7 Genius Weight Loss Tricks You Haven't Tried

As a quadruple board-certified medical doctor in Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep Medicine, and Internal Medicine, I know that maintaining a healthy weight is extremely important for your overall well-being, to significantly reduce the risk of heart conditions, diabetes, and even certain cancers. It also has a positive impact on your mental health and self-esteem, as well as contributes to cardiovascular well-being, joint health, and improved sleep, enhancing your overall quality of life. Beyond your well-being, it saves money on healthcare expenses. Achieving and sustaining a healthy weight involves making smart choices in your daily diet, staying active, and prioritizing your long-term health and longevity.

1. The #1 Genius Trick

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One often overlooked but crucial tip for successful weight loss is to prioritize quality sleep. Insufficient sleep disrupts hormones that control hunger, increasing your appetite and reducing feelings of fullness, which can easily lead to overeating and subsequent weight gain. Having inadequate sleep also diminishes energy levels and motivation for exercise. So, making sure you get a good night's sleep is a smart move for your overall health and effective weight management.

Related: Woman Stuns With Her Fit Body After Losing 50 Pounds in a Year With This 1 Hack

2. Walking the Dog

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Pets are a great way to help keep you active and according to the American Heart Association, dog owners were 54% more likely to get the recommended level of physical activity compared to non-dog owners. This can be a great way to help with weight loss for both you and your dog.

3. Treadmill Desks

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It’s always a great idea to try incorporating movement into parts of your day that would otherwise be stationary, such as working at your desk.

4. Taking the Stairs

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This may not be revolutionary, but the practice of opting to take the stairs over using an elevator can add up calories burned. On average, people burn 5-11 calories per minute when climbing the stairs at a normal pace, which can quickly add up over time and help you lose weight.

Related: 8 Simple Things That Helped Me Naturally Lose 50 Pounds in 4 Months Without Exercising

5. Cutting Back on Processed Foods

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Over time, reducing the amount of processed foods you eat can certainly help you lose weight by removing those additional calories from unneeded ingredients and opting to eat whole instead.

6. Low-Impact Workouts

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Exercises that are low impact (yoga, pilates, etc) are another great option to slowly raise your heart rate and burn fat without putting significant pressure on your joints, as high-intensity workouts do (running, burpees, etc.)

7. Avoiding Stress Snacking

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Instead of reaching for a snack when you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, try to distract yourself and substitute the action with a healthier behavior. Ideas could include journaling to vent frustrations, taking a walk for some fresh air, playing with a pet, listening to your favorite song or calling a friend."

Related: 5 Healthy Snacks For Fat Loss, According to Dietitian

8. Don't Make These Mistakes

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Common mistakes about losing weight include faith in quick fixes or trendy diets to give you instant results. Some also believe that specific exercises can target weight loss in certain areas of the body, but that's a misconception. Extreme dieting is almost always problematic, and it's not just about the amount you exercise—healthy eating is a very crucial part of weight loss as well. Not all calories are the same, and only focusing on the number that appears on your scale doesn't show the whole picture. Emotional and mental health are important, and everyone is different, so what works for one person might not work for another. Weight loss supplements may also be marketed as a magic solution, but this is another misconception. It's best to have realistic expectations, eat balanced meals, stay active, and get personalized advice from your doctor for a healthy and long-lasting weight loss journey.

Dr. Raj Dasguptais the chief medical advisor for Garage Gym Reviews. Dr. Raj's extensive credentials as a quadruple board-certified physician specializing in internal medicine, pulmonology, critical care, and sleep medicine.

Weight loss coach Soraya (@project.s.lifestyle) is a diet and fitness influencer with well over 300K followers on TikTok, and she has plenty to say about healthy—and in this case, not so healthy—ways to lose weight. Clearly frustrated by the massive amount of bad fitness information floating around online, Soraya put together a video debunking some of the silliest and most dangerous weight loss myths that could be derailing your wellness routine. Here are 7 weight loss myths Soraya wants you to never follow. Read on to find out!

1. Detoxing Works

Soraya emphasizes the point that the human body is perfectly capable of detoxing itself without the need for expensive supplements or juices. “This is a complete waste of your time,” she says, advising that the best “detox” is simply to get back into a good routine as soon as possible. "Detoxing, as commonly marketed in the form of diets, supplements, or procedures, is often based on the premise that your body needs help getting rid of toxins," says celebrity personal trainer Kollins Ezekh. "However, the human body is already equipped with its own highly efficient detoxification systems. Organs like the liver, kidneys, digestive system, skin, and lungs are constantly working to process and eliminate toxins. These natural systems are usually very effective, provided they are healthy and functioning properly."

