How many times have you resolved to lose weight, only to put it off because it seems like too difficult of a goal? You’re not alone. Weight loss, if done in a healthy manner, is far easier and long-lasting than many people realize. Interested in finding out more? Read on!

An important part of any weight loss journey is learning to control your own food. This means learning to cook from scratch, so that you know exactly what’s going into the foods you eat. Also, cooking from scratch will let you replace high-calorie ingredients such as cream, with lower-calorie ones such as skim milk.

You can supplement your weight loss plan by adding extra steps into your day. When you go to the grocery store or to work, park further away from the building than you usually do. By doing this small thing, over time those steps add up to extra calories burned and extra pounds shed.

Weight loss will go faster if you hold the bread. Eating out is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately when you eat out, waiters quickly shuffle over with chips, dips, mixes, and hot loaves of bread. Do not accept them. Send them back if you have to. Your waist will thank you.

A great way to help you lose weight is to try eating brown rice instead of white rice. White rice is high glycemic which means it’s more likely to be stored as fat in your body. Brown rice however is low glycemic, which means it burns a lot longer and gives you energy.

To avoid temptations and improve weight loss results, you should avoid keeping foods that are outside of your dietary guideline, in your home. By keeping distractions such as sweets or chips out of the house, you can reduce your desire to eat these items. By reducing the desire and in effect, the amount of these types of foods consumed, you will have improved weight loss results.

To get to your optimal weight, you need to get on a workout schedule. In order to do this, you must plan what muscle groups you will be working out each day. You should target maybe two or three muscle groups, tops and allow about three days rest before working those groups again.

In the same way that you need to monitor what you eat when trying to lose weight, you also need to weigh yourself regularly. This is because you need to give yourself reason to set and achieve goals in order to stay motivated. Be sure to record your starting weight so that you’ll know how far you have to go. Also, how often to weigh is up to you. Some people recommend daily weighing, but most would agree that since weight can go up and down so dramatically from day to day, it’s actually discouraging to weigh too often. A less stressful approach would be to weigh in once every 1 or 2 weeks – or even once a month.

Before you go nuts and change your lifestyle all together, try listing all of the things you are doing wrong. What I mean by this, is making a list of the foods you are eating and how much of each food that you are eating. From there, reduce the amount to what best fits you.

When eating protein, some people like a more flavorful choice. Instead of adding sour cream or some other creamy sauce, put some salsa or chutney on your protein. This will bring a huge kick to your flavor, without adding extra fat and calories that you really do not need.

Becoming an active person when trying to lose weight is a great idea, and an easy way you can increase your activity is to become a social butterfly. If you can attend festivals, visit flea markets or swap meets, or participate in any activity where you’re out and about, make going out your alternative to watching TV.

Ditch the apple juice. Believe it or not, a small glass of apple juice has as many calories as 3 apples. Also, drinking apple juice regularly, will increase your chance of getting diabetes, due to the huge amount of sugar. Another reason to choose the fruit rather than the juice is the fiber content, which is removed when processing juice.

If you are going to order a salad while eating out at a restaurant, you should ask them to put the salad dressing on the side. Most restaurants use twice as much as they should so this will give you the chance to control how much of it you actually consume.

Don’t take our word for it, though – try some of these tips out for yourself! Many people are unaware that weight loss can be achieved with far less work than one might think. So give it a try. And before you know it, you could be coming up with some tips of your own!