How many times have you succumbed to the temptation of chocolates, donuts, savory snacks and ice creams? If your answer is ‘often’, then you can very well consider your continuous cravings as the main culprit for the failure of your weight loss program. Don’t lose heart though; follow these simple tips to stay off the forbidden food and enhance your chances of rapid weight loss.

Eat a hearty breakfast. Skipping breakfast does not result in fat loss; rather by mid morning you would be munching on unhealthy sugar-rich foods, which satisfy your cravings but pile on the pounds too. Drink water often and in copious quantities. Water fills up your stomach so that you don’t feel like raiding the fridge that often. Eat your other major meals, like lunch and dinner; properly and at fixed times everyday. As your body adjusts to a scheduled pattern of receiving fuel, sudden outbursts of cravings will gradually disappear.

Set up an achievable timetable of switching over from unhealthy snacking to healthy meals. Commit yourself to healthy eating for short periods of time. Give yourself a week to follow your diet plans, ignore cravings and see the results yourself. Once that week is over and you can sense the difference, you will be more committed to skipping the snacks from the next week onward.

Motivate yourself properly for speedy weight loss. If you want to shed the flab just to fit into a dress at your friend’s wedding next month, it is likely that you would exercise hard but not give up on snacking. Ignoring cravings is a lifelong habit; something that has to be acquired through tenacity and determination. Inspire yourself by thinking about a healthy lifestyle and a fit body which would be the envy of all.

Restock your fridge with healthy food and snacks like fruits and veggies, nuts, low-fat dairy products, lean meat and energy bars. Once you start preparing your meals with these food items, your meals keep you satiated for long and you gradually lose the propensity to succumb to your cravings.

Stress activates cravings for sweet food. Try and reduce stress; meditate or take a short nap to re-energize yourself naturally. Divert your attention to more engrossing tasks whenever your hand itches for a chocolate bar. With regular practice, this should be easy to do.

It seems comfortable to just sit at your desk throughout the day and carry on with your office work uninterrupted. However, studies show that a deskbound career radically increases your propensity to put on weight. Prolonged inactiveness can actually kill you slowly and silently. If you can’t change your job, you can certainly include some easy activities in your daily office routine to prevent the pounds from piling on.

Always have a heavy breakfast before leaving for office. This provides you with all the energy you need and keeps you satiated for long. This ensures that you no longer succumb to mid-morning snacking urges. Even if you are snacking, carry healthy food like energy bars, whole grain crackers, nuts or even low-fat yoghurt. All these foods boost your body’s metabolism and help in speedy burning of accumulated fat. Instead of soda, drink plenty of water. At the cafeteria, avoid coffee with cream; instead have it black or with skimmed milk.

Carry lunch from home. Prepare something quick and easy such as chicken or turkey sandwiches and simple salads without the dressing. If you are already following a meal replacement diet program, carry your customized pre-portioned lunch to office. Avoid the processed food dished out by most office cafeterias.

A brisk walk is one of the best ways of keeping in shape. Whenever possible, get up from your seat and take a walk. Carry around documents yourself instead of relying on somebody else. Use stairs instead of the elevator. If you are not carrying lunch, walk to some nearby place which serves wholesome unprocessed food. Apart from the walk, the healthy food also means less fat deposition in your body. Park the car a few blocks away from your office and walk the remaining distance.

If you don’t mind the stares from colleagues, you can do simple exercises using office furniture like your desk or chair. While sitting on your chair, spread out your arms akimbo and lean on either side as much as comfortably possible. Another quick workout is where you just raise your arms and circulate them in clockwise and anti-clockwise circles. Butt squeezes are another simple exercise which you can do while sitting. Just squeeze and release your butt muscles several times. This is one of the best methods to prevent fat accumulation in your hind areas.

Group exercise is one of the most effective ways of expeditious weight loss. If you are undecided about whether to workout alone or join a group, read further to understand the benefits of group exercises over individual schedules.

When you exercise in a group, there’s plenty of motivation all around you. Whenever you feel like quitting, friends would always egg you on. This is particularly applicable for intense workouts like military drill type exercises, which are extremely exhausting yet ensure rapid weight loss. There is also a sense of healthy competition between members when you are exercising as part of a group. The entire ambience actually urges you to push for more even if your body wants to leave. Naturally, this means you workout more and shed the flab fast.