2. Everyone Needs the Same Calories

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This is important! Soraya reminds followers calorie requirements change from person to person, depending on weight and lifestyle factors. Limiting calories too much can backfire and negatively impact workouts. “The amount of calories that you need to be eating is going to be customized based on your height, weight, goals, activity, a lot of different factors,” she says.

Related: Kim Kardashian’s Trainer Shows Her “Perfect Body” and Reveals How She Overcame YoYo Dieting

3. Blast Your Belly Fat

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No one exercise is going to blast any body part, let alone belly fat. A decent diet and workout routine will help with a sensible calorie deficit, which will lead to fat loss everywhere. “You can't spot reduce fat,” Soraya insists. “Spot exercises, such as sit-ups, can tighten abdominal muscles but won't get at visceral fat,” say the experts at Harvard Health. “Exercise can also help keep fat from coming back.”

4. Exercise More To Cover Diet

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There is no need to go crazy over-exercising because you ate more calories than intended over the weekend. Simply return to your normal health and fitness routine without trying to “make up” for the extra food. “I used to be guilty of this working out more because you ate more,” Soraya admits.

RELATED:5 Signs You Are Burning Fat While Exercising

5. Waist Trainers

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Soraya is blunt about the uselessness of waist trainers for weight loss. “Save your money,” she says. Waist trainers might force you to eat less, but this is not a long-term solution. In fact, wearing a waist trainer could be downright dangerous. “There is a lot of damage on the organs because they’re shifting, stretching the vessels around,” hepatologist Jamile Wakim-Fleming, MD, tells the Cleveland Clinic. “This causes people to report more gas because gas is retained, which causes bloating.”

6. Grilled Chicken Is Best

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Grilled chicken is a stereotypical high-protein meal option, but don’t feel trapped in a chicken rut. There are so many other options! “Tempeh, tofu, ground turkey, Greek yogurt, eggs. There's a bunch of really yummy protein snacks,” Soraya advises.

Related: 12 Best Foods For Men to Build Muscle

7. Slow and Steady Wins the Race

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It’s boring but true—if you want to lose weight, and more importantly, keep it off, good lifestyle habits will take you there. Detoxing and waist trainers will not! “That's exactly what to help my clients do inside my coaching program,” Soraya says. “Proper nutrition supports overall health, which is essential for consistent and effective exercise,” Ezekh says.

💪🔥Body Booster: Nothing is more effective for weight loss than a consistent, sensible diet and workout routine. There are no shortcuts! Take it one day at a time.

Do you want to lose 10 pounds by the holidays? Jenn Markwardt is a fitness and nutrition coach and founder of Flourish Nutrition, whose goal is “helping you lose 20lbs in a stress-free way. In a recent social media post, she reveals how to drop weight fast by making a few simple tweaks to your routine. “Maybe it’s your energy, maybe it’s an extra 10-20lbs that came out of nowhere, especially around your middle, or maybe it’s exhaustion and brain fog you can’t get rid of,” she writes in the Instagram post. “Here are the three️ things I (and my clients) would avoid if I wanted to drop fat and get my energy back.”

Stop Eating Healthy and Start Eating with Intention

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Her first tip? Stop eating “healthy” and start eating with intention. “Track your food for a week (not forever, and you’ll be amazed at what you learn. It’s not about eating as little as possible; it’s about understanding how to build your pants in a way that leaves you full and satiated and helps your body lose fat without restriction and hunger,” she writes in her post.

Get More Focused with Exercise

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Next, “stop doing random workouts and only relying on cardio,” she says. “Muscle is the key to lighting up your metabolism and helping you actually keep your results! You should be training intentionally in a progressive overload style (building in weights or reps each week) to optimize your results!”

Don’t Do It Alone

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And her third tip is to “stop trying to go it alone,” she says. “Listen, things change as we age, but you are not broken. It’s not impossible to see results, but you have to do things differently than you did in the past, and it’s a heck of a lot easier when you have the support and accountability of coaches and other women just like you.”

RELATED: I'm a 75-Year-Old and Here Are My 15 Secrets to Staying in the Best Shape of My Life

She Also Recommends These 5 Healthy Habits for Weight Loss

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In another post, she reveals that one of her clients dropped a whopping 30 pounds over a period of six months, “and this was someone who has done literally every diet under the sun,” she says in the clip. “Here are the five habits we focused on to optimize her metabolism hormones and get her energy back so fat loss felt easy,” she adds in the post.

