Easy Weight Loss With Minimal Effort

Carrying a few extra pounds is a problem faced by many of us. There are remedies that anyone can use to lose 10-20 pounds without devoting time to strict diets where food must be weighed or points endlessly computed. A few simple changes in your daily routine can lead to a sleeker body profile in just a few weeks. Some simple suggestions:

1. Downsize your plate - You may be eating more than you did years ago without realizing it. In the 1960s the standard size of dinner plates was 9 inches. Over the years, the size increased half an inch at a time. In 1992 dinner plates were 10 ½ inches but if you buy a plate today you will probably find it measures a full 12 inches across.

No wonder we’ve gotten fatter! Those sneaky manufacturers have given us more space and without realizing it we’ve increase our portions to fills that space. Find some nine inch plates if you can. If not, buy a few large salad plates that are 8-9 inches and use those as your dinner plate at every meal.

2. Make Cleaning House a Stretch - Most of us put as little effort into daily pickup and house cleaning as we can get by with. My own housekeeping guru was the late Erma Bombeck who distilled the process of cleaning house into three simple rules:

- If it’s loose, pick it up

- If it isn’t, dust it

- If it moves, feed it

If you hate exercising as much as you hate cleaning, why not combine the two and get them over with? It’s amazing how many calories you can burn if you turn daily chores into simple exercises. It only changes the basic rules a bit.

- If it’s loose, stretch as far as you can to pick it up

- If it isn’t, dance while you dust it

- If it moves, take it for a walk or a run and then feed it

You will be ready for a rest when you are finished – but with a clean house, you deserve it.

3. Change what you eat – and when you eat it. Carbs are not your enemy. Our bodies need a certain amount of carbohydrates to keep running and to maintain energy. When you eat carbs is another matter. Consume carbs early in the day rather than late in the evening and the calories won’t be as likely to add to your waist measurement. Weight loss supplements can help compliment a healthy diet and assist with more rapid weight loss.

Make dinner a three course meal by eating soup and salad before adding the main course of meat and vegetables. Make each meal an occasion and take your time to savor the meal, relax between courses and give your body time to recognize when it is “full”.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it’s not. A small cup of Campbell’s soup has about 100 calories and is quite filling. A green salad with a light dressing or lemon juice is low calorie, healthy and provides nutrients we need. By the time you get to the main course – whether it is a pot roast or a frozen entrée – you will have taken the edge off your hunger and are far less likely to wolf down the main course and reach for seconds.

4. Be Nice to You - One of the quickest ways to sabotage a diet plan is to delete every food you love. You end up feel deprived and sorry for yourself. This leads to binge eating and the end of the best laid diet plan.

Of course you can’t have chocolate every day and avoiding pie and cake for a while may be necessary. That doesn’t mean that once a week you can’t add desert to your 3 course meal. Many of the foods we love to eat aren’t healthy choices. Limit the special treats to one moderate helping once a week. You will enjoy the treat all the more because you have anticipated it. Once the weight begins to drop you may find you choose not to add a special treat at all.

Another tool to use is a list posted on your refrigerator. When you are hungering for foods that is not diet friendly, write it down. Keep a list of foods you really want and promise yourself that you will lose an extra five pound and then allow yourself to eat the foods listed (using your smaller plate, of course) after you have reached your weight goal. That list will look so good to you and knowing you will be able to enjoy those foods soon will satisfy you. When you look at the list after reaching your ideal weight, you will wonder why you wanted all those foods so badly at the time you wrote them down. Works every time.

You can also be nice to yourself by finding small luxuries to take the place of desserts and high calories snacks. Spend an hour soaking in the tub with herbal oils or fragrant bubbles. Spend a few hours browsing through local shops or making a new flower bed by the front porch. The busier you are, the less you will be focused on putting food in your mouth and the fast those pounds will disappear.