A solo journey is always a lonely journey and your fitness pursuits are no exception. Group exercises foster a sense of camaraderie. Even when you are sick and cannot attend a few sessions, your friends would keep in touch; making you feel wanted and cherished. Additionally, the common goal which drives the entire group inspires you to give that extra mile in order to achieve team success.

As a part of a workout group, you need to keep certain commitments regarding schedules and days. This is important to maintaining the continuity of any weight loss program and making it successful. Whenever you are working out alone, you tend to skip a day or reschedule timings to accommodate sudden appointments. However, once you know that your workout partner would be expecting you, you feel committed enough to cancel other schedules and head for your workout session instead.

Additionally, exercising all alone gives you enough excuse to cheat on yourself whenever you are tired or just don’t feel like moving those muscles. As an important member of a group, there is slim chance of your ever using lame excuses to skip a session. With plenty of success stories and advice all around you, workout sessions as part of a group, is one of your best ever opportunities of having fun while working those muscles.

The breakfast is your first major meal of the day. However, during the morning rush hour, most people tend to just gulp down a cup of coffee and hurry on to their day’s work. Preparing an elaborate breakfast requires time, which you just don’t have. Additionally, there is a misconception that skipping breakfast helps in weight loss. However, having a hearty meal before leaving for your job can actually aid in keeping you in perfect shape.

An empty stomach is guaranteed to make you feel hungry before lunch time. The natural tendency then is to stuff yourself with unhealthy snacks which provide instant gratification but pile on the pounds silently. Additionally, you binge during lunchtime at the office cafeteria, which further worsens the situation.

If you want to lose weight gradually and effectively, inculcate the habit of eating a healthy breakfast. According to the National Weight Control Registry, people who eat a hearty breakfast everyday, lose about 30 pounds in a year and maintain it successfully. A study conducted on 4,200 adults shows that those who have their breakfast regularly, tend to eat less calorie rich food throughout the day.

Your breakfast provides your body with all the essential nutrients it requires for proper functioning. This means you are more active, you have the energy to do more work and consequently, your body burns the fat faster. Moreover, a good breakfast kick-starts your inherent metabolism, which accelerates rapid break down of the accumulated flab. Additionally, a good breakfast keeps you satiated for long; so you eat in small quantities at specific times which mean that whatever calories you are taking in, is evenly distributed throughout the day, thus avoiding a pile-up of calories during lunchtime or dinner.

If breakfast holds the key to rapid weight loss, the food items selected should be appropriate too. Always avoid junk food like donuts, bagels and creamy milk. Have your cereals with skimmed milk and add healthy servings of seasonal fruits like banana and berries. It is always better to have fruits rather than juices as fruits are loaded with beneficial dietary fibers. Peanut butter, eggs, wholegrain bread and smoothies with low-fat yoghurt are also good options.

It is not always necessary to go through arduous gym sessions or boot camp routines to lose weight. As it is important to burn calories to lose weight, dancing is an effective way to burn calories as well as tone the muscles of your body. Most people are unable to lose weight in their weight loss program because it lacks one important ingredient – pleasure.

If you indulge in an exercise routine that you enjoy, you will get motivated and inspired, especially when you realize you have succeeded in achieving instant positive results in your weight loss goals.

Dancing raises your heart rate on account of rapid body movements and helps in tightening your muscles. It burns the same amount of calories as swimming, cycling, walking and jogging. However, you need to select an appropriate dance form to ensure you derive maximum results. Some dance styles are more strenuous than some others. For example, ballet is slower than a quick-paced jazz and will burn fewer calories. There are many different dance styles like tango, salsa, flamenco, line dancing, ballroom dancing, break dancing and hip hop.

Any kind of physical activity that make your body move will burn calories. Zumba is an energetic, fast and spirited dance that incorporates aerobic with latin music. It gives you all the benefits that you will get from a good cardio workout. If you do Zumba for an hour, you will burn large amount of calories. Slow Zumba will improve your posture as well as tone and sculpt your muscles.

