Weight-loss goals: 10 tips for success

Weight-loss goals can mean the difference betweensuccess and failure. Realistic, well-planned weight-loss goals keep you focused and motivated. They provide a plan for change as you think about and transition into your healthy lifestyle.

But not all weight-loss goals are helpful. Unrealistic and overly aggressive weight-loss goals — for example, losing 10 pounds each week or fitting into your high school jeans from 20 years back — can undermine your efforts. They’re difficult, if not impossible, to meet. And if your weight-loss goals are beyond reach, you’re more likely to feel frustrated and discouraged and give up on your dieting plans.

It’s OK to dream big. Just use these 10 tips for creating weight-loss goals that will help you achieve your big dreams.

1. Personalize your goals. Set goals that are within your capabilities and that take into account your limitations. Also, consider your personal fitness level, health concerns, available time and motivation. Tailoring your expectations to your personal situation helps you set achievable goals.
2. Aim for realistic weight loss. Healthy weight loss usually occurs slowly and steadily. In general, plan to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week (0.5 to 1 kilogram) — even if your initial weight loss is a little faster in the first week or two. To do this, you need to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you consume each day. Also, don’t expect to lose more of your body weight than is realistic. For instance, set a goal of losing 10 percent of your current weight, rather than 30 percent.
3. Focus on the process. Make most of your goals process goals, rather than outcome goals. “Exercise regularly” is an example of a process goal, while “weigh 145 pounds” is an example of an outcome goal. It’s changing your processes — your daily behaviors and habits — that’s key to weight loss, not necessarily focusing on a specific number on the scale. Just make sure that your process goals are specific, measurable and realistic, too.
4. Think short term and long term. Short-term goals keep you engaged on a daily basis, but long-term goals motivate you over the long haul. Your short-term goals can become stepping stones to reaching long-term goals. Because healthy, permanent weight loss can be a long process, your goals need to be feasible for the long term.
5. Write it down. When planning your goals, write down everything and go through all the details. When and where will you do it? How will you fit a walk into your schedule? What do you need to get started? What snacks can you cut out each day? Then track your progress to see if you’re meeting your goals.
6. Pick a date. Timing is crucial, often making the difference between success and failure. Choose a definite start date for your weight-loss program and don’t put that date off for anything. Be sure to account for life circumstances that might hamper your efforts, such as work or school demands, vacations or relationship problems. You may need to resolve some issues before starting.
7. Start small. It’s helpful to plan a series of small goals that build on each other instead of one big, all-encompassing goal. Remember that you’re in this for the long haul. Anything you undertake too intensely or too vigorously will quickly become uncomfortable, and you’re more likely to give it up.
8. Plan for setbacks. Setbacks are a natural part of behavior change. Everyone who successfully makes changes in his or her life has experienced setbacks. Identifying potential roadblocks — a big holiday meal or office party, for example — and brainstorming specific strategies to overcome them can help you stay on course or get back on course.
9. Evaluate your progress. Review your goals each week. Were you able to successfully meet your goals last week? Think about what worked and what didn’t. Make plans for how you will reach your goals both today and during the course of the week.
10. Reassess and adjust your goals as needed. Be willing to change your goals as you make progress in your weight-loss plan. If you started small, you might be ready to take on larger challenges. Or, you might find that you need to adjust your goals to better fit your new lifestyle. If you find that you have to make frequent adjustments downward or constantly scale back, you may not be setting realistic weight-loss goals in the first place — head back to tip No. 1.

Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Women

Weight is now the most talked about health topic, with 40% of adults classed as overweight and 20% classed as obese. The health problems that are inherent with being overweight are well documented and include heart disease, digestion troubles and certain cancers. With an increasing number of children picking up bad habits from their overweight parents and, as such, an increasing number of children are becoming overweight, there is more impetus on parents to lose weight in order to set a good example for their children.

However, the main problems with much of the weight loss advice on the internet is that it doesn’t take into account the busy lifestyles that many people have, and a lot of advice is geared towards males; particularly on the exercise side.

Of course, there are places where weight loss tips for women can be found, yet these are usually weighted towards the dieting side and don’t take into account either sport or a busy lifestyle that many women have (which restricts the time that can be designated to cooking a healthy meal). The main advice that will be presented here are some quick women weight loss tips, which can be incorporated into a busy lifestyle!

