47 Weight Loss Tips – For The Practical Indian
With this epic blog post, you will learn the
BEST
weight loss tips (for Indians), and you will learn what you need to start doing to lose that ugly fat and what it takes to reach your weight loss goals.
This post is in 2 parts, and contains proven steps and strategies on how to successfully lose weight. There are a lot of good reasons to lose excess weight. Over the past few years, obesity has become known as the main risk factor for diseases like diabetes and heart ailments, especially in India.
It can also affect your quality of life and prevent you from doing some of the activities that you used to enjoy.
Fat loss can be achieved by changing some aspects of your lifestyle, especially your diet and level of physical activity. This post contains diet, exercise, and lifestyle tips that can motivate you to lose weight. However, you shouldn’t stop once you achieve your ideal weight. Maintaining your weight loss also has its own challenges.
At the end of this 2 part series, you can download our bonus recipe + maintenance guide for some real life tips on how you can maintain your weight and lose some more.
So without wasting time, let’s go!
These weight loss tips are divided in 3 categories:
- Diet Tips – Have got some really practical nutrition tips and tricks.
- Exercise Tips – For some really great fat burning!
- Lifestyle Tips – How to inculcate healthy habits
Diet and Nutrition Tips To Lose Weight
1. Curb Your Sweet Tooth Naturally
Sweet treats like cakes, pastries and cookies are very delicious and appetizing, but they are loaded with artificial ingredients that do not provide much benefit for the body. Additionally, these sugary foods can have negative effects on the body.
These treats have high calories and thus make it easier for you to gain weight. They can also trigger blood sugar fluctuations that can cause mood swings.
However, it is also unrealistic and unreasonable to remove all sweet foods from your diet completely. Fruits are called “nature’s candy” because of their natural sweetness. Unlike candies, fruits contain fiber, vitamins, and minerals that can provide many benefits for the body. Keep a stash of fruit in your kitchen so that you won’t be tempted to overindulge in processed sweets when you have a craving.
2. Slow Down And Hara Hachi Bu Rule
It takes about 20 minutes for the body to realize that you are already full. Eating mindlessly can make you eat more calories than you need.
Take time to enjoy your meals. Isn’t there an old Indian saying that tells you to chew each bite 32 times!
Of course it’s not practical these days, but you get the point. 
It is better if you eat on a table instead of in front of the television because watching can distract you from enjoying your meal.
Take your time and eat slowly.
A study at the University of Rhode Island (
source
) showed that a person can lose about 2 pounds a month if they eat slowly because they become more aware of what they are consuming.
You should also avoid eating too much food until you are stuffed full. Overeating can make it uncomfortable for you to move or even breathe afterwards. There is a practice in Japan known as “
hara Hachi bu
” where you should eat only until you feel that you are 80% full.
Do undertake this practice and avoid eating till you get full. According to some of our Indian traditions you should
divide your stomach into three parts
. So fill half of your stomach with food, quarter with water and quarter with air.
3. Do Not Completely Eliminate Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates have been labeled as one of the causes of weight gain. However, the real reason behind its bad reputation is that most of the carbohydrates that people consume are highly processed.
If a standard diet of eating processed carbs and one that is low in carbohydrates are compared, it looks like the latter wins in terms of being the best way to lose weight. However, the results are different if the low- carbohydrate diet is compared with a good carb-diet that is low in processed foods and sugars.
Before 1991, Japanese people made carbohydrates part of their regular meals. They often eat rice and sweet potatoes, but they are considered one of the healthiest people in the world.
Obesity is uncommon in Japan, unlike the case in other countries. The body needs adequate carbohydrates to function well. Completely removing carbohydrates from your diet can affect the hormones responsible for fat loss and consequently make it harder for you to lose weight.
As a general rule, eat more carbohydrates on days in which you expect to be more physically active.
4. Increase Consumption Of Fruits And Vegetables
People who eat more fruits and vegetables are healthier and slimmer than those who constantly eat processed foods.
Fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients that can give you energy.
Also, these foods are free from sugars and artificial ingredients, which can be toxic to the body.
Aim to eat different colored vegetables and fruits.
Fortunately, fruits and vegetables are delicious and versatile, so you can add them to your dishes easily.
5. Increase Fiber Intake
Increasing your fiber intake can encourage weight loss by making you feel full even if you consume fewer calories.
Eating fiber-rich foods like whole grains, whole produce, and beans can also reduce your cravings, making you less likely to binge on unhealthy foods later in the day.
6. Be Conscious Of Your Calorie Intake
Consuming fewer calories than what you burn is the most straightforward way to lose weight. Your ideal calorie intake depends on your current weight, height, and level of physical activity.
There are calorie calculators online that automatically calculate these numbers. You can easily reduce your calorie intake by consuming less processed food and focusing on nourishing your body with whole food. However, you should also refrain from eating very few calories because this can be detrimental to your health.
As you lose weight, you should adjust your calorie budget accordingly because you will need fewer calories as your body becomes lighter.
