Weight Loss Tips for the Real World—Part 1

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Do you know what drives me completely insane? Articles that claim to be brimming with helpful tips about losing weight, which instead turn out to be full of what I feel to be obvious, unlikely, or even unhealthy suggestions.

Examples of this would be “don’t eat the whole bag of Cheetos at one time.” Yeah thanks, I’m sure none of us realize that this is not a good idea. Honestly, I don’t know many overweight people who eat huge amounts of snack foods at one time. Speaking personally, I never gained weight by eating an entire box of Oreos. I put on the pounds by eating an extra Oreo here and there, along with a few too many chips and maybe one more piece of cheese than I should have had in a given day.

Another helpful tip might be something like “work out with an easy series of 25 exercises four times a week over the period of an hour.” I can’t even remember how to do five exercises, let alone over two dozen, so that won’t fly with me either. And although I feel that exercise is great for our bodies, it’s very hard for me to find a full hour to devote to the activity.

Then there’s the classic “in order to lose weight, replace all of your beloved sweets with sugar-free versions of them.” I realize that not everyone feels this way, but to me, I’d rather eat small amounts of real sugar that my body knows how to process than vast quantities of artificial sweeteners that don’t seem to agree with me and make me feel crabby and that I’m pretty sure aren’t good for us in the first place. Whenever I eat my beloved Haagen Dazs ice cream, I have visions of my pancreas going “ah yes, sugar! I know what to do with this!” Whereas if I drink a Diet Coke I can see my whole digestive system thinking “uh, we’re not exactly sure what this stuff is, so until we figure it out, let’s just store it in our cells for awhile.” Until a group of 90-plus year olds can walk up to me and tell me they’ve consumed artificial sweeteners for 70-plus years with no side effects, I’m sticking with good old fashioned cane sugar, thank you very much.

So, with all of this in mind, my hope for these next group of articles is to provide you with a bunch of honest-to-goodness, decent weight loss tips that are helpful, easy to do, and most of all effective.

In case you are wondering, I do have the life experience to back this up—between April of 2008 and March of 2009 I lost 50 pounds and since then I have managed to keep it off, give or take a few pounds up and down. The things I will share with you are things worked for me, and I truly hope that they work for you too.

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.