The next top 10 weight loss tips for women are divided in two sections: food and exercise.

Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Women – Food Section
The main question that many women ask is ‘what should we eat’? It is all well and good to say that you should cook a healthy meal every evening that covers all the main food groups in sufficient quantity but the fact is that there just isn’t time to do this. A busy lifestyle results in you getting home later but, more importantly, much too tired to cook a meal. Therefore, there are certain things that can be done to ensure that you have a healthy diet and are not inconvenienced because of it.

1. Eat soup and fit into the loop!
The best way to do this is to make soup. Contrary to the opinion of many, soup is actually a very filling and satisfying hot meal and can be made using any ingredients. The reason that this works is that soup, if created properly, gives you relatively few calories whilst still giving you the nutrition that is essential if you want to stay healthy. There is one trap to avoid when cooking soup, though; avoid all cream or milk that you may be advised to put in by recipes. These can easily be substituted by stock and water which will give it the same consistency with none of the calories. If the soup doesn’t taste as expected, add herbs and spices, or experiment with different ingredients. The best part is that if you make a large quantity of soup then it can last the whole week; all you have to do when you get home is heat the soup up – no unnecessary hassle.

2. Avoid Carbohydrate and Protein shakes!
Don’t mix carbohydrates and proteins. Both of these types of foods are rich in calories and are relatively ‘heavy’ foods – meaning that you will have to do additional exercise to work it off. If, as is the case for the vast majority of people, a lack of time dictates that you can’t do lots of exercise, this energy will be converted to fat which will stay on your body. By not eating both carbohydrates and proteins in the same meal, we take in a much more manageable amount of energy that can be used much more readily.

3. Eat slow and feel light like snow!
Eat slowly and deliberately. Because we are rushing when we get back from work, we tend to wolf down our food. We assume that our bodies work out that we are full and tell us to stop eating as soon as we get full, yet in reality it takes around 20 minutes for our stomach to tell our brain to stop eating. If you eat overly quickly then you run the risk of eating too much. In those 20 minutes you can eat a lot more food that your body doesn’t want; resulting in you gaining weight. Many women weight loss tips don’t identify this but over eating often comes as a result of eating too quickly; if you slow down your eating then you will lose weight.

4. Be wise and snack with size!
The main issue that is not addressed in many of the weight loss tips for women that can be found is the idea of snacking; all that is ever put forward is to stop snacking completely. In an ideal world, this would be perfect but in practice this doesn’t work and ignoring your stomach when it needs a snack leads to cravings and inefficiency when working. The question shouldn’t be whether to snack but what to snack on. The obvious answer is fruit which will fill you up and provide a burst of energy but the best thing to do is to drink water which gives you no calories yet also fills you up sufficiently until your next meal.

5. Chewing gum!
Chew gum or eat mints. The act of chewing is part of the digestive process which helps to simulate the process of eating. It has two main effects on you; it distracts you from your feeling of hunger and it makes your body believe that you are eating. The power of the mind mustn’t be understated here – if you convince your body that you are not hungry (through chewing gum or mints) then you will stop feeling hungry. However, you should pay attention when you decide to chew gum, as this habit is more delicate for a woman than a man, in terms of style and good manners.

Top 10 Weight Loss Tips for Women – Exercise Section
There are very few places offering weight loss tips for women that focus on exercise which means that it is often overlooked as a weight loss tip. However, there is only so far that dieting can take you before you have to start exercising, but it really shouldn’t feel like a chore! Exercising can be made incredibly fun if you throw yourself fully into it.

6. Collect your friends and fit the trends!
Make sure that you exercise with friends. Make no mistake about it, exercising is hard; you are intentionally working your body hard and making yourself tired and it will hurt after a time. Without someone there to motivate you; to cajole you and keep you going when it gets hard. Without this pushing, many people start to give up before they have felt any of the benefits of the exercise which defeats the object of exercising in the first place!

7. Aim and hit those targets!
Set yourself targets. Target setting is one of the most important things that you can do and is essential if you want to keep yourself going. It is very important to set a realistic target and because of this it is advisable to talk to a fitness trainer beforehand. They will be able to offer you advice and help to construct a timetable that you will be able to manage. This stops you from setting an unrealistic target that will merely serve to get you down or even hurt you! Learn more about this women weight loss tip in a more detailed article available on our website: The Importance of Setting Realistic Weight Loss Goals.