Simple dances like cha-cha, mambo and sambo will give you a full body workout. Belly dancing is another dance style that helps prevent weight gain as it involves continuous vigorous movements. It also has slow circular hip movements and doing figure 8’s. An hour of belly dancing will help you burn 300 calories. Belly dancing exercises your heart muscles as it makes it beat faster. Lounging on the couch will never help you lose weight. If you love dancing, don’t lose time to make use of it to keep you fit and healthy.

Bringing down your intake of fatty foods is one of the steps you need to take to lose weight fast. Though it is impossible to keep fats totally out of your diet, you must make an effort to reduce fats in order to prevent the damage they can cause to your health.

Your body needs proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates and fats to produce energy and function well. However, if your body gets more fat than required, it becomes huge and flabby. Fatty foods like sausages, bacon, processed meats and chips have less minerals and vitamins and only serve to increase the level of bad cholesterol in your blood.

Fats also have more than twice the number of calories in each gram as opposed to proteins and carbohydrates. One gram of fat contains 10 calories as opposed to five calories in one gram of proteins and carbohydrates. Therefore, in order to lose weight expeditiously, you must watch your fat intake and consciously make an effort to cut it down.

Foods like chicken, duck, turkey (with skin), egg yolks, butter, cream, cheese, bakery items, avocado and vegetable oils are very high in saturated fat, which is harmful to your health, especially your heart. These fats block your blood vessels, raise triglyceride levels and increase body fats. For a weight loss diet program of 2,000 calories, your consumption of saturated fats must not go beyond 15 grams, to help you achieve weight loss goals in an easy and speedy way.

Besides cutting down on your fatty foods, you must also cut down on your calorie intake because consumption of high calorie low-fat foods are stored as fat in your body. Therefore, switching from high-fat food to low-fat food high in calories will not help you lose weight. You must also eliminate trans-fats from your diet as they are capable of converting healthy fats into harmful saturated fats in your body. Margarine, fast foods like fries, burgers, packaged foods like cake & soup mixes and frozen foods like waffles, pies and pizzas are high in trans-fat. You will lose weight if you exercise regularly coupled with consuming less calories and fat.

Exercise is the best way to lose weight. In addition to losing weight, exercises build your stamina, increase your immunity and keep your internal organs healthy. By following a good workout regime, you can lose weight in the fastest manner.

One of the most effective, fastest and the best ways of losing weight is interval training. This is a kind of workout where you make your rate of heartbeat fluctuate up and down. Interval training is known to burn more fat because it makes your heart work harder and subsequently, the metabolism rate of your body remains more active.

Typically, interval training is the process where you alternate the intensity of workout between high and low. If you are running, begin with a slow run for 5 minutes, then run at your best possible speed for a minute. This will get your heartbeat to the maximum. Gradually slow down and return to a jog for the next five minutes. You can begin with 5 reps of high and low intensity exercises in the beginning and then increase the duration of training. As you gain more stamina, you can increase the duration of your high intensity interval. This will burn tremendous amounts of calories.

The biggest advantage with this kind of training is that it can be done with all sorts of fitness regimes, be it running, walking, swimming, jogging, dancing or cycling. The other advantage is that it is great to build your endurance power. As you continue with interval training, you can workout longer and include more reps. You will also find a lot of ease in performing routine activities such as climbing stairs, walking a couple of blocks and even lifting weights.

Nothing increases the rate of metabolism of the body like interval training does. With interval training, you continue to burn fats even after you stop working out. In fact, studies have shown that when you perform interval training, you burn more calories even when you sleep. So essentially, you are burning calories all through the day and through the night. You are more active and refreshed. Owing to all these advantages, interval training is indeed the best fitness regime to follow if you are on a weight loss mode.

Weight loss is tough and mean because you are often forced to give up a lot of foods that you love to eat. Nevertheless, if you are on a weight loss regime, then there are things that you have to abstain from. However, here is a little good news. There is nothing mentioned about “complete abstinence” in any of the hundreds of commandments of weight loss. The key is “moderation”. Eat little, eat wisely and you will be happy. Below given are five foods that scream “moderation” to the highest degree!

Appetizers

The name says it all! These foods build your appetite and make you ready to eat more. When on a weight loss regime, switch to the main course of your meal after one small mouthful of appetizer.

