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How To Plan Your Wedding And Lose Weight With A Smile!

5 Top Tips for Happy And Healthy Weight Loss In Time For The Big Day!

Fail to plan, plan to fail

The average wedding planning takes place over around 6 -12 months. If losing a little weight for the big day is on your agenda this can be incorporated as part of the actual wedding plan, quite easily. Many brides often leave it too late and by consequence don’t reach their goal, or, nearly kill themselves trying to reach their target weight. In the final preparations for a wedding, no one wants to be doing bootcamp workouts 7 days a week and eating 500 calories a day – it’s not healthy and just adds to your stress. Set realistic, small but achievable goals, and get going from the off which will keep you motivated in the long run! Exercise is recommended in moderation – little and often with a few short bursts of high intensity effort which will get your heart rate up and prolong fat burning for while even after you have stopped exercising. Even 20 minutes 3/4 times a week will make the difference. A healthy weight loss is around one pound per week, so keep this in mind when you consider how much weight you want to lose.

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Monitor your calorie intake

You must be in a calorie deficit each week, burning more than you consume, it really is that simple! You need to be in a deficit of approximately 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week. Fortunately, in this age of technology, we have a range of wonderful apps to help! I’d advise MyFitnessPal (it’s FREE). Enter all of your details and it will give you a daily calorie allowance that is specific to your goal and daily lifestyle. Log everything you eat and drink and you will quickly learn where your diet needs to improve. A lot of our clients thought this was going to be a chore, but once you are logging, it takes around 5 minutes out of your day, and you quickly start to educate yourself on what foods you can enjoy in sensible portions. Nothing is off limits, you can still enjoy a treat, as long as it fits in your calorie allowance!

Drink calories

Don’t drink your calories

You do need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight, as established above, and we don’t want to starve ourselves, so why waste our allowance on sugary drinks? Enjoy water, drink as much as you like, it has NO calories in and is crucial to the wellness and functioning of your organs and natural processes. If you want a little flavour add a slice of lemon or lime (or other fruit). Unfortunately your favourite alcoholic tipple is one of the biggest culprits for high calorie intake and is almost detriment to any weight loss without moderation and caution. A bottle of cider has 200+ calories where as a vodka and diet lemonade has around 50 – make the smarter choices to balance your allowance.

Monitor calories

Increase your daily activity

You don’t need to go to the gym more and you don’t need to do insane workouts. With the modern day busy lifestyle, this isn’t always achievable to fit into your schedule. What you can do, however, is move more every day. A 20 minute walk on your lunch, always using the stairs, and if you’re stuck at home, get up and walk around or do some housework? You’ll be amazing how many calories hoovering burns. Moving still burns calories, so whenever you can move just a little extra, do it. These ‘extra’ calories you burn total up to hundreds per week!

healthy food

Reduce processed foods as much as possible

If you can cut out the manufactured foods that fill up your fridge and freezer, you will be on to a winner! Always cook fresh and keep your fridge stocked up with lots of colourful fruits and veggies. Include lean protein sources such as fresh fish, chicken, turkey, lean beef and legumes/beans with each meal. Eating these sort of foods works because they have no additives and less calories in them. This makes it easier to get into that deficit and see the pounds drop off. None of these foods have to be bland either. Get experimenting with your favourite herbs and spices like fresh garlic, coriander, ginger and chilli.