5 Simple Ways to Cut Calories
The goal to losing weight is really about losing fat – not weight. It sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it? Weight loss can mean muscle loss too and muscle is your key to successful fat loss. Who wants to be a skinny person without any muscle or tone? Your focus is to preserve muscle while losing the fat.
You want a strong, lean body. You want to maintain your agility, your power, and your strength. You want to burn fat while maintaining your muscle. You can cut calories that will result in fat loss without counting foods, weighing foods, or measuring foods.
Use these 5 simple tips to cut calories:
Separate the food on your plate. That’s right, by separating your food you are creating natural portion control – without trying.
- Put down your fork between bites. Your brain will signal that you’re satisfied. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to sense that it’s full. What happens is that we keep eating and ingesting those calories before we get the message resulting in needless calories.
- Add Protein to every meal and snack to balance blood sugar, maintain and add lean muscle.
- Make veggies the biggest portion of your meal. Veggies take up a lot of room in your stomach (a good thing) so you eat less of the condensed caloric foods. When you make veggies and protein the star of your meals you: balance your blood sugar, increase your fiber intake (which will make you feel fuller) and increase your antioxidant intake – all of which lead to less cravings and inflammation.
- Drink a glass of water before each meal. Water not only helps you feel fuller, it also boosts your metabolism by 3-5% after drinking it. Remember too, that mild dehydration can cause you to feel hungry.
Bear in mind that cutting calories can involve creative substitutions or changes in portion sizes, too. Small changes like these tips here will help create fat loss success!