If you think losing a few pounds (or quite a few pounds) in time for swimsuit season is a hopeless cause, I feel your pain. Most of us have struggled to lose weight at one time or another.
Diets are an intensely personal thing. No diet is best for every person.
Exercise alone won’t make you lose weight. It will help, though, combined with diet, and you don’t need to join an expensive gym.
Depending on your own preferences, you may want to take up walking. For several years, I’ve used a recumbent bike kind of like this Schwinn A25 four days a week. You could try the Bowflex Max Trainer
or even use workout videos in your living room.
I’ve put together a list of diets that work. Maybe one is right for you!
This post may contain affiliate links; please read my disclosure here.
No Counting Calories or Restricting Portions
If most diets leave you so hungry that you’re about to gnaw off an arm, have I got the diet for you. Ever heard of the Dukan Diet? Chance are that you haven’t, since the diet hasn’t caught on nearly as well in the U.S. as it has overseas.
Other diets failed me because I was always hungry. Even when I was eating a low-fat diet and exercising, I either couldn’t lose weight or even slowly found my weight creeping up.
The Dukan Diet is the only diet that has worked for me long-term, meaning, I’ve stayed on it for years to prevent gaining back all the weight I lost. I admit that like with any diet, the Dukan Diet seems very restrictive at first.
There are a lot of foods that you can’t eat. After about three or four weeks, though, it becomes much easier. I used to love sweets, but I haven’t had birthday cake or donuts in years. And I don’t care.
Sure, they look tasty, but I’m not really tempted. I just know I don’t eat those things. People will say things like, oh, you have such willpower, but seriously, there’s very little willpower involved after the first few weeks.
Eat as much as you like of food and lose weight with Dukan Diet. Learn more at DukanDiet.com.
The main reason the Dukan Diet worked for me (and continues to work) is that I never have to feel hungry. If my stomach growls, there are numerous things I can eat. The secret is to ALWAYS have acceptable snacks on hand at home and at work. These include fat free yogurt (such as Yoplait Light) and low-fat cheese sticks (such as Weight Watchers mozzarella).
No Cooking Special Meals or Measuring Portions
One of the tough things about diets for many folks is the time involved in preparing special foods and measuring the right portions. It’s so much easier to cruise through a drive through or microwave a convenience meal!
With Medifast, you buy all of your meals and snacks for two weeks or a month at a time for as little as $10 a day for the first 30-day order. They offer a wide selection of foods and diets to fit any age, health condition or lifestyle. Plus, satisfaction is 100% guaranteed.
The 30-day select kit contains more than 125 Medifast meals, including a sampling of 12 Flavors of Home lean and green meals. You’ll get cookie dough chewy bars, chicken flavored noodle soup, pancakes, Dutch chocolate shakes and more. Plus, there’s a dining out guide, food journal, plan guide, blender bottle and healthy living workbook. For a limited time, you can try Medifast Achieve for $149 or get Medifast Achieve for $10/day.
Gourmet Meals From Your Personal Weight Loss Chef
With Bistro MD, you can customize your nutritionally balanced, gourmet meals with physician-designed diet food plans for women and men. You can choose from among various plans such as weekdays only or seven days a week. They have specialized plans for menopause, diabetes and gluten free eating.
Meals include cranberry and chestnut stuffed chicken breast, four cheese ravioli, beef stroganoff and beef with red wine sauce and roasted vegetables. All you have to do is warm up the meals and eat them.
Weight Loss Supplements
Among all the available weight loss supplements on the market, there’s at least one that actually works, with some caveats. FBCx Weight Management Tablets work by absorbing fat from food so that the calories aren’t processed, potentially removing up to 500 calories a day from what you eat.
FBCx weight loss supplements are cheap (about $39.99) and easy to use – just follow the directions on the package to take the correct number of tablets before a high-fat meal. The main drawback is that they can cause intestinal upset (generally gas) in some people, particular if you take too many or take them with a meal that isn’t high in fat.
The pills won’t help you lose a lot of weight quickly, and they won’t help make up for eating a bunch of cookies or a candy bar. If most of your calories come from sugar, pasta, bread or other refined carbs, FBCx probably won’t boost your weight loss much. What they can do is give you a hand if you’re following a low-fat diet and fall off the wagon occasionally.
Lose a Few Pounds Quickly & On the Cheap
The old standby for quick weight loss, SlimFast, is much different than it was several years ago. SlimFast Advanced Nutrition High Protein Meal Replacement Shakes are much more filling than their predecessors that aren’t high in protein, and you won’t get hungry again as quickly.
SlimFast is still available at your local grocery store, Walmart or drug store at a relatively low price. In my experience, slow and steady wins the race when it comes to weight loss.
However, sometimes you may want to lose a few pounds for a vacation, wedding, party or other special event. Maybe you don’t have time to mess with special meals or money to send for pre-fab weight loss meals.
You’ll want to make sure you buy some of SlimFast’s snack options, too, in case you’re feeling peckish on a morning when a coworker has left donuts in the kitchen. No matter what diet plan you choose, it’s important to have a substitute around so that you’re not tempted to grab a sweet treat out of habit or hunger.
You can lose weight using SlimFast without spending more than you’d normally spend on food for yourself. SlimFast also offers a wide variety of shake flavors plus snack bars and other diet food items.
How About You?
Have you struggled to lose weight? What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked? What do people need to watch out for when trying to lose weight?
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