and every calorie that’s there on your plate. So, in an attempt to take the load off your head, we would list out ways to lose weight without counting calories all day long.
1. Check out the Weight Loss Diets on the Rati Beauty app: There are a lot of ways to create a calorie deficit, and you can find all of them on the Rati Beauty app. You can lose weight by following different diets and exercise programs where you can get into calorie deficit without compromising on nutrition or health, so you can be completely free from counting calories and enjoy eating good meals instead.
2. Eat Nutrient-Dense Food: Nutrient-dense foods have high nutrient content relative to their calories. By including nutrient-dense foods, we can increase the amount of nutrition, without increasing number of calories. Nutrient-dense foods would include complex carbs, healthy fats, protein, antioxidants, phytochemicals, minerals, vitamins, fiber, etc. Most of them would come from fruits, vegetables, saturated fat, dairy products, whole grains, that would keep you in the pink of health. Wanna know more about nutrient-dense food? Read this detailed post – 21 Most Nutrient Dense Foods to Accelerate Weight Loss.
3. Cook your Own Meals: When we cook our own meals, it is easy to get into a calorie deficit by cutting down extra calories that may otherwise creep through unhealthy ingredients and high-fat cooking oil. You can find out what kind of food leads to weight loss on the Rati Beauty app.
4. Say no to Sugar: Refined sugar is insanely high in calories with zero nutritional benefit to the body. These calories are called “empty calories” because they hardly provide any nourishment in terms of vitamins or minerals to the cells. The biggest issue is when the body converts the excess sugar into fat and stores around the belly, under the skin, and around the organs. When you give up on added sugar in the form of refined sugar, energy drinks, soft drinks, cakes, pastries, cookies, biscuits, etc., you are cutting out a lot of unwanted calories.
5. Spike up Metabolism: To lose weight at a faster pace, your metabolism needs to be really high and robust. So, here are “9 Ways to Speed up Metabolism to Lose Weight.”
6. Choose Zero Calorie Food: Every food item has some amount of calories in them, but the idea behind “zero calories” is that the body burns more calories to digest a food item with negligible calories. For example, mushrooms, celery, cucumber, etc. have extremely low amount of calories and the body burns more calories to burn them out, sometimes leading to a negative deficit. Consider this, if a cucumber has 15 calories in it, the body may use up to 20 calories to burn it off, and mathematically, it means the total calorie count fell beyond zero.But the truth is that you cannot make a diet comprising of only zero calorie food items and expect to lose weight because the body also needs nutrition, vitamins, and energy to run, and a lack of nutrients will kill your metabolism, so keep a healthy balance of everything in your diet. Check out this list of 32 Zero Calorie Foods For Weight Loss to get an idea about low-calorie foods.
7. Fill Half of your Plate with Veggies: Fill half of your plate with vegetables and you would never fall into a calorie surplus.
8. Switch to Water-Dense Food: Fruits with high water content keep you satiated and full for a long time along with hydrating your body. Since water has zero calories, fruits with high water content do not pile up calories and can keep you in calorie deficit. Replacing junk food with water-rich fruits is a great idea to keep your metabolism high, burn fat, and supply your body with essential vitamins and nutrients. Here’s a list of Top 19 Water-Rich Fruits for Weight Loss that you should try.
9. Practice Hara Hachi Bu: It is an eating technique that originated from Okinawa region of Japan where people live an exceptionally long life, are not obese, and rarely suffer from any metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke or cardiovascular issues. “Hara Hachi Bu,” literally translates to “eat until you are 80% full.” This practice promotes putting a stop to eating once a person reaches 80% satiety and hence promotes weight loss. Read more about this technique here.
10. Say no to Liquid Calories: We tend to lose track of calories while consuming fruit juices and other liquids, so it’s better to eat fruits in their whole form rather than juicing them out. Also, say no to energy drinks or packaged fruit juices as well.
11. Eat from Smaller Plates: The bigger the plate, the larger is the room for more food to be served. Make that important switch from 10 inch dinner plate to 8 inch small plate, and you would be able to finish everything that’s there on the plate without overeating or falling into calorie surplus.
12. Sleep Well: The easiest and most effective way to shed some extra weight is by getting full 7 hours of sleep at night because sleep deprivation is strongly linked to weight gain. Research has established that people who sleep for 5 hours or less every night tend to be obese than people who get their mandatory 8 hours of sleep. When you sleep comfortably at night, your body can go into a fat-blasting mode by raising metabolism, levelling up fat-burning enzymes, and decreasing the stress hormone. Lack of sleep can stimulate appetite and you are more likely to wake up “hangry” with a ravenous appetite for unhealthy and high-calorie food. So, get your mandatory 7 hours of beauty sleep every night to lose weight and wake up refreshed and with a robust metabolism.
Top 19 Water-Rich Fruits for Weight Loss
How To Eat Until 80% Full to Lose Weight