I’m by no means a personal trainer or dietician but I am someone who’s lost weight and more importantly – fat. The daily weight loss habits in this post are what’s worked for me and so there’s no guarantee they’ll work for you too but I am certain they will help in some way or at least give you some inspiration.
Like many, my weight crept up without me realising it until I was about 10 pounds overweight for my height. I’d tried to diet in the past but nothing ever really stuck. I’d soon go back to my bad habits of binging on junk at the weekends or drinking too much beer in the evenings.
I finally managed to build daily habits for weight loss due to creating new habit loops.
I first identified a specific goal and then changed my environment and routine so losing weight would be as easy as it could be. In this post, I’ll describe the simple, small and achievable habits I built for losing weight gradually.
These are simple, realistic habits you can start today and over time they could make a big difference, just like they have for me.
1. Download MyFitnessPal
This is probably the most important thing you’ll ever do if you want to build daily habits for weight loss. MyFitnessPal will calculate your daily calories for you for your desired goal weight. All you have to do is stick to those calories everyday al you will likely lose weight. The way you do this is by tracking your meals and snacks. Their built-in database of food makes it easy to find what you’ve eaten and you’ll then get a total calorie count for the day.
The best part is, the app is completely free to use. Whilst you may not want to count your daily calories (I never could be bothered), MyFitnessPal makes it very easy to do. You’ll also get push notifications to remind you to log your breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Doing this daily soon becomes second nature.
2. Stay topped up with healthy foods
The second daily habit for weight loss is making sure you have proper food. There’s no point buying healthy food to last you a few days only to run out during the week. You have to have healthy, fresh food constantly available to you otherwise you run the risk of falling off.
When I decided to lose weight I removed any junk food I had in my cupboards and filled them with brown rice and protein shakes. I stuffed my fridge with fresh meat and broccoli. The use of protein shakes can be highly beneficial for those who want to fuel their fitness journey without having to stop and make food all the time. To accompany this, people can also turn to supplements to achieve their goals, however there is a lot out there to try so it may be wise to look at some Unify Health Labs reviews and other similar content to help people make the decision about that would be best for them.
Your environment dictates the cues for your habits to trigger whether good or bad. If your environment remains the same, you can never implement new daily habits for weight loss. Your routine will be the same old unhealthy routine and you’ll quickly go back to your old eating habits.
Make things so easy for yourself that there is no room for finding excuses.
3. Make sure at least 50% of your meals are unprocessed
Another great daily habit for weight loss is to make sure that at least half of your meals are coming from unprocessed foods. When I first rummaged through my cupboards and freezer it soon became apparent that most of what I was eating was highly processed food that had lots of added fats and sugars. Even the things like protein oat bars had tons of added sugar.
Truth be told, it’s very hard to find boxed and canned foods that haven’t had lots of extra things added to them!
My idea was simple – add fresh meat and vegetables to my meals instead of pre-prepared meals with sugary sauces. To keep things interesting I decided to add hot or spicy sauces to my meals to avoid them being too bland.
If you build your meals around unprocessed, natural foods, you’re instantly cutting out a whole bunch of calories that you don’t need. These stealthy calories add up quickly.
Once a good chunk of your meals are unprocessed, you can then up all of your meals to include plenty of unprocessed meats, veg and nuts, for example.
4. Season everything
If you’re not used to eating lean meats and vegetables on a regular basis, you may find these foods very bland. I’ve seen lots of people start a diet only to fall off after a couple of days because they aren’t enjoying the food in their new routine. It’s hard to stick to a much plainer diet of lean meats and veg if you’re used to eating sugary foods and soda, for example.
However, these foods don’t have to be boring. Make sure you add salt and pepper to everything and have a look in your local store for different sauces. the key is to find low-calorie sauces as many are packed with calories.
A good daily habit is to find different flavour combinations that you won’t mind eating every day.
