Medically reviewed by Anthony Fanucci, Pharm.D., licensed pharmacist
Weight loss isn’t always about suffering through a strict diet or spending hours in the gym, hating every minute of it. Most of the small actions that will help you lose weight can be started with your first bite of the next meal. These are simple, practical, and sustainable ways to lose weight, each with an expert backing it.
One note on the headline for this story. Losing weight isn’t easy. There are gradations of easy when it comes to building a weight loss plan. Things like drinking water are typically much easier than going to the gym (for a lot of people, anyway.) So we don’t want to give the impression that this is a simple plan. Losing weight the healthy way is basically stacking a series of healthy decisions. You don’t want to lose weight too fast, and you want to do things that will lose fat more than muscle or just water weight. But this list is really just the first steps to building your stacking plan. Good luck!
1. Drink a Glass of Water Before Meals
Drinking a couple of glasses of water before you even go to your table helps suppress your appetite a bit, so you may eat a little less without feeling like you’re depriving yourself. One study found that individuals drinking approximately two cups of water prior to a meal consumed significantly less than those who did not.
One thing we do at home: the first thing we have in the morning is a little lemon water with a little sea salt. The lemon gives you a little boost, and the sea salt — I believe it helps your hydration, helps that water actually get into your body. If it’s the first thing you have during the day, it’s a great way to tell your body it’s time to get going. It kind of kick-starts things.
“Consuming water shortly before eating may help decrease food intake.”
— Elizabeth Huggins, RDN, Hilton Head Health
2. Put Protein at the Center of Your Plate
Protein is the most filling of all the macronutrients. It quiets the hunger hormones and keeps you fuller longer on fewer calories, which makes everything else easier. Use this as your guide and place protein at the center of your plate: eggs, Greek yogurt, chicken, beans, fish.
“Many people find protein foods can fill them up on fewer calories, so focusing on protein may make it easier for people to stick to a lower-calorie diet.”
— Maggie Moon, MS, RD
3. Aim for 30 Grams of Fiber a Day
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School ran a study where they told one group to do nothing except eat 30 grams of fiber a day. Those participants lost weight, lowered their blood pressure, and improved their blood sugar nearly as much as another group following a far more complicated heart-healthy diet. Fiber fills you up and slows digestion, and the one-rule simplicity is exactly why it works. The trial was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
4. Fill Half Your Plate With Vegetables
Because vegetables carry a great deal of water and fiber for very few calories, you can fill your plate and feel full while the total calorie count quietly drops. Simply make sure half of whatever you’re eating is produce, and let the rest fall into line.
“Bumping up your fruits and veggies helps you reduce your overall calorie intake. Reducing calories allows your body to go into your fat stores and burn fat for energy.”
— Beth Czerwony, RD, LD, Cleveland Clinic
5. Slow Down and Eat Mindfully
I’m never very good about eating slower, so I’ll be the first to say it’s something I need to do better at myself. But the mechanism is simple.
It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that you’re full. Eat faster than that and you’ll blow right past the signal before it ever arrives. Set the fork down between bites and give the message time to land.
“Slow down — it takes 15 to 20 minutes for the stomach to signal the brain that you are full.”
— Kimberly Gomer, RD, Pritikin Longevity Center
6. Stop Drinking Your Calories
Liquid calories from soda, juice, sweetened coffee, and alcohol aren’t compensated for the way solid food is. When you drink them, you’re essentially adding calories on top of what you’d normally eat without noticing. Cutting them is one of the highest-impact easy swaps there is.
Something clicked for me in my mid-twenties, and I stopped drinking sodas. I started drinking more water instead, and it had a huge effect — on overall calorie intake, but also just on what you’re putting in your body, keeping it as clean and clear as possible. I don’t miss sodas at all. I know some people love them, so maybe I was lucky there.
“Fluid calories do not hold strong satiety properties, don’t suppress hunger and don’t elicit compensatory dietary responses.”
— Richard Mattes, Professor of Nutrition Science, Purdue University
7. Get More Sleep
Short sleep drives up ghrelin, your hunger hormone, and you end up eating more the following day almost on autopilot. In a University of Chicago trial, simply extending sleep led participants to eat hundreds of fewer calories a day, without changing anything else about how they ate.
“Now we’ve shown that in real life, without making any other lifestyle changes, you can extend your sleep and eat fewer calories.”
— Dr. Esra Tasali, Director of the UChicago Sleep Center
8. Walk Every Day
You don’t need a gym membership or a workout routine. Walking is probably the most accessible form of physical activity there is, and the incidental movement you rack up across a day (errands, stairs, a short walk after lunch) adds up to real calorie burn without leaving you ravenous the way brutal workouts can.
“[Walking is] a low-impact exercise that just about anyone can use to get started on a health journey.”
— MyFitnessPal registered dietitians
Stanford geneticist Dr. Michael Snyder, whose lab runs continuous-glucose studies, has found that when you take that walk matters as much as whether you take it.
“The party line is that you should not eat 3 hours before sleeping, and I believe that, and that’s true from the studies we’ve run — that people who do have a gap, and actually people who walk after dinner, have lower glucose the next day. And if you go into the evening with a high glucose spike, in general that correlates with poorer sleep. So I think it’s more complicated than that.”
— Dr. Michael Snyder, Stanford University, speaking on the Huberman Lab podcast
9. Write Down What You Eat
I don’t track my food with an app, but I do it sort of mentally. I know what I typically should be eating and shouldn’t be eating, and I know if the ratio of things I shouldn’t be eating starts to outweigh the ratio of things I should be eating — that’s when I know, okay, maybe I need a day of salads. Or less sweet stuff. You know, I think like most people, we tend to have go-tos for dinner. You have a rotating handful of dishes you kinda make over and over again, and then you know when you get away from that, or you have too many pasta or pizza nights or something like that. That’s when you know you gotta pull back and maybe go a little lighter on the calorie densities.
“Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories.”
— Jack Hollis, PhD, Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research
10. Step on the Scale Regularly
Weighing yourself regularly keeps you accountable and catches small regains before they snowball into bigger ones. Study after study, frequent weigh-ins track with better results, not because the number is magic, but because it keeps you paying attention.
“Weighing in regularly can be helpful for adopting healthy behaviors to lose weight because it increases awareness of how the things we eat and the exercises we do impact weight.”
— Dori Steinberg, PhD, RD, Duke University
The Common Thread
Notice what these ten have in common: not one of them is a diet. And you don’t have to be rigid about any of it. I really don’t weigh myself very much. It’s not something I try to keep thinking about. I think less about a number and more about being generally healthy. Sometimes you can tell if your pants start to fit a little too tight, you know, that things are creeping, and maybe it’s time to pull back on extra desserts, or maybe an extra glass of wine, or, you know, smaller portions or whatever. You know what you have to do when it’s time to do it, and you know what you feel. Every once in a while I’ll weigh myself just to make sure I’m within the range I’m comfortable with. But other than that, I just try to go by my gut. Pick two or three of these habits, let them turn automatic, and the rest tends to follow.
This article is for general information and isn’t a substitute for personalized medical advice. If you have a health condition or take medication, talk with your doctor before making big changes.
Sources: Harvard Health Publishing; Cleveland Clinic; Pritikin Longevity Center; Purdue University; University of Chicago Medicine; Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2008); Duke University; University of Massachusetts Medical School (Annals of Internal Medicine, 2015).
Joseph has been writing and editing for a wide variety of publications over the last decade. He loves covering news in the health and wellness space and has written extensively about all aspects of wellness for a wide range of publications.
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