Starting your fitness journey can be daunting. Losing weight and getting fit requires effort to change your behavior. You may have many questions and perhaps be unsure where to start. Yet, if you can achieve a healthy weight and become fit, you will feel better physically and mentally and improve your quality of life. While there is some overlap, let’s examine how you can lose weight and get fit without a strict diet or starting a rigorous fitness program.
Losing Weight
You can lose weight without exercising. It comes down to simple math: You must burn more calories than you consume. The number of calories you need daily depends on factors such as your current weight, gender, and age.
If it’s that easy, it seems like dieting is the solution, right? Not necessarily. You are on a diet right now, regardless of what you eat and drink. Making drastic changes to your diet can lead to mental fatigue and frustrations because of hunger pangs and cravings. If you’re constantly in this state, your willpower will eventually wane, you will overindulge, and your inner critic will flood your mind with negative thoughts. So, let’s look at some strategies to help you manage your weight.
Strategies For Losing Weight
Start by Identifying What You Eat
Keeping a food journal can help you determine how you usually consume calories. At first, just writing everything down for a few days to a week will help you see your eating habits. You don’t have to make any changes right now, but it will be helpful later if you note what changes you could make. Of course, if you want to make changes now, you can—but more on that later.
You may discover that you eat or drink at a particular time of day out of habit, such as getting a snack or drink, regardless of whether you’re hungry or thirsty. Learning what you do when specific triggers happen can help identify how to change your routine to lower your caloric intake.
Make Small Adjustments
Sometimes, a minor tweak to your diet can save hundreds of calories a week. Avoid drastic changes unless advised by your doctor or dietician. Introducing too many changes too quickly will make it harder to lose weight as you battle your willpower against hunger pangs and cravings.
For example, small changes like black coffee instead of cream and sugar, switching to water instead of soda, and eating fruit over candy may help you lose weight without exercising. Does that mean you can’t ever have a soda, candy bar, or caffè latte? You absolutely can. Instead of having them every day, you’ll enjoy them in moderation by having them occasionally.
Do you love desserts and sweets? Try reducing the portion. Instead of a bowl of ice cream, try a spoonful to satisfy your cravings. Do you like the crunch of chips or other junk food? Substitute them with cut vegetables or fruit.
How you eat your meals can also help you lose weight. Eat those non-starchy vegetables and protein-rich foods first. Then, eat those carbohydrate-rich sides. Since it takes your body time to tell your brain you’re full, eat slower by chewing those bites more and drinking in between. When you start to feel full, stop eating. If it’s too hard to leave food on your plate, prepare your plate with smaller portions.
Stay Mindful Of Your Choices
When you eat or drink, take a moment to reflect on your choice and whether it aligns with your efforts. Even if it is a cookie or another of your favorite snacks, you can still succeed if you are intentional about your choices. Eating those foods occasionally and in moderation still lets you work towards your goals and enjoy your favorite treats now and then. If you realize you’re starting to indulge more frequently, recognize what’s happening and substitute your choice.
This part is always tricky at first. However, it takes practice and patience to make progress. Be kind to yourself while you work through your choices. In time, you will gradually shift your diet and reduce your caloric intake and cravings, resulting in a slow but steady decrease in your weight.
Start Exercising
Changing your diet helps reduce your caloric intake. Burning more calories than you consume will result in weight loss. You don’t have to do much exercise to make a difference. Start by going for a brisk walk or casual bike ride. Both are great exercises for burning extra calories without going all out.
You can succeed without doing exercises that burn the most calories. You don’t have to run or do other workouts you don’t like. Instead, find activities you enjoy, and it won’t feel like a chore. Exercise can help you lose weight, but it aims to help you become fitter by increasing your endurance, strength, and flexibility.
Getting Fit
Exercising can improve your fitness level without changing your diet. It burns extra calories, which may be enough to help you gradually lose weight. However, it can be daunting to start again if you have never exercised before or it has been a while since you last exercised.
When you feel determined to start exercising, you must start slowly. Making steady improvements will help build consistency, which is critical to your success. Otherwise, you risk making common mistakes such as doing too much too fast, making radical lifestyle changes, and expecting too much too soon.
Strategies For Getting Fit
Start Small
The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity weekly. On two or more of those days, you should also engage in muscle-strengthening activities with major muscle groups. When you first start out or start over, forget those recommendations and focus on doing any amount of exercise.
Your initial goal should be to shift your mindset to be more active. You don’t have to lace up your shoes and run an hour every day. Instead, start with a 15-minute brisk walk, and try to do that consistently over most days of the week. If you need to take a day off to recover, do so. Don’t worry. One or two days will not erase all your effort.
Gradually Increase Your Workload
You’ll notice your workout getting easier once you consistently exercise, no matter what and how much you’re doing. That’s a sign you’re getting more fit! Now is the time to increase your workload a little. If you’re doing aerobic exercises like walking or running, add more time and distance or pick up the pace. In time, you’ll be able to do more, such as turning those 15-minute walks into 45-minute runs or 5 push-ups into 50. Don’t try to do too much too quickly. That will only lead to frustration, burnout, or injury.
Track Your Progress
Unfortunately, you can’t remember everything related to your goals. So, you’ll need to track yourself to know if you’re making progress. Tracking your progress isn’t difficult and is vital for your success. You can use a notepad, journal, or app to track your effort.
Tracking your progress gives you a birdseye view of all your workouts. Not only will you see your progress unfold, but you may notice early indicators of trouble. You may even learn what works and what does not. In fact, you may also create your own rules and guidelines to help you achieve future goals more quickly.
When starting out, start by tracking the days you exercise, what you did, how long you exercised, such as total time or distance, and a summary of how you felt about your workout. You can record more relevant information from your workouts as you become more fit or shift your fitness goals. By reviewing your notes routinely, you may notice trends in your workouts. Tracking your progress is essential because it helps you make decisions based on feedback.
Never Force Yourself To Exercise
When you don’t like the exercises you’re doing, it makes it harder to exercise regularly. Forcing yourself to do exercises you don’t like will almost guarantee you’ll stop exercising or end up injuring yourself. How can you have fun exercising if you don’t like what you’re doing? The simple answer is you can’t. Instead, you should find workouts that you enjoy. If it increases your heart rate, it counts as exercise! If you don’t like running, biking, swimming, or practicing yoga, don’t do them.
You never know what fun new workouts you may discover. Strive to find more than one exercise you enjoy so you can alternate or give yourself another option when you need one. When you enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll be surprised at how fast those exercise minutes add up and how quickly you’ll improve your overall health.
The Takeaway
Maintaining a healthy weight and regularly exercising are essential to your overall well-being. Losing weight and getting fit help reduce your chances of certain diseases and promote a positive outlook on yourself and life. It may seem overwhelming initially, but you can improve your chances of success by making small, gradual changes to your diet and getting exercise from activities you enjoy.
Although both goals will improve your health, the best strategy with the most benefits is engaging in regular exercise and eating a reasonable and balanced diet.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
