10 Secrets Of Successful Weight Loss

Try a few of these 10 tips for faster and successful weight loss.

1. Reduce caffeine intake. To lose weight faster, reduce your intake of caffeine. Caffeine leads to an increase of insulin in your body that retards the burning of your stored fat. This is a simple chemical reaction in your body that you can change. Reduce your caffeine intake by 50% and see what happens. Here is a rough guide to use when looking at the amount of caffeine you currently take in: Brewed coffee (6 oz. cup) - 100mg; Instant coffee (6 oz.) - 70mg; Tea (6 oz.) - 50mg; Soft drinks (12oz.) - (Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew) - 50mg; Dark chocolate (1 oz.) - 20mg and Milk chocolate (1 oz.) - 6mg.

2. Spice Up Your Foods. When you go fat free or low fat, you also cut out much of the taste of the foods you eat. Add the flavor back with herbs and spices. Strong flavors such as vinegar, garlic, chili powder, cayenne, curry powder, rosemary and tarragon can be used to doctor up any food you are eating.

3. Self Confidence Promotes Success. The more positive your self-esteem, the better you feel about yourself, the faster and easier it will be for you to lose weight. When you are self-confident, you are better able to take charge of your life. It also means that after you lose weight, it will stay gone permanently.

4. Increase Fiber. Increase your intake of fiber rich foods. They will help fill you up faster and will help all the food you eat pass through your digestive system more easily

5. Never skip a meal. To lose weight quickly, never skip a meal. Your first meal after waking starts your metabolism. Your metabolism then speeds up for about eight hours and then starts slowing down until you go to sleep when it goes to low until you wake and eat and start the cycle again. Skip breakfast and your metabolism doesn't get started until lunch time. You've just missed three or four hours of fat burning time. When you skip meals during the day, your metabolism also slows down. Weight loss through the burning of stored fat is all about eating enough of the right kinds of foods so you stay full and your metabolism stays as high as possible. Remember, if you feel hungry, your metabolism slows down. Stay full with healthy, nonfattening foods and your metabolism will continue to burn your stored fat as fast as your body will allow.

6. Exercise Is Key To Success. Exercise is probably the most important key to increasing your metabolism and burning off excess fat. Research shows that you burn more stored fat for energy when you do aerobic exercises on an empty stomach. You burn more stored fat when you exercise late in the day rather than in the morning. The best time to exercise to lose weight is in the late afternoon/early evening before dinner. Doing this will not only burn off stored fat but increase your metabolism for about two to three more hours just when it was starting to slow down. This produces a significant increase in fat burned off, even after the exercise is over. Second best time to exercise is in the morning before breakfast.

7. Stay Positive. Negative emotions will also interfere with your weight loss program. It's difficult to stay motivated to lose weight when you feel bad. Overeating often accompanies negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, fear, guilt and anger.

8. Make Your Meals Last. Stretch your meals to, at least, 20 minutes or longer. Your stomach, mouth and brain are all connected and it takes 20 minutes of chewing before your stomach signals your brain that you are full.  To successfully lose weight, you need to eat slowly for 20 minutes or longer.

9. Drink water. Drinking 8 glasses of water a day is important to your health, your normal diet and to help lose weight. Water is necessary for the metabolism of your stored fat. Weight loss cannot occur without an active metabolism which requires large quantities of water. Another way to use water to lose weight is to drink a large glass of ice water just before meals. The cold causes your stomach to shrink slightly which will make you feel full faster.

10. Spicy foods increase metabolism. Increase your metabolism by as much as 40% by using hot and spicy foods such as hot peppers of all varieties and mustards. Research shows these foods all increase your metabolism. For double duty, give up fat filled mayonnaise for mustard and add hot peppers to your food for greater flavor and increased metabolism.

All of these factors should insure weight loss success.