Aerated drinks

Aerated drinks are nothing more than water, sugar and fizz. The high sugar concentration in these drinks make you put on weight. If you practice “complete abstinence” from aerated drinks, it will do you a lot of good in the long run because these high sugar drinks with soda are bad for the bones and the muscle tissues.

Snacks

Healthy snacks like sprout salads and clear soups are good. But if your definition of snacks is deep fried French fries, cheese filled rolls and cream dripping cakes, then abstain. These are a lot of unhealthy fats, which are bad for the heart, cholesterol level and of course, your weight. Do not be carried away by the brilliant ads about snacks that you watch on the television. It is the advertisers’ job to sell their product. Your job is to lose weight and lead a healthy, happy life.

Processed foods

 Sure, processed foods are easy to prepare and they save a lot of your time. However, they are not easy on your health. Firstly, preservatives are not good for the body. Secondly, foods with preservatives are low in nutritive content and high in undesirable sugars. Hydrogenated oils that are used in most of the processed foods are saturated fats and add a lot of pounds on you.

Coffee

Yes, not being able to cradle a cup of hot coffee in your hands is tough. But coffee makes you hungry and is not good for those on a weight loss regime. Coffee is also known to increase hunger pangs.

Weight loss is not a destination; it is a process or rather a journey towards a pre-determined goal. If you are looking for effective tips that will help you close the distance and reach those targets quickly, then read on. Weight loss is not all about exercising and controlling your diet; it has a lot to do with strategic planning as well!

Short term goals are always better for expeditious weight loss

Often, the process of weight loss is long drawn and thinking about light at the end of a very long tunnel is often not the best motivation for a lot of people to keep at their weight loss regimes. A better option is to set short term goals. It is easier reaching the top of the tall hill when the peak is within close reaching distance.

Set realistic goals if you want to lose weight quickly

Aiming for short term goals does not mean that you aim to lose 10 lbs in a week. Such unrealistic goals make you lose faith in your weight loss regime. You either tend to leave it half way and switch on to some other better marketed plan or give up dieting all altogether. Do not be surprised if you fail at it again because the problem is not with your weight loss regime; it is with your goal setting. Goals such as losing 3 lbs a week are realistic and when you reach your goal, you are spurred on to work harder and lose more weight speedily.

Set goals to set your habits right

Setting goals for weight loss does not always have to do with the number of pounds that you want to lose; they have a lot to do with your determination to change your habits as well. So, set goals that you will wake up an hour early, exercise, follow a precise timetable for meals, eat in controlled quantities and refrain from binging on fast foods. To make this more effective, you can make two lists – one of habits that you want to change and the other of habits that you want to inculcate. Make it your goal to put these lists into practice and weight loss will follow automatically.

Dieting can be a bother, especially if you have been a heavy eater. Eating tiny portions, no matter how many times a day, just does not satisfy your hunger. However, since you are on a portion-controlled diet regime, there is nothing much you can do about it. Or is it? What if there is a way by which you get to eat large portions and still be able to lose weight? Yes, it is possible and the solution is called “high density foods”. High density foods are foods that are rich in water, low in calories and rich in nutrients that are essential for the body. So, even if you eat a big meal, the calories you gain are very few.

A large part of weight loss regime is in your mind. As absurd as it sounds, your brain needs to feel full and satisfied with the food you eat for your stomach to feel full. When you eat small portions, your metabolism kick starts and your stomach acids are satisfied, but your brain is not, because it is used to ordering your body to digest more food in one meal. So, you crave for food and when it is your next meal time, you eat more to compensate for your pent up hunger.

High density foods are a way of tricking your brain into believing that you are full. So, although the energy that you gain from the food is low, you do not feel hungry. Subsequently, you lose weight quickly because you do not eat untimely meals. The metabolism of your body is active as well.

The density of energy in foods is influenced by three factors – water content, fiber content and fat content. Foods with high water content, high fiber content and low fat content are excellent for the body. Fruits and vegetables are the best examples of high density foods.

Dieting is more than just about controlled consumption of fats and sugars. An important concept is food density. High density foods can give you immediate results and you do not have to wait for weeks to watch the needle on the weighing machine dip. The effects are fast and prompt.