Most of us are aware of the basics when it comes to keeping our weight in check:  drink water, exercise, eat less calories than you burn, enjoy whole foods and avoid junk food laden with added fats and sugar.  However, below are some fun and interesting tips that you can add to your arsenal to fight off unwanted weight gain.

Snack Before Dinner.  Eat ½ ounce of healthy fat such as nuts or avocados eight minutes before dinner.  You will feel fuller longer and eat less.  One study showed a 4-pound weight loss per year with this simple trick.

Eat Mint.  Mint has been shown to be a natural appetite suppressant and can even improve digestion.  It can be eaten or inhaled.  It could be a cup of mint tea, mint flavored toothpaste (don’t eat it), mint infused room scent or a simple mint leaf in your water.  One study found that people who inhaled a peppermint scent every two hours ate 2,700 fewer calories per week—that’s nearly a one-pound loss!

Personally, I swear by a cup of mint tea at night.  I started drinking it a couple years ago whenever I got hungry at night and it did the trick.  Now it is my go to whenever I want to munch (Tazo Refresh is my favorite.)

Add Don’t Subtract.  If you are getting depressed thinking of all those foods you are not supposed to eat, then instead concentrate on what you should add to your diet.  For example, find a way to add 1 or 2 different healthy foods to your diet each day.  Plan your meals around it, and your focus will go from depriving to thriving.  Some examples: add kale to your scrambled eggs, add spinach to a juice or make a dessert with three different kinds of berries.

Eat Vitamin C.  It inhibits the production of cortisol, a hormone that essentially tells your body to store fat.  One simple way is to eat grapefruit or orange slices with breakfast. Or use it as your afternoon snack.

Shoot Your Food.  We have all heard about writing down everything you eat, well instead of pen and paper, record what you eat with a photo.  Sound complicated?  Not with today’s ever present cell phones.  Simply snap a picture before you pick up that fork.   When you look back and see that healthy salad covered in blue cheese dressing and croutons, it may give you a pause the next time you hit the salad bar.

Eat Breakfast.  A recent study in the journal Obesity found that women who ate a 700-calorie breakfast and 200-calorie dinner shed more than twice as much weight over 12 weeks as those whose meal sizes were reversed. 

Drink Wine. A 2010 study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which followed more than 19,000 women for an average of 13 years, found that those who had one to two alcoholic drinks daily put on fewer pounds than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. Weight gain was lowest among wine drinkers. While the researchers can’t definitively explain this, they say that the subjects who sipped a glass or two ate fewer calories—and that women burn more calories after drinking than men do.

Stand up!  Standing burns 1.5 times more calories than sitting. Stand when you’re at the doctor’s office or when you watch TV.  My favorite tip is to set my computer on the bar height counter in my kitchen – this way it is perfect height to stand and work.

Sleep in a Cold Room. A somewhat chilly bedroom could improve both your sleep and your metabolism. An article in Obesity Reviews noted that the average indoor temperature has ticked upward during the past few decades. What’s more, most of us keep the thermostat steady throughout the house, preventing the body from experiencing dips in temperature to stoke its own calorie-burning furnace. Sleeping in a chillier room is a great way to force your body to heat itself up for hours and you will burn calories all night long while keeping yourself warm.

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