Walk 8,000 to 10,000 Steps Per Day

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The first habit is to get your steps in. She recommends “daily movement of 8-10k steps.” Why should you aim for 10,000 steps per day? A 2018 study published in the journal Obesity found a link between walking that amount and weight loss and weight management. Other studies published by the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) in JAMA Neurology and in JAMA Internal Medicine also linked walking 10,000 steps a day to less dementia and less cardiovascular disease overall, with less heart disease, less heart failure, and fewer strokes.

Amp Up Your Protein Intake

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Next, amp up your protein intake. “30g of protein at each meal for satiation and preserving and building muscle,” she writes. According to clinical trials, consuming more protein than the recommended dietary allowance not only reduces body weight (BW) but also enhances body composition by decreasing fat mass while preserving fat-free mass (FFM) in both low-calorie and standard-calorie diets.

Also, Increase Fiber Intake

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Also, she recommends amping up your fiber intake. “25g of fiber daily” is her suggestion. Why? “Fiber is key for balancing blood sugar and keeping you full, so you avoid mindless snacking,” she says.

RELATED: This Guru Doctor Reveals 8 Hormone Mistakes Making You Gain Weight After 40

Strength Train

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In addition to getting your steps in, she recommends doing strength training to build muscle. Specifically, she suggests three 30-minute strength workouts a week “using our Flourish Fitness progressive overload program,” she writes. According to the Mayo Clinic, strength and weight training help reduce body fat, preserve and increase lean muscle mass, and burn calories more efficiently. Strength training may also help you:

• Develop strong bones
• Manage your weight
• Enhance your quality of life
• Manage chronic conditions
• Sharpen your thinking skills

Stress Management

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Lastly, she stresses the importance of mental health. She explains that “stress management and finding and creating the time to prioritize” yourself is fundamental in getting in physical shape.

A Lot of Factors Impact Weight Loss

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“And here’s why this works: your metabolism isn’t just ONE thing. There are a lot of factors, and your daily habits have the biggest impact on your metabolic health and hormones. You don’t have to do these things perfectly, but consistency (even on the weekends) matters for forever results,” she writes at the end of the post. And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

Do you want to lose weight with some easy, expert-backed tips? Cori Lefkowith is the founder of Redefining Strength and is devoted to helping people get in shape no matter their age. In a new YouTube video, she reveals a few of her simple tricks for losing weight fast. “Stop believing that losing weight and maintaining your results has to be a full-time job because it doesn't. And the more we act like it has to be, the more we're ultimately sabotaging ourselves. We're just creating unsustainable habits that, while they may yield some fast initial results, also lead to a quick plateau and us just regaining the weight and even more,” she says in the clip. “To help you stop this extreme dieting cycle, I'd found myself personally caught in for years. I wanna share five weird but extremely effective weight loss tips to help you build your leanest, strongest body ever.”

1. Stop Trying So Hard to Lose Weight

Her first trick is one of the “oddest sounding weight loss tips ever,” she admits in her post. “Stop focusing on losing weight. That goal weight you have in mind that you've tried countless times to get back to is actually stopping you from losing weight,” she says. “It's causing you to eat less as you train harder, which doesn't make you actually lose fat any faster. Our singular focus on that scale and that number changing leads to burnout and metabolic adaptations that make each weight loss attempt harder and harder.

Measure Success by Non-Scale Victories

“Instead, we need to focus on multiple ways of measuring success and even step away from the scale for a bit because it isn't that number on the scale we're truly after. It's how we feel at that weight that we want back. And that feeling isn't attached to the number. It's how energized we felt,” she says. “Focusing only on that number being our only measure of progress often leads to us giving up on habits that are working habits that would yield the results we want if we gave them time because the scale doesn't really show us true fat loss happening, especially as we retain and even gain muscle.” She recommends using how your clothes fit, progress pictures, and measurements instead. “We need to celebrate the other signs of success such as improved energy, better sleep, crushing our workouts, and inches being lost that show us the habits are working.”

RELATED:8 Tips to Make Losing Weight Feel Effortless, From Proven Experts

2. Build Your Diet Based on Meals You Live

The next weird tip, and it's more a way of thinking about how to make diet changes, is to build your diet based on meals you love,” she says. “When we think about adjusting our diet, we go to all the foods we can't have and then find diet meals we now need to make. This makes us honestly often feel deprived and really not enjoy our lifestyle. It makes us dream of going back to what we were doing, and this is why the changes don't stick. We don't evolve our diet to match our needs and goals.”

Tweak Your Meals to Make Them Healthier

“Instead of focusing on diet meals, take meals you already eat and love and find ways to adjust them to match your goals,” she says. If you love pizza, she recommends finding ways to add protein or adjust the portion. If you are a pasta lover, either add more protein or swap regular pasta for chickpeas or lentils. “Take the dishes you ultimately want to enjoy and find ways to tweak them so you don't feel like everything you love is being cut out or that your meal prep and cooking habits all of a sudden have to shift so dramatically you're miserable. Stop making yourself extra miserable, trying to overhaul your diet completely.”