5. Escape the sandwich trap
This next habit leads on from point number three. Ever since I was seven years old, my lunch would consist of a sandwich, a pack of potato chips and a chocolate bar. Even when you go to a large store there’s generally always a meal deal that consists of the same things. That’s understandable if you’re a child but when you get older, this type of lunch will likely not be nutritious enough to sustain your body. Worse still, it will likely make you gain weight.
It’s understandable therefore that most people will opt to grab a sandwich for lunch each day, hence why I call it the ‘sandwich trap’. Whilst a good old sandwich is a tasty option, it’s not the best option for you. In fact, if you buy sandwiches from a store, they’re probably packed with a bunch of bad ingredients for weight loss.
A better habit would be to not differentiate between your lunch and dinner. There’s no reason to not eat lean meat and vegetables at lunchtime as well as dinner time. This is a daily habit for weight loss that was a real game-changer for me. Packing my lunches with fibre and lean proteins instead of stodgy carbs helped me to lose weight over the course of months.
Again, I believe you should try to integrate natural foods into as many meals as you can. You get the weight loss benefit but also the benefit of all of the fibre and vitamins.
6. Learn to cook
Personally, I love to cook with fresh ingredients but in the past, I could never be bothered. I enjoy using fresh vegetables and pilling them together for a notorious lunch or dinner. I can’t see a way around losing weight unless you learn how to cook. If you make all your own meals, you know exactly what you’re eating and therefore you’ll be able to track your calories with ease.
The best thing to do is look online for healthy meals. There’s an unlimited amount of recipes that are easy to follow and you’re bound to find meals that you will like. For example, I’ve found so many easy, healthy recipes to cook by watching Gordon Ramsay and scrolling through the BBC Good Food website.
You might think that cooking your own meals takes a long time but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Many easy, healthy meals take no longer than 20 minutes to cook which is the same amount of time it takes for most takeouts to arrive at your door.
Learning to cook is one of the most important daily habits for weight loss because eating is something you have to do every day. You have the ultimate control of everything you put in your body when you learn to cook for yourself.
You never know, you might even start to grow a passion for cooking!
7. Stop eating when you’re full
It sounds obvious but how often do you overeat just because your taste buds are having a great time? Most of the meals I used to eat were huge, probably big enough for two people. I was always told to finish my plate but the truth is, my plates were always too big.
Something I’ve learned is that you really don’t need much on your plate to get by. I would always overeat out of habit or worse, boredom. A good way to start eating your food is to practise mindful eating. This means taking your time as you eat and listening to how your body reacts. When you feel full, stop eating. Your stomach will let you know when you’ve had enough. You’ll then have a good idea of how much you should eat during your next meal.
8. Drink water with every meal
Another daily habit for weight loss is drinking water with every meal. Better still, drink water before every meal. If you feel hungry you may be surprised after you drink some water. Half the time you might just be thirsty. Water is also very dense so it helps to fill your stomach and let your brain know you’re getting full. You’ll be less likely to overeat when you begin your meal.
Staying hydrated is also extremely important for bodily functions so increasing your water intake daily cannot hurt and may just help you lose weight.
9. Do some kind of exercise
Whilst exercise isn’t going to be as effective as dieting, it’s a great aid for weight loss. Even if you set a target of 5k steps a day you need to move your body in some way. This is a small habit that is easy to achieve rather than aiming to go to the gym every day.
I was lucky enough to buy an exercise bike in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Having it in the front room has allowed me to have an easy way to exercise rather than having the hurdle of going to the gym to use a bike that lots of people are waiting for. I made it easy for myself and as a result, I’ve kept up the habit of using it a few times a week to this day.
If you’re going to spend your evening watching TV, you may as well spend some time on your bike or treadmill whilst you’re doing it. You don’t always have to associate exercise with going too far out of your comfort zone. If you’re new to exercise, make it easy for yourself to begin with. Integrate it into your daily life in a way that makes sense for you.
The key is to find a way of being active each day.
