7 Things to Promote Weightloss All Day

The best part of mornings is that they’re so full of potential! No matter whether you laced up your sneaks yesterday or overindulged on a co-worker’s birthday cake, it’s a fresh chance to get closer to your health goals. To keep that get-fit momentum going all day long, start your day off right with these morning habits that will motivate you even more.

1. Get Some Sun Basking in the sun’s rays can help you drop pounds, according to research published in the journal PLOS ONE. Study authors had 54 participants wear wrist monitors that recorded their exposure to morning light for seven days. During that period, participants kept food diaries to track their calorie intake. The people who spent more time in morning light had lower BMIs than those who were in the dark, no matter their age, activity level, or what they ate. Why? Morning light helps regulate your internal clock, which aids your sleep schedule (crucial for weight loss). Morning sunshine also contains higher levels of blue light, which has the strongest effect on your circadian rhythm. You only need 20-30 minutes of morning sunlight between 8 a.m. and noon to get in on these benefits!
2. Sleep In This one goes hand-in-hand with the previous tip. Spending more time on those precious Zzzs can help you eat less and have fewer cravings than people who skimp on sleep. Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin tracked the sleep of 10 overweight young adults who were at risk for obesity and who self-reported fewer than six and a half hours of shut-eye each night. For the first week of the study, they stuck with their regular sleep schedules. For the second and third, the study authors had them bump it up to eight and a half hours. On average, they slept around an additional 1.6 hours and experienced a 14% decrease in appetite and a 62% drop in cravings for sweet and salty junk. If you’re groaning each time your alarm goes off, try to rearrange your schedule so you can spend a little more a.m. time in bed.
3. Get In A Mindful Mood Mindfulness is a key strategy when it comes to weight loss. It’s all about taking a focused, intentional approach to your life by really tuning in to your body and mind. Even better, it can stabilize your emotions, potentially making you less likely to give into stressed-based eating. Researchers at the University of Utah had 38 people between ages 20 to 45 fill out a survey that measured how mindful they were naturally. For two days, participants rated their emotions throughout the day in addition to tracking their physical and cognitive arousal before sleep to measure anxiety. Those who were naturally mindful had experienced less irregular mood swings. Rather than trying to kick-start this habit when faced with your first meal, begin your morning with mindfulness instead: Take a few minutes at the start of each day to sit quietly and focus on the rhythm of your breath.
4. Change Up Your Commute Driving to work is easy, but it may not be best for your waistline. A study published in the journal BMJ shows that people who walk, bike, and take public transportation have lower BMIs and body-fat percentages than those who depended on their cars to get to work. The University College London team of researchers collected the BMIs and body-fat percentages of more than 7,000 people. Participants then completed a survey about how they usually got themselves to the office. The women who used a method other than a car had a BMI that was around 0.7 less than the others, which is about a 5.5-pound difference on the scale. Note that this doesn’t exclude public transportation! Even walking to the closest bus stop or train station can be beneficial.
5. Go High-Protein While the jury’s still out on whether breakfast is essential for weight loss, a healthy dose of protein in the morning looks like it can help you drop pounds. Scientists at Biofortis Clinical Research and the University of Missouri department of exercise physiology and nutrition gave 35 women from the ages of 18 to 55 three different breakfasts. One was just a glass of water, while the others clocked in at around 300 calories each (and had equal fat and fiber counts). One of those had three grams of protein, while the other had 30 to 39 grams, which is more than two-thirds of the RDA. Those who had high-protein breakfasts felt less hungry and ate 175 fewer calories at lunch. Protein takes a long time to digest and pushes your body to secrete the gut hormone Peptide YY, which helps increase feelings of fullness.
6. Work Up A Sweat Obviously, working out at any point is going to be a good thing! But besides giving your metabolism a boost that lasts well into the day, a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that women who exercised in the morning were less distracted by pictures of delicious food. They had 17 participants with healthy weights and BMIs and 18 obese participants walk briskly for 45 minutes in the morning. Apart from not being as interested in pictures of unhealthy food, study subjects were more active throughout the day, no matter their weight.
7. Pack The Day’s Snacks Avoid the afternoon dash to the office vending machine with this one: Take just a few minutes each morning to make sure you’ve got enough snacks to take you through the day, suggests Keri Glassman, MS, RD, a Women’s Health contributor. When you’ve just woken up, it’s easy to underestimate how much fuel you’ll need throughout the day and just throw an apple in your bag. Instead, budget extra time to whip up some quick, healthy snacks that will keep you on the road to weight-loss success. Even better, just throw them in your bag after prepping them the previous weekend.

Don’t be a sucker

I give a lot of free advice. People text me, email me, and message me on Facebook all the time. And I don’t mind to do that. My passion is to help people.

This is probably some of the most important advice I can give you. This time of year, every diet supplement company is marketing their products to you. Trying to make you believe that they have the “magic pill.” Don’t fall for that. Yes if you use their product you might lose some weight, but when you stop using it, it’s coming back. Not because you’ve failed but because the system is designed for you to fail. You fail, you keep buying their products, they keep making money off you.

You need education to be successful. You need changes in your everyday life or you will fail. You need guidance and direction and instructions on how to change the way you think and the way you live everyday. That’s how we will make you successful for the rest of your life. Not just through a six month program but for as long as you apply what you learn. It’s all about the 80/20.

Being generous

If you’re like most people, you’re an extremely generous person. You most likely give and give and give. So much so it’s likely that you give until there is nothing left for you to give. You likely deplete your biological resources mentally and emotionally, and ultimately that depletion shows up physically. Women especially are prone to believe that we are to put the needs of EVERYONE else far and above our own. We even give more generously to strangers than we do to ourselves! In counseling women, I usually have two words in regards to this behavior…”STOP IT!” It’s good to give generously; but in order to live a truly healthy and balanced life, you have to give equally as generous to YOURSELF also. If you’re not refilling your own resources, what can you possibly give to those you love? I get it…. You love your family and friends and want to do things for them. That’s understandable, but you MUST do and love yourself just as much. If you don’t, your living your life out of balance and actions like that will eventually catch up to you. When it does, you might find emotions such as resentment and discontent. You may even find yourself in your physician’s office with a stress disorder, depression, or irritable bowel syndrome. Then what? Who is going to do for those you love? Ladies, it is OKAY to love yourself and give yourself some TLC. Spend some time learning to practice extreme self care. If you’re not certain how to make that happen, let me teach you. Extreme self care is something most women have to learn. It’s not always bred into our DNA. We tend to think that if we’re doing something for “us” that we’re selfish and self-centered. That couldn’t be farther from the truth!! Loving ourselves and caring for ourselves gives us the ABILITY to love and care for our families and friends more contently and more completely. So stop what you’re in the middle of and schedule some time in your calendar for extreme self care for YOU. It’s okay to “love yourself up”!! I promises that you will be a better wife, mother, daughter, and friend because of it.