It seems hard to believe, but for some reason we want the path to weight loss to be difficult… We want to sweat our keisters off 5 days each week, starve ourselves on a daily basis, and eliminate anything from our diet that has any taste to it.
If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself: Um… No, I don’t WANT to do this. But unfortunately it is the ONLY way for me to lose weight! Well then keep reading because we are going to talk about THREE easy things that you can be doing on a daily basis that will speed your process to cut down that waistline. The unfortunate part is that they are going to seem SO easy that you aren’t going to them, and that’s because you apparently want to suffer for every pound you lose…
EASY WEIGHT LOSS TOOL #1: Improve your sleep quality.
You’ve heard it once. You’ve heard it twice. You’ve heard it so many times that you tune it out like you did Mom asking you to clean your room. Sleep is when our body and mind recover from a full day of building up inflammation in the muscles, joints, and brain. When we sleep poorly this recovery is stunted and the day of inflammation is not entirely dissipated. So we carry it into the next day… and the next… and the next!
Any guess what chronic inflammation in the body leads to? If you guessed that it leads to you going up pant size, then you nailed it friend! In Shawn Stevenson’s new book Eat Smarter, he references the result of chronic inflammation multiple times, and the effect it has on increasing visceral and subcutaneous fat storage. Unfortunately, a trip over to Mark’s Work Wearhouse for a new pair of painted on denim jeans isn’t the most detrimental effect of allowing chronic inflammation to build up in the body. You won’t have to search too many health journals to hear a reference to systemic inflammation listed as a leading cause for fatigue, decreased immune health, increased aging, dementia, and cancer to name a few!
If reducing the effects of chronic inflammation in your body isn’t motivation enough, here’s another fun factoid for you. A study documented in The British Medical Journal found that the majority of our fat “loss” occurs in breathing out carbon dioxide. And any guess where approximately 33% of that weight loss via exhaling occurs?? Yup, a full night of restful sleep.
So if you’re sleeping less than 7 hours a night, restless at night, or waking up tired, then it is time to seek out tips on improving your sleep quality and start helping yourself lose that lingering fat!
EASY WEIGHT LOSS TOOL #2: Reduce Chronic Stressors.
Stress is a natural part of life. Can’t avoid it. Vary natural and important to our survival. What is NOT natural, is the CHRONIC stress that the majority of us face on a daily basis. Stress stimulates the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the body to respond with the “Fight-or-Flight '' response that allows us to survive attacks from predators and battle foriegn invaders to our immune system. But in today’s world we face similar stress in the form of work stress, personal stress, relationship stress, physical stress, environmental stress, and even nutritional stress! As a result, many of us have our “Fight-or-Flight'' response turned on far more often than we have it turned off! Which leads us back to chronic inflammation, weight gain, and increased chance of disease…
Some of our best methods of reducing chronic stress in our lives is a quality night of sleep, regular breathwork, meditation, journaling, and even just talking to a loved one about your stress. Adding in 1 or 2 of these simple practices won’t just help you lose those pesky inches, it will literally help to save your life!
EASY WEIGHT LOSS TOOL #3: Drink More Water.
You don’t drink enough. A study out of New York in 2020 found that only 22% of individuals drink the recommended amount of water in a day… That’s just nuts.
Water aids in just about every chemical reaction that takes place in our body. This includes breaking stored fat down into energy. Query for you my friends, if YOU were the one in charge of what reactions to prioritize inside your body with a very limited supply of water provided by your dumb-dumb body pilot, where exactly would you put “weight-loss” on this list:
Heartbeat
Breathing
Basic Brain Function
Basic Movement
Heating the Body
Digestion
Transitioning Fat into Fuel (i.e. *Weight-loss)
The simple solution: Bring a 500mL water bottle to work and drink 4-6 of them each day
So simple, yet so many of us ignore these crucial components to any weight loss strategy. Start with nailing down two of the aforementioned three, you have nothing to loose - just any unwanted weight!
Love,
Coach Luc