7. Increase Water Intake
Drinking water has numerous benefits, including detoxification and suppressing your appetite.
There are times when you confuse thirst for hunger. Drinking water can help you reduce your food intake and makeyou feel fuller. It also reduces water retention in the body, which can help you lose a lot of water weight. Water should be your choice of beverage rather than high-calorie sodas and juices.
8. Use Your Utensils Carefully
You can eat less by using different utensils and plates when eating. By simply using a smaller plate, you can trick your brain into thinking that you are consuming more food. This rule also applies to drinks.
Tall and lean drinking glasses are better than short and wide ones. Some people also opt to use chopsticks instead of a spoon and fork to help them eat more slowly.
9. Have Occasional Treats
Having the perfect diet that eliminates all kinds of unhealthy food is unrealistic. Aiming for perfection can be counterproductive because it can make you feel deprived and depressed. It is okay to indulge in your favorite treats every once in a while.
A couple scoops of ice cream, a single helping of a Bengali sweet and one slice of cake will not hurt your diet.
However, be careful not to make these occasional treats a regular indulgence
. Aim to have treats comprise 10% to 15% of your total diet.
This way, you will not feel deprived.
10. Learn To Cook Delicious Food And Invest In Equipment
Relying on restaurant food can be detrimental to your health and budget. Invest in a good cookbook, and start cooking on your own. Learning how to cook can be fun and exciting. You will also feel a sense of accomplishment after preparing dishes that you and your family can enjoy.
Cooking your own food can enable you to control your ingredients and serving sizes. 
You should also invest in kitchen equipment to make cooking easier.
If you often lack time to cook at home, you can purchase a slow cooker so that you can simply prepare the ingredients ahead of time and come home to a warm cooked meal in the evening.
A slow cooker is also very versatile and economical because it consumes less electricity than an oven.
A food processor and blender are also great tools to use.
You can make fruit shakes and green smoothies using a blender. Such shakes and smoothies are great alternatives to whole vegetables and fruits.
Finally, store your leftovers in the freezer after cooking a large batch of food. Freezing the food can maintain freshness and preserve nutrients. You can also buy a large bulk of fresh vegetables and fruits that are on sale and then freeze them to prolong their shelf life.
11. Plan Out and Shop For Snacks
A properly devised and developed exercise as well as diet routine is extremely essential for anyone who wants to lose weight. Without a proper plan your hard work may not at all benefit you.
Everyone loves snacks and people who love food are generally reluctant about dropping their favorite snacks. Unfortunately most of these generally loved snacks are fatty and unhealthy.
But you do not need to drop your snacks altogether, you just need to reduce the intake of these snacks. It is also advisable to plan out your snacks once a week. This pre-planning is always helpful and will prevent binge eating or unhealthy eating.
12. Healthy Recipes
Generally everyone loves food but more than often all of us love foods which are considered to be fatty and very unhealthy.
Instead of eating these fatty and unhealthy foods you should prefer healthy and nutritious foods. It is a very popular myth that healthy and nutritious food does not taste good.
This is a lie.
Nutritious and healthy food can be very tasty if you follow good and well tested recipes. You can find such recipes online which will make you fall in love with healthy food. You can also buy recipe books which are specially made for people who want to lose weight. These recipes are well researched so they will not have any side effects.
If you have some health problems you should ideally consult with your dietitian or doctor first about recipes. Your dietitian can prescribe and suggest the best recipes for you.
13. Jot it Down
This weight loss tip is one everyone at NutriFit uses (or is forced to!)…
Keep a big white board or chalkboard in your kitchen and jot down your total diet plan (maybe weekly) on this board. Jotting down your diet plan and keeping it in focus all the time will keep you motivated and accountable.
This constant reminder will keep you active and peppy. You should also jot down your weekly meal plan on the board so that you can follow the plan thoroughly.
By making a weekly plan you can keep a track of your daily calories and nutrients easily.
Another benefit of keeping a white board or chalkboard is that you can write beautiful inspirational and motivational quotes on it. Although motivational quotes have faced a lot of ridicule in recent times but that does not mean they are useless.
You can feel the change if you keep yourself motivated. Remember, losing weight is just not about physical strength, it is also about mental strength and mind power. If you keep yourself motivated the journey of weight loss will not be hard at all.
14. Curb Those Food Cravings
One of the biggest if not the biggest enemy of your weight loss journey is craving. Human beings are heavy gluttons, we love food. It’s not a hyperbole if someone says that we live to eat not eat to live.
Unfortunately, diet is all about controlling your intake of calories which means controlling your intake of food as well. But human beings human being we cannot control ourselves when we are on restrictions to eat food.
Curbing the cravings is not much of an issue if you are full all the time. This can be achieved by eating foods which are rich in fiber and are filling. Another major problem with cravings is that sometimes you get cravings even when you are full. You need to understand that these cravings are not actually cravings but just boredom or emotional pain.
People eat food when they feel sad, frustrated, angry or even when you are bored.