8. Fill in the blanks!
Exercise around your other tasks. It is incredibly hard to find time to go to the gym as that usually means you have to set a good few hours aside for travel and exercise; something busy women of today simply don’t have. It is therefore important that you take every opportunity to exercise. If you keep some weights by the television, or the computer or even the bed, you can do a few repetitions whilst you are relaxing. This is a great weight loss tip for women with a busy lifestyle!

9. Discover your limits!
Make sure that you exercise in a manner that suits you. There will be many people who try to tell you how you should or shouldn’t exercise but you must do only what appeals most to you. Nobody knows your body better than you do and if you lift weights because you’re told to (for example) when your body isn’t able to handle it, you will do yourself damage or lose motivation because you don’t enjoy it. Whether you go to the gym or go for a jog, if you enjoy what you’re doing then you have more chance of continuing and, therefore, more chance of feeling the benefits.

10. Value your self image! (Special women weight loss tip!)
One issue that affects women more than men is self image. It is very important that you think positively about what you’re doing and the effect it is having on you. Don’t think about how you look when you’re at the gym or running along the road – no-one is judging you and the only thoughts that people will have is admiration and a wish that they could have the same drive and determination. And in any case, for the sake of being a little bit sweaty for an hour you can look fantastic for the rest of your life; certainly worth it!

Therefore, make sure you follow at least a couple of these 10 weight loss tips for women and you will be well on the way to slimming down to your natural size. Good luck!

Vitamin C for Weight Loss

The discovery of the effects of vitamin C on our immune system was a major discovery – a sailor noticed that people who ate the oranges, limes and lemons on voyages didn’t appear to get scurvy. At the time this was a remarkable discovery about the healing properties of vitamin C, but today we now know more about vitamin c, including its weight loss effects. The best bit about vitamin C weight loss is that it doesn’t only help in one way, but it actually has numerous effects. It also naturally occurs in a variety of products that taste good so is easier to get into your system than you think.

Weight loss involves you burning more calories than you ingest, either by consuming less than your GDA (Guideline Daily Amounts) or by exercising. However if you consume the right calories, you can get more nutrients into your body for each one of those precious kcals. Vitamin C, when found in fruit and vegetables especially, is a good example of a way to get the right calories into your body.

Another effect of vitamin C for weight loss is that your body is more efficient at burning fat when you consume it. This means it’s crucial to any diet, but luckily it can be found in lots of foods that we’ll detail below.

Vitamin C can also help stimulated Noradrenaline which, like its name suggests, is similar in some ways to adrenaline. Noradrenaline hormone supplements may be prescribed to depressed patients as they can improve a person’s mood. However it can also be used as a ‘slimming hormone’. This works by tricking your brain into suppressing your appetite so you don’t feel like you need to eat as much, but it also stimulates your mood so you don’t care as much that you haven’t eaten – think of when you’re busy and in a good mood, this makes your forget about your hunger in a similar way noradrenaline does.

Finally, vitamin C has almost unlimited benefits to your whole body that aren’t all about vitamin c weight loss. These include things like reducing wrinkles, helping the immune system, and helping the eyes and heart stay healthy. It’s been shown that vitamin C can also play a part in the prevention of cancers, strokes, eye healthy and even helping you live longer – there’s no reason not to include it in your diet!

The recommended daily dose of vitamin C varies, but is around 100mg. However, some studies have suggested that 500-1000mg per day, or in some cases even 2000mg per day are optimal. If you want to stick with about 100mg a day then a cup of orange juice will get you this (97mg). Most other vegetables provide you with lots of vitamin C too, for example a cup of cooked broccoli will give you 74mg. Even one medium kiwi fruit will give you 70mg. Another great source of Vitamin C which also aids weight loss is the grapefruit juice.

If you don’t like to eat fruits and vegetables whole, then there are plenty of other ways you can use vitamin C for weight loss. For example, you can add pureed fruits to recipes for soup, eat frozen fruit slices in the summer months, or put a bit of salad in your sandwiches. If you have cereal every morning then throwing a handful of fruit on top will help you on your way to getting your RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance).