10. Listen/watch/read
Another daily habit that helped me lean down was getting into the right mindset. This meant watching videos of other people that had lost weight and finding out what they did. I also read a bunch of articles that are freely available online about the principles of weight loss.
Essentially, I surrounded myself with the right information to motivate myself on a daily basis. Although I had read a lot of information about weight loss in the past, I never really applied it in daily life. The truth is, everyone has their own opinions about how to lose weight but by gathering information from different sources, you can quickly see where the cross-overs are and then apply the things that are commonly talked about in your daily routine.
Doing daily research is so helpful because you’ll learn so much along the way. You’ll no doubt learn about the benefits of fasting and veganism, for example. You can take core principles from different areas and try them out.
11. Don’t snack
A lot of people snack throughout the day and between larger meals due to boredom. I was no different. In fact, I’d often eat several bags of potato chips between breakfast and lunch. However, it was only until I started eating larger breakfasts that I stopped snacking so much. Snacking adds a bunch of extra calories that you don’t need.
Snack bars that look innocent enough can easily add 250 calories more to your daily total. By the end of the day, that can tip you over your daily calorie total and cause you to keep gaining weight.
If your total daily calorie intake is 2000 calories, snacking can add up quickly.
12. Don’t drink your calories (if you can help it)
The debate as to whether drinking a glass of wine a day is good or bad for you is never-ending however one thing is for sure, alcohol is packed with empty calories. These are ’empty calories because they have no nutritious value at all. They are just units of energy that are very easily absorbed into your fat cells.
That’s just a basic example of why alcohol calories are bad for you. The bottom line is that alcohol is a great way to get fat quickly.
When I was trying to lose weight I still had a drink here and there but only drank alcohol on the weekend. When I did have a drink I didn’t go mad.
13. Listen to how your body feels after eating
Whenever I eat a big plate of carbs like rice, my stomach feels achy and bloated the next day. If I eat too many green vegetables at once, my stomach feels similar. I’ve had to learn to listen to my stomach. Do you get indigestion after eating pasta? Maybe eat less and see if you still feel sore.
Your stomach will tell you when it’s full but it will also tell you when it doesn’t agree with something you’ve eaten.
A good daily habit for weight loss overall is to keep a daily food diary. This way you can log everything you have eaten and be able to identify what made your stomach hurt. You can easily do this with MyFitnessPal or you could get yourself a physical food journal.
14. Create better habits to stay busy
To keep your mind from food, consider starting a new habit or hobby to fill your time. As mentioned, I think a lot of people eat too much due to boredom. However, part of the success of my weight loss has been making food ‘less important’. By that, I mean getting it out of my mind and only thinking about it when I’m actually hungry.
Creating better habits is a way of preoccupying yourself. It doesn’t matter what you do. It could be writing, cycling, swimming or dancing. Find anything that stops you from sitting around for too long.
15. Opt for black coffee
Things like milk and cream can cause a lot of stomach upset without you realising that they are to blame for your potential digestion issues. I used to use milk in my coffee for the taste but soon decided to skip it altogether and go for a simple black coffee in the mornings. I had less stomach upsets and felt better alround.
Cream and whiteners are additional ingredients that you don’t need and they have lots of added calories. Fancy coffees like these from Starbucks can sometimes add up to 200+ calories per coffee. That’s a huge chunk of your daily calorie allowance in one drink. If you grab one for breakfast and lunch you’re looking at close to a whopping 500 calories.
I didn’t used to like the bitter taste of black coffee but now it’s second nature to pour one in the mornings. The best part is, black coffees are virtually 0 calories!
Daily habits for weight loss
I personally didn’t use all of these habits for weight loss when I first started. Instead, I started with a few habits and only once I had mastered them I added more and more until my daily routine was 100% better than it had been when I was eating junk and not caring about what I was putting into my body.
They key with starting new habits is to start with one that is easy and rewarding. If you only add one of these daily habits into your routine you’ll see a benefit and that one benefit will motivate you to keep adding in more and more habits.