8 Exercise and Eating Tips for a Quick Weight Loss

If you are looking to ultimately live a healthy lifestyle, a long-term approach is the way to go.

So what happens if you have a wedding, special event, or reunion to go to? Or maybe you just want an ego boost.

Whatever it is, there are eight things you can do to achieve some quick and healthy weight loss while you ramp up your workouts.

Related - What is the Best Workout for Weight Loss?

When you start increasing your workouts, you'll start seeing a performance boost and a change in your body. A common complaint with ramping up your workouts is that many gain weight.

It is heartbreaking to put some much work into your workouts only to see your scale creeping up.

Trust me.

There's one good thing about a common complaint -- there's typically a common solution. It may take some time to figure out where you are having an issue, but here are the suggestions you can follow to help you get a leaner body you are after.

Tips to Lose Weight Quickly

1.) Skip the Snacks

When we up our sweat sessions, we feel like we need to eat more. Unless you are putting in an hour or longer with high intensity, you don't really need that refuel.

Losing weight means creating a calorie deficit. This simply won't happen if you think you earned that bag of chips because you exercised.

2.) Know Your Body Composition Numbers

What the scale says is only part of the equation. It is worth getting a body fat assessment and take measurements of various body parts so you can keep a more accurate track of what's going on.

Know that muscle weighs more than fat and it is more metabolically active tissue. It is possible that your scale says you gained weight, when in reality your body fat has decreased while you built some lean mass.

If you don't want to go get a professional scan, buying a decent scale with sensors to read your body fat and other measurements.

I paid $30 for mine and here's what it tells me:

• Weight
• BMI
• Body Fat
• Fat-Free Body Weight
• Body Water
• Skeletal Muscle
• Muscle Mass
• Bone Mass
• Protein
• BMR
• Metabolic Age

It's Bluetooth enabled and saves to my phone. If you have a simple scale, I'd look into getting one of these.

3.) Try Protein Instead of Carbs

Cutting back on your carbs helps your body flush out water weight. This can help for a short-term loss of looking a bit leaner.

Protein is satiating and will keep you fuller for longer. Don't be afraid to replace calories that you would have had in carbs with protein.

Unless you are an ultra-endurance athlete, our bodies have plenty of glycogen to burn for fuel.

4.) Don't Just Eat Salads

While eating raw veggies is great from a nutritional standpoint, it can cause bloating. When our bodies have to digest all of that roughage, it can make you feel sluggish and possibly uncomfortable.

Often I see a salad topped with as much dressing as lettuce, with bacon, chicken, and eggs on top. It's a lot of calories that appear to be healthy.

Processed foods and foods with sugar alcohols like diet anything, chewing gum, or sparkling water can also cause excessive bloat.

5.) Don't Be Afraid to Restructure Your Diet

When we up the amount of time we spend in the gym, sometimes we need to keep it energized so we perform well.

Refusing to eat near or during your workout can cause you to go home and eat the whole house. As the day goes on and you get more hungry, it is just going to make things worse.

Try to restructure your diet so you are getting a little fuel before you lift. Eating a banana on the way to the gym can give you an energy boost and reduce the likelihood of a sinful snack later on.

6.) Hit the Weights First, Then Cardio

Doing a short 5-minute cardio session to get your body warmed up to lift is smart. Doing cardio for 30 minutes and then going to lift isn't.

When you lift weights first, your body will start ramping up its excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. This means when you go into your cardio workout, you'll be burning calories at a higher rate.

It's much safer to be mildly fatigued while doing cardio after lifting weights, but not so safe if you try lifting weights fatigued.

7.) A Fitness Tracker is Nice to Have

The cardio machine is wrong. You can't trust them, and they definitely don't know your body composition.

Fitness trackers can track your steps, heart rate, and sleep. More expensive fitness trackers can do more.

Regardless of your budget, getting a fitness tracker will give you more insight on what's going on -- giving you more information to make informed adjustments.

Many times, we work out extra hard in the gym for the luxury of laying around the rest of the day. Some fitness trackers you can set to give you a buzz if you are sitting for too long. If you invest in a good fitness tracker, you'll see your heart rate during workouts; giving you a personalized look at how hard you really are going.

If your fitness tracker says your heart rate isn't increasing much, you aren't going to see the progress you want.

8.) Two a Day

Remember that excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption? When you start doing high-intensity workouts, your metabolism is boosted afterward. Another great benefit from high-intensity training is that your hunger hormone ghrelin is reduced.

Doing a morning and evening session will burn more calories, keep your EPOC stoked, and it may help reduce your feeling of hunger.

Wrapping It Up

While these tips are great for short-term loss, making a long-term lifestyle change is always the best. Once you reach your goal for whatever reason you needed to lose the weight, start slowly implementing a more sustainable way to keep reaching goals.