10 Great Tips For Summer Weight Loss

Below you will find 10 tips for summer weight loss.

1 / Cut The Crap!

Say goodbye to McDonalds and Burger King and say hello to homemade cooking. This should be a no-brainer but people still think that if they go to the gym they can eat whatever they want. WRONG!

If you are serious about summer weight loss, you need to kiss all fast food joints goodbye. Not only are these places loaded with calories but also the fat content in them is enough to stop your heart instantly.

If you haven’t watched the movie Super-size Me, you need to go rent it today and watch it. If you don’t get sick watching that movie and seeing for yourself that McDonalds French fries can last well over three months without sprouting any mold, then you honestly don’t have all systems firing in your brain.

2 / Cook At Home

When eating out you never really know how your food is prepared. Therefore, your best bet is to prepare and cook your own food if you want the best results with your summer weight loss. When you eat out many of the foods you are ingesting are cooked in butter or other fattening ingredients, which is exactly the stuff you want to stay away from.

Do we even need to get into all the fried foods that are out there? You want to talk about a heart attack waiting to happen… fried foods throw up the red light. STAY AWAY! Your best bet for cooking at home can be anything from grilling your foods, steaming your foods, and even baking your foods.

Portion sizes are another issue with eating out. When you eat out and see the food on your plate, your natural instinct is to finish everything on it. Did you stop to think about how many calories you just took in eating that whole plate? Probably not. If summer weight loss is your goal, you need portion control.

This is a quick and easy fix by simply preparing all of your food at home. Not only will you know exactly how your food is prepared, but you can make sure everything is portioned out correctly.

The American Cancer Society created a great visual to ensure proper portion control by naming objects that correspond to correct portion sizes.

• 1 oz. meat: size of a matchbox
• 3 oz. meat: size of a deck of cards or bar of soap-the recommended portion for a meal
• 8 oz. meat: size of a thin paperback book
• 3 oz. fish: size of a checkbook
• 1 oz. cheese: size of 4 dice
• Medium potato: size of a computer mouse
• 2 Tbs. peanut butter: size of a ping pong ball
• 1 cup pasta: size of a tennis ball
• Average bagel: size of a hockey puck
• Medium apple or orange: the size of a tennis ball
• 1 cup chopped raw vegetables or fruit: baseball size
• 1/4 cup dried fruit (raisins, apricots, mango): a small handful
• lunch-box size container of unsweetened applesauce
• cup of lettuce: four leaves
• 1/2 cup cooked or canned legumes (beans and peas)
• 5-6 baby carrots

Also, when you are eating at home, make sure you aren’t eating from a bag. The worst thing you can do is continually reach into a bag and keep eating and not know much you consumed. After no time at all, you can throw down a couple hundred calories and not even know it. Always take products out of the bag and portion it so you can track how much of something you ate.