Laxatives to lose weight

bsorption of nutrients.See also: laxatives , laxatives , herbal tea laxative , laxative food
Laxatives are not a good choice for weight loss. In fact, despite many people have recourse to laxatives to lose weight fast, this is a real affront to human health and intelligence.
The use of laxatives for weight loss is related to their ability to promote the loss of body fluids, since the water is about 65% of body weight , the dehydration -induced purging tips the balance in the direction coveted . However, this is a fake weight loss, since weight loss is not associated with a significant reduction in fat mass , true goal of any weight loss program.

The second mechanism with whom laxatives help to “lose weight” consists in the reduction of the amount of nutrients absorbed, given that accelerates in an appreciable effect on intestinal transit; all this, however, to the detriment of their own health, given that the effect so much sought you associated with unpleasant side effects such as diarrhea , flatulence , abdominal pain, weakness, fatigue, electrolyte imbalance (hypokalemia), dehydration, and prolonged use, alteration of intestinal flora ( dysbiosis ), melanosis of the colon , osteomalacia and ulcerative hypotonic (resulting in constipation, chronic). Not surprisingly, the laxatives are not among the approved drugs for weight loss , but there are specific medicines that conform to the action, but with much lower side effects, it is the case, for example, of ‘ acarbose (which reduces the absorption digestion of carbohydrates) and of ‘ orlistat (which reduces the intestinal absorption of fat).
Laxative abuse is often an indicator of the underlying eating disorder , since these products are often misused by women with bulimia, as an alternative method of disposal to the vomiting self-induced.
In the final use of laxatives to lose weight is a choice entirely irrational, the only category of products that can be used for this purpose are the bulk laxatives. It comes to products based on vegetable fibers , such as psyllium seeds and flax , the guar gum , the bran , the pectin etc., that on one hand increase the sense of satiety swell in the stomach, and on the other modulate and slows the absorption of nutrients. These laxatives are taken before meals, along with copious quantities of water in the quantities specified by the manufacturer and preferably side by side with a supplement of vitamins and minerals , such multicentrum , if taken for long periods. Instead should be avoided laxatives to lose weight irritants ( cascara , senna , aloe , frangula, rhubarb , phenolphthalein, bisacodyl , Dulcolax , sodium picosulfate , guttalax and castor oil ), usually taken after meals to reduce the absorption of nutrients.

Parsley Juice for Weight Loss

Parsley is one of the top weight loss spices available. First let’s take a look at parsley health benefits and, in particular, parsley juice health benefits as we think this is the best way to get more parsley into your diet. However, you can also use fresh parsley to garnish loads of dishes, including sandwiches or salads. Parsley juice can be drunk fresh, right after squeezing, or warm, combined with tea, under the form of an infusion.

Parsley has many, many health benefits, including reducing effects of diarrhoea, improve digestion, reduces fatigue, helps with the menstrual cycle, and even provides some properties that reduce the chance of cancers, especially in the lungs. But, as the herb is a diuretic, it also has important weight loss benefits. A diuretic increases the rate of urination, which means that more matter is expelled from the body, including more calories and thus reducing weight loss. The diuretic aspect of parsley juice also means that it detoxifies the body faster than other drinks, and acts as an appetite suppressant making you feel fuller than you are.

Drinking parsley juice will also aid your digestive system, resulting in a more efficient processing system and faster metabolism. You will get more nutrients from the food you are eating, and therefore won’t have to eat as much food, resulting in weight loss. One more great health benefit provided by parsley which is especially welcomed by overweight people is that, this vegetable dissolves cholesterol within the veins. As you know a high bad cholesterol level is the negative side-effect of poor eating habits!

The parsley weight loss tip that we recommend to you is having a cup of warm parsley juice 15 minutes before you eat a main meal. You should be warned however that the effects of concentrated parsley juice are very strong, and you should therefore never have any more than one ounce of parsley in eight ounces of tea. Drinking more than the recommended amount can have a toxic result on your body.

There are loads of recipes available for parsley juice, but the most popular seem to include diluting the flavour of the parsley down with lemon or carrot. You can even include parsley in your regular main meal dishes, especially where fish is involved as you can have parsley sauce on it. You must be careful not to consume too much parsley however as it can result in some quite serious side-effects; it is a powerful herb! You should particularly not use it during pregnancy.

Easy Parsley Juice Recipe
Ingredients: a handful of parsley, some carrots, cucumbers, some celery and a lemon.
Method: Peel the lemon and add all ingredients in a mixer. Blend and serve one glass of the beverage together with a few cups of ice.