Overweight / Obesity (I already work out)

There are numerous diets to choose from. If you don't know what diet to choose, or if you already tried a few diets and none of them worked for you, check this list of many popular diets with a short description and pick the one that is right for you.

This workout consists of intense cardio and weight exercises in a relatively short time frame. During a typical HIIT workout, you achieve high intensity that burns your calories for hours after your workout is done. It is exhausting but highly effective. Consult your doctor before you start with HIIT. Read more about HIIT at mensfitness.com

HIIT for beginners instruction video:

Just because a certain food is considered healthy, doesn't mean you can eat as much as you want. Healthy food still has calories. For example, almonds are considered healthy because they contain fiber, good fats, minerals, vitamins, and protein, but it is really easy to go into calorie surplus with them. A handful a day is enough.

Be especially careful with "healthy" processed food like canned food, low-fat cereals and dairy products, low-sugar/fat snacks, substitutes for butter (margarine, canola, soy or corn oils) etc. They claim to be healthy, but if you carefully read labels, you might get shocked.

Most cereals and dairy products that are low in fat, are high in sugar. Sorry to burst your bubble, but when you remove fat from yogurt, it tastes horrible. That is why manufacturers add sugar, various high-fructose syrups or artificial sweeteners.

Snacks that claim to be low in sugar, tend to be high in fat and contain artificial sweeteners that are connected to various diseases, including cancer.

Butter substitutes are industrially made vegetable oils (canola, corn, soy) and various kinds of margarine that bring disbalance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids to your body and are also filled with potentially cancerous ingredients. Use butter or homemade olive oil instead. Just like with any other food, all within reasonable limits.

Bottom line, stay away from the processed food as humanly possible, no matter how healthy it claims to be. Stick to the real, whole food.

A vegetarian diet is not specifically designed for weight loss, but this fiber-rich nutrition combined with regular workouts may support weight loss as a positive side product. Becoming a vegetarian won't make you lose weight all on its own. You still have to take care of your daily calorie intake and sugar and fat consumption.

For a healthy life, make sure that your everyday menu includes a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Try to reduce (as much as possible) intake of saturated and trans fats and replace them with unsaturated fats such as those found in various nuts and oils. And remember, no matter how healthy and diverse your diet is, if you eat more calories that your body can spend, you’ll gain weight.

Before becoming a vegetarian, consult your doctor. Read more about vegetarianism here.

Eating many small meals during the day means that the body can more easily burn every meal into energy, instead of harvesting the excess energy of large meals for later. This process is called metabolism. Read more about a correlation of metabolism and weight loss here.

• Soft and carbonated drinks are filled with sugars and artificial ingredients that give you extra calories without any nutritive value. Stop drinking them and switch to water or green tea. If you can't do it instantly, do it gradually. If you miss the flavour, you can add squeezed lemon in your water or tea.
• Alcoholic beverages add a lot of unnecessary calories and even suppress the ability of your metabolism to burn fat and make it harder for you to lose weight. Remove it completely from your diet or at least decrease consumption.
• Coffee on its own won't affect your weight much, but if you drink it with lots of cream and sugar, then it becomes a problem. If you drink several cups of coffee a day, those extra calories from sugar and cream can really add up. Gradually reduce sugar, cream and whatever else you put in your coffee until you start drinking it black or with low-fat milk.

If you can't survive without sugar (and pretty much all diets require you to give up sugar) and you simply must eat something sweet every day, let that something be in your breakfast and not in lunch or dinner. Of course, in reasonable limits. Your body is more likely to burn that breakfast sugar during your everyday activities (especially if you exercise) so you will be able to enjoy something sweet without feeling guilty while still losing weight.

Becoming dehydrated can signal your body that you are hungry. So try to drink a bit more than you normally would. When you feel hungry, and it's just been an hour or two after your last meal, instead of eating something, try drinking a full glass of water and see if that helps.

To get a sense of how much water is optimal, check out this table.

Being sleep deprived harms the way your body burns calories. Learn more about how sleep deprivation affects your weight here.

When you chew your food slowly, it takes you more time (naturally) to finish your meal which allows more time for your stomach to tell your brain that it is full. Not chewing properly (besides causing you digestion problems) allows you to put in your body lots of calories that you don't actually need because your brain hasn't had enough time to realise that you are full.

For more information about slow eating read here.

Personal trainers can help you create a training plan that is tailored to your current fitness, medical pre-condition and age. These training plans will be adapted as your fitness level evolves and trainers are also there to motivate you. You can ask around at your local gym or search online for a personal trainer.

