Time to be honest, relentless positivity without reality rarely helps. It is never easy to lost weight fast in a healthy way. Unlike celebrities, we do not have an all-round coach to give guides on exercise plan and how to eat, but we can still benefit from previous researches on weight management and improve our efficiency in working against body fat.
When you feel angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad or even nothing on your journey of fighting against body weight, do not blame yourself, remember we have all been there. Using these 10 tips to optimize your action plan and get ready to embrace drastic change.
1. Drink enough water during workouts
Water is necessary to burn fat. Your body needs water to burn fat, increase water intake may lead to increased lipolysis (the process of digesting fat) as well as decreased appetite. Through these two mechanisms, drinking more water is associated with body weight loss.
Drinking enough water during workouts not only helps organs and muscles to work effectively as they ramp up activity during exercise, but also facilitate lipolysis process, which lead to more fat burning. Keeping water close at hand during exercise is an easy way to improve weight loss efficiency.
Drinking how much water is enough?
The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is: About 3.7 liters of fluids a day for men. About 2.7 liters of fluids a day for women. In terms of bottles, that would be about 5-6 bottles of water for women and 7-8 bottles for men.
Related reading: How Many Bottles of Water a Day

2. Skip refined carbs and sugar, eat more vegetables
Avoid refined carbs and sugar not only helps with weight loss, but also benefits your overall health.
A group of participants (609 nondiabetic overweight adults age 18 to 50) were given guidance on what to eat and how to eat. Two of the key instructions are as follows, one, maximize vegetable intake, two, decrease intake of added sugars and refined flours. At the one-year-long end of the study, people were found to have lost 13 pounds, on average.
Why skip refined carbs?
Not all carbs are the same. Compared with whole foods, refined carbs have had most of the nutrients and fiber removed. Eating refined carb contributes to drastic increasement of blood sugar and overeating as well.
What are refined carbs?
Refined carbs have been removed almost all fiber, vitamins and minerals. which is why they can be considered as “empty” calories. There are two main types of refined carbs:
- Sugars: such as table sugar, high fructose corn syrup and agave syrup.
- Refined grains: white flour made from refined wheat.

3. Try HIIT if you are not seeing much progress
HIIT is a type of interval training exercise. Science has proved that despite HIIT is a short workout, you will burn calories hours after the workout. By quickly elevate heart rate to fat burning zone, HIIT workout burn as many calories as moderate intensity exercise in 40% less time.
Out of question, HIIT is a good workout to achieve best efficiency in losing weight. A combination of HIIT and diet can help with drastic weight change in less than two weeks.
The biggest challenge about practicing HIIT is whether people can practically tolerate the extreme nature of the exercise regimen. The high-intensity exercise should be done at near maximum intensity, which requires great will power and good health conditions.
4. Extend cardio to speed up losing body fat
Cardio helps to lose weight through burning calories in the process. The longer you exercise, the more calories you burn.
How long should i cardio for weight loss?
For fat loss goal, it is recommended to do cardio five times a week for at least 250 minutes, at the same time making sure your heart rate reach to 50% to 80% of your maximum heart rate.
How can I last longer on cardio?
Doing cardio for long period is challenging. Try slow steady cardio if 30 minutes of cardio is difficult for you to persist. A recommended strategy is start with 15 minutes of steady cardio, gradually increase your steady state training to a 20-minute cardio routine, eventually going up to 30 to 90 minutes.
What is the best steady state cardio type?
If you prefer outdoor workouts, try walking, running, hiking, and biking are all great outdoor steady state training exercises. If you’d rather be inside, treadmill, elliptical machines, stair steppers, and rowers are your best bets.

5. Do not compare with others
Too much comparison led to unhappiness and low self-esteem and they will kill your determination and motivation to achieve the target body weight.
Comparing with others is essentially a toxic way of thinking that cause you to overlook all the efforts you put in and results you achieve. Good news is although outside comparing is a bad habit, it is possible to break.
Start by spending less time on social media, step by step to shift your attention to yourself.
6. Yoga helps to burn calories
Although many people think yoga as a low impact low intensity workout form, it is an unbeatable truth that many yogis managed to loss weight by practicing more intense forms of yoga, like Ashtanga, Vinyasa and hot yoga.
How Many Calories Does Yoga Burn?
Generally speaking, yoga can torch anywhere from 180 to 600 calories per hour on several factors, including:
- The type of yoga you are practicing
- The lasting time and intensity of the yoga session
- Your gender counts too
According to a research published on Harvard Health Publishing, The number of calories you’ll burn doing a 30-minutes Hatha yoga is based on your body weight and workout duration.
Calories burned in 30-minutes Hatha yoga for people of three different weights
Workout Activities | 125-pound person | 155-pound person | 185-pound person |
Hatha Yoga | 120 | 140 | 168 |
Related reading: How Yoga Contribute to Weight Loss? / Find best affordable matching workout set here.

7. Combine cardio with weight resistance training
Cardio helps with weight loss, while weight resistance training is aiming for building muscles. Combine both ways will help you to get the best of both workout forms. The more muscle you build, the higher Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) you will have.
About 60% percent of your daily energy consumption is attribute to BMR. It has been proved that one pound of muscle requires six calories a day while that number is four when it comes to one pound of fat.
That is to say, the more muscle you have, the higher BMR you are likely to have, and the more calories you will burn everyday.

8. Eat properly after workout
After your workout session, eat foods high in magnesium, potassium, and calcium – electrolytes that will help rehydrate and replenish you.
Nuts
You’ll find magnesium in many nuts such as almonds, cashews, peanuts, a handful pile of nuts is perfect option for refuel after hot yoga class.
A cup of smoothie
Did you sweat buckets during workout? Obviously, you’ll want to drink lots of water. A cup of smoothie combining spinach, avocado, bananas, and milk (known for their potassium content) is an excellent choice for post hot yoga recovery.
Light snacks or meals
Light snacks or meals helps to support the body’s recovery after exercise. Fuel with oats or avocado toast, or a bowl with rice, sweet potatoes, chicken or eggs, avocado, and broccoli can not be more perfect.

9. Get enough sleep
Sleeping too little urges people to eat more food. Researchers found that a lack of sleep led to increased cravings for high-carbohydrate foods. New researches suggest that a good night sleep could help sleep-deprived, overweight people eat less food, approximately 270 less calories.
How much sleep should you get?
For adults over age 18, it is recommended to sleep for at least 7 hours at night.

10. Think positively and maintain confident
The incredible power of positive thinking empowers you with hope and motivation to attaining goals, but creating a consistent positive mindset takes efforts, positive thinking exercise requires avoiding negative energy almost as much as involves creating positive energy.
Positive thinking is incredibly helpful to your weight loss goal on the long term, and worth your time and efforts to foster such habits.
Final thoughts
For women who are not seeing much progress in fighting against body weight, after trying these measures, you will see drastic changes. They are
- Eat mindfully,
- Expand cardio time,
- Combine cardio with weight lifting exercise,
- Sleep for at least 7 hours per night,
- And try HIIT if you can tolerate its intensity.