RELATED:Woman Lost 42 Pounds With These 7 Simple Protein-Rich Recipes

3. Cut Back on Cardio

“The third tip is something some of you may hate here and others may love: Cut back on the steady state cardio,” she says. “If you love running or cycling, I'm not telling you not to do it, but if you've been struggling to lose weight and see the muscle definition you want, you may want to cut back on your mileage for a bit or really acknowledge the cost of doing this cardio and make massive changes to your strength workouts and diet to account for this. For those of you who refuse to cut back on the cardio, slow down your strength workouts. Lift heavier with lower reps and longer rest periods while increasing your protein more than you want to. And even deprioritize your endurance sports to focus on your lifting when you're freshest.”

Instead, Focus on Building Muscle

“For those of you who are thinking, I don't like cardio, but it's always helped me lose weight in the past. Think about that statement. You are here because you need to lose weight again. So, as a long-term strategy, cardio didn't work. Part of the reason is that we've always used it to try to out-exercise our diet instead of making dietary changes, but also because we haven't really built muscle, and we've even lost it in the process of eating less. As we try to burn more, this negatively impacts our metabolic rate and how many calories we burn, not only in our workouts but at rest. And the more calories we burn at rest, the more muscle we have, the more toned we look, and the easier our results will be to maintain. So instead of turning to cardio, focus on strength workouts, whether you challenge yourself with body weight sessions or hit the gym to lift, focus on building muscle,” she explains.

RELATED:Doctor Reveals 4 Foods That Trick Your Body Into Losing Weight Like Ozempic

4. Don’t Always Be on a Diet

“This next tip was one of the weirder realizations for me, but also why I feel I'm able to stay leaner all year round: Stop acting like the person always on a diet. When we're working to lose weight, we can feel like the friend who can never eat out. We can feel weird at parties or celebrations. We can feel like we have to avoid the baked goods at our work or office lunches. We can feel a bit like we have to isolate ourselves and not really have fun. No wonder most of us dread making diet changes and ultimately fall off the healthy habits we're trying to build. But we often do this because we feel this need to be perfect, to eat clean based on what someone else told us a healthy diet should look like. We also don't own who we are, our current lifestyle, or what we want our lifestyle to look like ultimately. We approach habit changes as being these very set things we have to do in one rigid form instead of finding ways to implement them to match what we need,” she says.

Instead, Practice Moderation

“If your friend invites you out to dinner at your favorite restaurant, instead of saying no, instead of trying to deprive yourself of a meal you love, plan it in. Maybe you go for a lower calorie and higher protein earlier in the day to have flexibility at that meal instead of feeling like you've ruined the day. Just focus on that portion control and getting right back into your healthy habits the day after, too. Don't let that dinner become multiple meals. If you love the baked goods someone surprised you with at work, maybe you have one, but instead of feeling guilty for it so that you end up eating ten or forgetting about the rest of your healthy meals the rest of the day, just enjoy it and even adjust your other meals to create a balance,” she says.

RELATED:Nutritionist Reveals 8 Simple Food Swaps That Actually Burn Fat

5. Take More “Movement Snacks”

The final tip that she “found to be super key in not only achieving amazing body recomposition but sustaining it over the course of the year is to take more movement snacks,” she says. “I think so often we put this emphasis on working out and working out intensely over just moving more. But the more active we are, the more we want to be active and the more active we want to be. Often, the more we wanna do other healthy habits that support the fact that we feel good, the more we do, the more we do.”

The More You Move, the Less Likely You Are to “Indulge in Mindless Eating”

“Throughout the day, include movement, snacks, and getting up and doing something, even if it's just for a minute or two. Listen to a song or quick podcast and walk around your office. Get up and stretch to reverse, sitting hunched over. Get up between episodes of your nightly TV show and go roll out or even wash the dishes quickly. Do a quick post-dinner walk, but get up and move around,” she suggests. “The less we're just seated, bored, lazing around doing nothing, the less likely we are to indulge in mindless eating. And often, a big habit we have to break on top of the benefits of moving more is mindless eating. Especially the desire to eat late at night while watching TV. However, just trying to willpower our way through this desire can often lead to losing the battle when stressed because we haven't shifted our patterns or environment. That's why these movement snacks can be so key. We aren't focusing on what we shouldn't be doing. We're focusing on something good. We want to do this mindset shift in focus to help us feel positive or feel like we're fighting something.” And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.