3 Tips to Help With Weight Loss (that you may not know!)

By Lizzie Streit, MS, RDN, LD 

“Move more and eat less.” This common recommendation seems so simple on the surface, but how it’s applied is where things get tricky. The key to dropping extra pounds is usually not counting calories and doing cardio for hours, but it’s easy to assume these tactics will work. 

This post highlights 3 tips that are often misunderstood and how you can apply them in a different way to support weight loss. 

1 – The type of exercise matters. 

Simply put, burning more calories than you consume leads to weight loss. Using this logic, long cardio workouts that use up a ton of energy must be the secret for losing weight. Right? Well, not exactly. 

In reality, resistance training is especially beneficial for weight loss. This type of exercise does not usually burn as many calories as cardio, but it does increase muscle mass. Having more muscle increases your body’s metabolic rate, which in turn leads you to burn more calories at rest.  

If you’re jogging for hours on end and not seeing the results you want, consider adding resistance training to your routine. Try lifting weights and exercises with resistance bands or your own body weight, such as push-ups and squats. 

2 – Counting calories shouldn’t be a priority. 

The “calories in, calories out” rhetoric has dominated weight loss meal plan advice for years, so it’s understandably difficult to think about losing weight in a different way. Yes, eating fewer calories than you burn will help you drop pounds, but meticulously counting calories isn’t usually the way to get there. 

For one, estimating calories in foods isn’t a perfect science, so the number you see on the label may not be accurate. In addition, how your body uses and burns calories from foods depends on age, activity level, and many other factors. With so much variability, it’s often a futile effort to count calories as your main tactic for losing weight.  

Instead of focusing so much on numbers, choose whole foods with a single (or just a few) ingredients, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, chicken breast, and eggs. Prepare meals from scratch as often as you can and limit restaurant and ultra-processed foods. 

That being said, some people benefit from estimating how many calories they eat per day and find calorie counting helpful in guiding healthy food choices. It depends on the person. 

 3 – How you talk to yourself makes a big difference. 

When it comes to weight loss, be your own biggest cheerleader! Some aspects of the diet industry, such as extreme meal plans and workouts, perpetuate negative and guilt-inducing messaging around foods. Instead of focusing so much on what you can subtract from your diet, and feeling guilty if you eat those foods, focus on what you can add!  

Cheer yourself on when you add more fruits and vegetable to your meals. Use positive language to talk to yourself and others about food choices and exercise. If you overdo it one day and have a few too many treats, try not to engage in negative self-talk. Every day offers a new opportunity to make healthy food choices. 

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