To overcome these cravings you should try doing things that will kill your boredom or will help you to overcome your pain, sadness, depression, tension, anger etc. These activities may include chatting with a close friend, going out for a walk, taking a bath, sleeping, reading your favorite book etc.
Doing yoga and some breathing exercises (go watch Ramdev Baba!) is also a good option.
15. Be Prepared, Be Ready
This weight loss tip is very important. Hunger can strike you anytime, anywhere.
It is highly necessary to tackle your cravings effectively.
You should not eat high fatty foods or high carb foods JUST to curb your cravings. You should ideally keep cut fruits and some good veggies in your refrigerator for emergency cravings.
Cut up fruits and veggies are not only effective in curbing the cravings but you can also arrange a quick snack or cook a small but healthy meal instantly with these sliced and diced veggies and fruits.
16. Throw Away the Junk Food
It is no news that we Indians love food, especially junk food. 😉
Keeping junk food in the house especially in places that can be reached easily is a massive problem.
You keep on going back to your junk food because human beings cannot simply control their desires for too long if their prey sits smugly in front of them for too long. We succumb to such desires which are quite natural but this should be avoided at all costs. 
To overcome this problem, it is advisable to
throw out all the junk food
from your house.
Now this is quite easy if you are a bachelor or spinster but it might become a nuisance for people who have roommates or live with their family, partners, spouse etc. for such people the only option is to make the others understand that snacking can be a very big of a hindrance in their diet and exercise regime and so to help them they should keep of the snacks for a bit.
If this does not work (and there are a lot of chances of this happening) you can try asking them to buy small amounts of snacks at a time which can eaten in one go or at most two go’s. This will definitely help you to stay put from snacks.
17. Low Calorie Meals and Tasty Smoothies
This tip might be very hard to follow as Indians love to eat. Reducing your meal to such a simple affair of 300 to 400 calories is a hard thing to do especially if you are accustomed to heavy meals and unhealthy foods. You will probably feel irritated, frustrated and sometimes downright angry if you simply try to shift to a diet which is just 300-400 calories.
You can obviously tolerate this kind of diet and prevent these sorts of side effects if you plan your diet properly. Instead of eating 40 calories of ice cream or something of that sort you should concentrate hard on including foodstuffs that are low on calories but still are highly fulfilling.
These things will help you feel satiated quite easily and quickly as well and that too without even consuming a lot of calories. These calories will not be so called empty calories.
There are certain options which are supposed to be really fulfilling as well. These options include healthy and tasty smoothies. You can make tasty smoothies and add healthy ingredients such as avocados, greens, berries etc. These things will revamp your smoothies and will make them even more healthy and delicious too.
Remember 300 to 400 calories does not have to be a bad thing if you manage it will You will get so accustomed to this diet in no time that you will not want to go back to your normal diet ever.
18. Never Skip Breakfast
It is believed that breakfast is known as breakfast because you literally break the night long fast with some food in the morning.
This simple myth or fact talks a lot about the importance of this meal.
Breakfast is definitely the most important meal of the day.
There is a very famous saying that goes something like this “
Have breakfast like a king, lunch like a minister and dinner like a pauper
.” This definitely shows why you should always eat a breakfast.
You can actually consume high amounts of calories in breakfast. 
By high we mean high but still under a healthy level. You can eat a heavy breakfast because most of the calories gained form breakfast are lost throughout the day and if you workout or even go for a simple walk you will not put on weight at all.
A breakfast can be anything but ideally you should eat something which is not exactly heavy but is at least fulfilling and that your hunger will be curbed and you will feel satiated for a long time.
According to a research it is believed that you should not just eat your breakfast but you should actually eat it as soon as you wake up and actually when in an hour after you have woke up.
This is supposed to increase your metabolism level and supposed to keep you motivated and to keep you active. An active and fast working metabolism is highly essential for fast weight loss.
19. Eat This Not That
Ghrelin
is a hormone in our body which is responsible for stimulate your appetite and to make you hungry. This hormone is quite important and necessary but this hormone can cause problems while losing weight because it will keep on making you hungry.
You can suppress this hormone by doing one easy thing which is adding around 10 to 15 grams of protein to your diet every day.
You can add this protein in any form and way but natural proteins derived from food items are always a better option. You can try adding eggs to your diet. Eggs are not only satiating but they are also a rich source f protein so they can actually curb your hunger.
With this you should also try and include at least 10 grams of fiber to your diet every day. Again this fiber can be of any kind but natural, food derived fiber is always a better option.
You also get good amount of fiber form flaxseeds, phylium husk (Known throughout India as Isabgol) etc. Fiber is important because it satiates hunger for a long duration and can also prevent bloating which is a common symptom of constipation. Remember drinking lots of water when you are consuming a lot of fiber.
Going low on carbs is an essential thing to lose weight.
But limiting ALL carbs will not help you
. You should try and limit carbs such as refined carbs, or from plain sugar and instead should add a little amount of good fats.
Continue To Part 2 of The Series
…
Or
Read our Epic Guide on “How To Lose Weight”