Making small changes to your mornings can help with weight loss and keep those pounds off. Here are 7 uncomplicated morning habits you can start incorporating into your weight loss routine:
PRACTICE MINDFULNESS OR MINDFUL-EATING
Mindfulness involves putting your entire focus on the present and bringing awareness to your feelings and thoughts.
Ever heard of mindful eating? This invovles increasing your awareness about when and how much to eat using internal cues to guide you, as opposed to your visual cues.
Try to give full attention to what you eat, savoring each bite, acknowledging what you like and don't like, and not eating when distracted. Doing this will ensure that you will develop more self-control to your eating habits!
Research suggests that the more mindful you are, the less likely you are to overeat in response to visual or external cues like food ads, super-sized portions and 24/7 food availability (fast food joints).
START TRACKING YOUR CALORIES
Similarly to weighing yourself every morning it's a good habit to keep a food diary to track what you eat and keep yourself accountable. Doing so is an effective way to lose weight, as one study of 123 people revealed that having a food journal was linked to improved weight loss (12).
In addition you will be able to track down what you need to cut out or how much calories you're unnecessarily cutting out, for a healthy weight loss routine.
DRINK PLENTY OF WATER IN THE MORNING
Starting your morning with a glass cup of water is an easy but effective way to enhance your weight loss efforts.
Water can increase your calorie burning rate for at least an hour. Drinking a bottled water can lead to a 30% increase in your metabolic rate on average (3).
If you want to lose pounds without any additional dieting or exercise involved, you can shed some pounds just by drinking an average of 34 ounces (2 water bottles) per day (4).
Every little bit counts!
HAVE MORE PROTEIN FOR BREAKFAST
Breakfast is commonly known to be the most important meal of the day. Having your morning breakfast can set you up for the entire day and it will determine if you'll feel satisfied and full until lunchtime, or if you'll be heading to the nearest fast food joint before it even gets to lunchtime.
What you can do is eat foods high in protein. Wait what?!
Now this may sound a little odd but there's some science that actually backs this up and studies suggest a high-protein breakfast can help reduce food cravings as well as helping with weight loss.
For example, 20 late-adolescant young women in a 2014 study were given specific breakfast meals with low or high protein content and were asked to consume these at home between 7:00am and 9:30am for an entire week. The study's findings showed that those who consumed higher amounts of protein meals tended to have far less savory cravings than those who consumed normal amounts (1, 2).
Don't know where to start? You can start with protein sources like nuts, chia seeds, eggs and Greek yogurt.
GET IN THE HABIT OF WEIGHING YOURSELF
Weighing yourself and stepping on the scale every morning can be an effective way to increase motivation and improve self-control.
Knowing the fact that you shed a pound or two in the past week is a sure motivation to keep your momentum running!
In addition, studies even show that people who weigh themselves daily lose more than those who don't (5).
So what happens to the people who hardly weigh themselves at all? They gain weight (6).
According to experts, the best time to weigh yourself in the day is in the morning, right after you empty your bladder and before you eat your breakfast.
It's apparently a healthy habit to adopt. So, get your scale on!
EAT SMALLER PORTIONS
Most people need to consume between 1200 to 1500 calories on a daily basis if they want to shed pounds in a healthier and sustainable way.
But for many others, monitoring portion sizes as well as skipping dessert or going back for seconds is one of the simplest ways to decrease their calorie consumption.
INCORPORATE EXERCISE IN YOUR MORNINGS
More commonly, one of the most effective ways to lose weight is to excercise regularly. Getting your workout done in the morning can fasten your weight loss goal.
A study conducted on a group of 50 overweight women showed that exercising in the morning was linked to a higher level of fullness, as opposed to those who exercised in the afternoon (9).
