Are You Ready for Summer? Weight Loss Hacks To Get You There Faster!
Are you ready for summer? It’s that time of year again – the time when winter jackets are coming off and those winter “comfort pounds” are not so comforting anymore.
Not to worry though.
You can drop those pounds quicker than quick with the tips below.
This post will share some of the best weight loss hacks and tips that my blog visitors have very generously shared with me over the last few years.
They may not all work for you – but hopefully you’ll find one or two that help you get to your summer goal weight fast!
5 Weight Loss Hacks To Get You Ready for Summer
#1 Get The Experts To Do the Meal Prep Work For You
Forget about counting calories or making diet meals yourself – that’s so nineties. Why not let experts do the prep work for you?
That way you can spend your valuable time on other things – like your workout routine, power-walking with friends or planning your new summer wardrobe!
Diet delivery services like Nutrisystem will make the food and send it to your door. All you do is follow the instructions, heat and eat.
You may have to add in a few healthy snacks yourself like low fat yogurt, berries, cut up veggies etc with services like Nutrisystem – but other than that it’s pretty simple.
(Click Here to Get an Instant 40% Off Nutrisystem)
You don’t have to go with Nutrisystem here – there are plenty of other diet delivery services to try (although they might be slightly more expensive than Nutrisystem).
For example, if you do better on a lower carb diet, you might want to try a South Beach diet delivery service.
Or you could try the low carb plan from Diet To Go. That keeps you to 30 grams of carbs a day from breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If you want to enjoy more gourmet, restaurant-quality meals with a balanced carb-protein-fat ratio, then Bistro MD is a fantastic option. It’s slightly more expensive than Nutrisystem or South Beach – and your weight loss will be a bit slower.
But absolutely everything is done for you (you don’t need to add in any snacks or fruit if you get the snacks package) and some people really like this approach.
Regardless of which service you choose, by getting somebody else to do the meal prep work for you, you free up a LOT of time and energy to do other things – whether that’s adding a new morning workout or pampering yourself with a new facial to get ready for summer.
#2 Breakfast Like a King…
You may have heard the saying, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”. This basically means that you have your largest meal at breakfast (like a king would eat), a medium sized meal at lunch (like a prince) and then just a very small meal for dinner (like a pauper).
This works for a number of reasons I think (although I’m no dietitian so this is not medical advice by any means). First of all your body needs a lot of calories in the morning (since it’s gone all night without food).
This breaking of your fast revs up your metabolism for the day. And because it’s in the morning, your body is more likely to burn most of those calories off during the activity of the day.
At night however your body knows it’s winding down for sleep – so in it’s infinite wisdom – it may want to store those dinner calories as fat. But if you eat less calories at night, your body doesn’t have a lot of calories to store as fat.
So it’s basically an efficient way of getting your body to use most of the calories you eat as fuel – instead of fat.
#3 Slow Down
We move way too fast today – and usually gulp down our meals without even tasting them. But if you consciously start to slow your eating you do 2 things that will move you towards your weight loss goal faster.
First of all, it gives your body more time to register that it has had enough – and that you’re full. So you end up eating less.
Second of all, by eating slowly you’re actually taking more time to DIGEST your food. And better digestion is not only healthier for you but it also means your body can use your food more efficiently – for energy instead for fat storage.
#4 Try HIIT Training
By now you’ve probably heard about the HIIT training – or High Intensity Interval Training phenomenon. There’s a reason this is so popular – because it works!
It’s basically a very effective way to do more with less.
Basically you add in high-intensity short intervals into your workout routine where you go as hard as you can for 30 seconds to a minute. And then you slow down and catch your breath (while still moving) for about 2-4 minutes. Then rinse and repeat.
I’m not sure why this works exactly but it seems to rev up your metabolism and even get it running higher thoughout the day post workout – which means more calories burned and faster results for you.
One note of caution however – you may not want to do this late at night as it could cause problems with your sleep. And speaking of sleep…
#5 Get Your Zzzzzz’s
I never really realized just how important getting a full, uninterrupted night of sleep can help with weight loss until I went through a period of high stress that left me fighting the monster of insomnia.
Not only was I less effective throughout the day – but I also packed on about 5 pounds in a month (without changing my diet).
When I started to take serious steps to improve my sleep (and stress levels) I noticed that those five pounds came off pretty quickly and easily. But when I was just working on my diet and exercise – without fixing my sleep, those pesky pounds wouldn’t budge.
Some ways you can improve your sleep include turning off all devices including TV’s and phones about an hour before sleep (since the blue light interferes with melatonin production) or taking a nice relaxing shower or bath about an hour before bedtime.
Other people have told me that taking some melatonin or magnesium about an hour before bedtime helps them nod off.
Also if your sleep issues are due to stress – like mine were – make sure you’re addressing that as well. As a very wise naturopath once told me, “Fix the root and you’ll change the fruit.”
So those are 5 weight loss hacks to get you ready for summer. Hopefully some of them (or all) will work for you to get you moving faster towards your adorable summer dresses and skinny jeans!
Do you have a weight loss hack that works for you? Share it in the comments below!