Nutrition coaches can help you create a balanced nutrition plan that is tailored to your current fitness, medical condition and age. If you live in the USA, you can search for a nutritionist at Idea Fit. If you live in the UK, you can try with Nutritionist Resource.

Don't do only cardio, or only weight lifting. Mixing cardio training with weight lifting or body weight workout is the most efficient way to lose weight and get in shape. If you only do cardio, you could lose lots of muscle tissue along with your fat. So do any form of weight lifting to build up your muscles. Muscles use lots of energy, and besides making you look good, they can help you burn your fat even faster. If you only do weight lifting and you are still not happy with your weight, mix in some cardio for burning fat more efficiently.

Studies show that people that work towards the same goal with a partner (working out or maintaining a diet) are far more likely to stay on course and less likely to give up. For more information about benefits of working out with a partner read here.

Using apps that track your daily calorie intake or workout sessions can help you monitor and improve the way you consume and burn calories.

Some of the popular (and free) fitness apps are:

1. Strava (Android, iOS)
2. Endomondo (Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone)
3. Lose it! (Android, iOS, Kindle, Nook, web)
4. Map my fitness (Android, iOS, Windows Phone)
5. MyFitnessPal (Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, web)
6. Touchfit GSP (iOS)

There are many more fitness apps. Find one you like the best.

When you decide to lose weight, be careful about how you measure your success. If you focus only on weight loss, you might get depressed or disheartened for no good reason. Weight and BMI (Body Mass Index) are not a perfect way to evaluate your progress. Many top athletes  with well-defined muscles (including abs) and extraordinary physical abilities have over 200 pounds with BMI between 25 and 30. That would make them "overweight", which of course is not true.

When losing weight, you want to lose fat, not muscle. If you combine exercise with healthy eating, you could gain some extra muscle and your weight might not go down the way you expected it.

The best indicator that you are on the right track with losing weight is your waist size. See these instructions to learn how to properly measure your waist. Most of unused calories your metabolism doesn't spend are stored as fat in your abdominal region so when your waist size starts decreasing and your pants are getting too big, you know that you are doing a good job, regardless of what your scale says.

Salt makes you retain water which adds to your weight and makes you look bloated. If you are overweight, you are most likely eating too much salt. Refrain from  eating salty snacks, processed meat, canned food and anything with high amount of sodium. Recommended daily sodium intake is 2400 miligrams. Try not to go over it.

Studies show that eating in front of a TV makes you eat up to 300 calories more per meal. When watching TV, you eat mindlessly and don't even realise that you are full. When eating, focus just on eating your meal and proper chewing. Think about how much and what you eat. You will get full sooner.

When you are done eating dinner, brush your teeth to suppress late-night munching. People are less likely to eat anything after brushing teeth. First, most food tastes horrible if you eat it after brushing your teeth. Second, there is something about the perfect cleanliness of your mouth and teeth that you just don't want to ruin with eating and then having to brush your teeth all over again.

Drinking green tea has many positive effects on your body. One of them is boosting up your metabolism and make you burn up to 70 calories a day thanks to the antioxidants it contains. It might not seem like a lot, but every bit helps. Especially if you drink it instead of sodas.

Spicy food that contains hot peppers has a couple of effects on your metabolism:

1. It can increase your basal metabolic rate thanks to capsaicin, a component that gives hot peppers their hotness. Because capsaicin is an irritant for humans, every time you eat it in high doses, your body releases adrenaline which usually stimulates your metabolism and its capability of burning calories.
2.  It can act as an appetite suppressant. If you are not used to spicy food, adding hot peppers(Cayenne pepper for example) in your meals will make you eat less because you simply won't be able to eat in excess due to fieriness of the meal. 

Ignore this solution if you have a condition that doesn't allow you spicy food.

Several studies have concluded that certain colors can lower our appetite while other can increase it. Of all the colors, blue is considered to be the best appetite suppressant. This is due to the fact that rarely any food in its natural state is blue. So when we see blue, we don't connect it with something we would eat. This is how you can implement blue color in your kitchen or dining area:

• Paint your kitchen and dining room walls blue
• Put blue light in your fridge instead of a regular light
• Serve food on blue plates
• Cover your dining table with blue
• It's a bit extreme, but you can even dye your food blue using natural food coloring you can buy in every supermarket

Never eat snacks directly from large bags or boxes. When you do this, you have no sense of how much you ate. Also, many people eat as long as there is something to eat. So if you open a huge bag of chips, you just might eat all of it just because it was there.

If you can't resist snacks, at least portion it in a way that you separate a handful of snacks in a small bowl, put the rest of the bag away and don't touch until tomorrow.