Fitness professionals reveal five simple changes you can make to your lifestyle that will lead to transformative weight loss success!
Personal trainers and fitness professionals throughout England are helping people lose weight by simply adopting a new mindset; stop looking exclusively at dieting and exercise and start looking at your lifestyle.
For many Brits today, fitness and healthy living have become daily pursuits. It’s a trend that’s been fueling the robust growth of gyms, spas, and state-of-the-art health clubs throughout England’s major cities, including London, Manchester, and, most notably, Canary Wharf.
A city once known for its thriving financial district, Canary Wharf has suddenly become one of the most health-conscious cities in England. While many Canary Wharf residents may feel comfortable exercising in one of the city’s many health clubs, few have the fitness expertise to devise an effective plan on their own to lose weight sustainably. As such, Canary Wharf personal trainers are in high demand as more people seek them out for their guidance and expertise.
What they’re discovering is that it only takes a few sensible lifestyle changes to lose weight and keep it off for good. In fact, we’ve discovered five of the easiest life hacks that personal trainers recommend for achieving long-term weight loss success:
Cut Back on Coffee Drinks and Carbonated Beverages.
One Canary Wharf personal trainer I spoke with for this article stressed the negative impact that carbonated energy drinks can have on our bodies. Though often promoted as energy drinks, the truth is that many of them offer very little in terms of nutritional value. In fact, they can cause gastric distress and even interfere with the absorption of vital nutrients that our bodies need.
Soda is a great example. I discovered an intriguing story about a guy who lost a substantial amount of weight just by calling it quits on soda. That may sound overly simplistic, but it’s an outstanding example of how even the most subtle changes to our daily routine can lead to eye-popping results over time.
However, England is also a country of coffee lovers. The flourishing coffee shop culture in the U.K. has fueled the popularity of cappuccinos, lattes, and other specialty drinks. Unfortunately, many of these popular drinks are loaded with excessive calories and sugar. A standard “Caramel Macchiato” from Starbucks comes with a whopping 33 grams of sugar.
If you’re consuming these sugar-loaded beverages on a daily basis, the odds are clearly stacked against you if weight loss is your goal.
Try “Portion Control”
“No matter how healthy the foods in your diet, calories, fat, and sugars can add up if you’re eating too much…” quipped another personal trainer who contributed to this article. His message was clear - watching how much we eat is equally as important as what we eat.
This is where portion control becomes important in our weight loss journey. Essentially, it’s a strategy that often employs the use of smaller dishes. That’s right. Try swapping out your dinner plates for smaller plates and you’ll undoubtedly find yourself eating smaller portions. And you’ll also begin to pay closer attention to those “I’m full” signals from your body.
Another advantage of adopting a portion control strategy is that it helps us build a greater sense of awareness in terms of what kind of foods we’re putting in our bodies. By paying deliberate attention to our food, we’ll have a better chance of eliminating the ones that may be sabotaging our weight loss efforts.
Focus on Rich Sources of Protein
Protein should play a crucial role in any weight loss strategy. It’s a remarkable macronutrient that can make significant contributions to our weight loss efforts. For starters, protein curbs our appetites thereby making it easier to consume fewer calories throughout the day. Plus, our bodies must work harder just to digest sources of protein resulting in a higher calorie-burn rate. Of course, protein also plays a vital role in our body’s ability to build lean muscle mass. This muscle tissue is metabolically more active and burns more calories than fat.
Ultimately, if you’re neglecting protein, you’re likely to have trouble building lean, fat-burning muscle tissue thereby making it less likely that you’ll lose weight.
Fortunately, protein sources are easily accessible these days. One personal trainer from London recommends that his clients keep a tub of Greek yogurt in their fridge along with a supply of hard-boiled eggs – both of which come in very handy for a quick and healthy snack. Other convenient forms of protein include peanut butter, cottage cheese, and beef jerky. If weight loss is your goal, studies suggest that 30% of your daily caloric intake should come from a source of protein.
Start Eating Breakfast
Here’s a shocking statistic: more than 8 out of 10 Brits admit to skipping breakfast. Whether they feel they’re just “too busy” or it’s part of a hastily assembled weight loss strategy, the truth is that breakfast is the morning meal that ends your night-long fast. While skipping breakfast can help you lose a little bit of weight, it’s certainly not a sustainable strategy and it can even undermine your efforts. How? Skipping breakfast can mean lower levels of blood sugar. That is something that can negatively affect your mood and energy levels, not to mention how it can intensify your cravings for sweets.
But there’s good news! You can find an entire array of easy breakfast ideas online, some of which can be made once a week and kept in your freezer or refrigerator for your upcoming workweek.
If weight loss is your goal, protein should play a prominent role in your breakfast planning - aim to include 15 to 20 grams of protein at breakfast time. A slower digestion process and the hunger suppression properties of a protein-rich breakfast can make it an effective lifestyle change for sustainable weight loss.
Stop Excessive “Snacking”
Nothing…nothing will upend your weight loss results faster than mindless snacking will. This is especially true if you tend to eat sugary snacks too close to your bedtime. One Canary Wharf personal trainer explained: “Our bodies run by an internal clock that regulates how we process the foods we eat. By snacking too late at night, we disrupt our body’s own internal “food clock” which affects how our bodies are supposed to respond to the foods we eat…”
In other words, excessive snacking upends our body chemistry which can negatively affect the rate at which our bodies are programmed to burn calories.
Here are a few tips that personal trainers recommend for suppressing these snacking urges:
Drink a glass of water (our bodies often confuse hunger for thirst)
Remove tempting, unhealthy snacks from your home. Instead, keep a can of peanuts, packs of cottage cheese, and beef jerky in your kitchen inventory for these urges.
Don’t skip meals – this includes a protein-rich breakfast.
Make a meal plan – When we create a meal plan once a week, we’re more likely to stay within our calorie budget.
Conclusion
If you’re frustrated that your diet isn’t getting you the weight loss results you want, don’t get discouraged – a lot of them don’t! Instead, try making a few of the small changes mentioned above in your daily routine. These lifestyle changes promise to produce major results over time when it comes to weight loss. It’s okay to start small, just so long as you start…