Discusses the seven essential keys to losing weight and keeping it off.

As a weight-loss expert, I am often asked: What are the keys to losing weight? or What are your best weight-loss strategies? Every time I am asked this question, I give a different answer because weight loss is so complex and multi-faceted. Well, today, I decided to flesh out the most important strategies. These keys provide a great foundation and an excellent start.

The Top 7 Weight-Loss Keys

• Diet
• Exercise
• Water
• Sleep
• Stress
• Laughter
• Patience

Key #1 – Diet

Calories

Estimate your daily caloric intake by:

1. Taking your height in inches
2. Subtracting 60
3. Multiplying by 50
4. Adding 1300

• Never eat fewer than 1200 calories a day. This prevents your metabolism from slowing down.
• Spread your daily calories over 4 – 6 meals. This will boost your metabolism.
• Never go more than 12 hours without eating, this includes time spent sleeping. This prevents your metabolism from slowing down.

Carbohydrates - Follow these strategies to stabilize your blood sugar.Avoid white carbs. These include white bread, white rice, white potatoes, white flour, white sugar, and white pasta. Avoid other bad carbs such as high fructose corn syrup, other syrups, and other sugars. Eat your beans, other legumes, fruits, and whole-grains before noon. Eat your vegetables after noon

Proteins – Eating protein boosts your metabolism and is essential for building muscle.

Estimate your daily protein intake in grams by:

1. Taking your estimated daily caloric intake
2. Dividing by 20

Fats – You need fats, but all fats were not created equal.Avoid saturated fats and trans fats

Key #2 – Exercise

• Strength train for 30 – 45 minutes, 2-3 times a week. Focus on exercises for your glutes (butt), quads (front thigh), hamstrings (rear thigh), lats (back), pecs (chest), and delts (shoulders). These are your largest muscles in size and your biggest calorie burners.
• Do an aerobic exercise, which involves the legs, for 30 minutes, 2-3 times a week.
• Get a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps a day

Key #3 – Water

Drink enough water to make your urine clear or close to clear. This helps to maintain your health and prevent your metabolism from slowing down.

Key #4 – Sleep

Sleep at least 7 hours every night. This helps to maintain your proper hormonal balance, stabilize your blood sugar, and decrease hunger.

Key #5 – Stress

Don’t sweat the small stuff and eliminate as much stress as you can. This helps to maintain your proper hormonal balance, stabilize your blood sugar, and decrease hunger.

Key #6 – Laugh

Laugh as much as humanly possible. Watch comedies, read funny books, and laugh at yourself. This helps to decrease stress.

Key #7 – Patience

Be patient. Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint. Large temporary lifestyle changes lead to fast temporary weight loss. Small permanent lifestyle changes lead to slow permanent weight loss.

Each of these keys is essential to losing and keeping off the pounds. If you address the first 6 keys and practice patience, the pounds will fall off and stay off.

Bonus Key

This is a good weight loss foundation. However for a comprehensive and inexpensive weight loss program, check out the ‘Don’t Go Broke’ Weight Loss Plan.

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