5 Tips To Help You Maintain Your Weight This Summer

Summer is often a hard time to shoot for lofty weight loss goals. With all the BBQs, weddings, and other events that tend to happen in the summer it’s hard to eat well and focus on trying to lose weight. Instead, from a goal standpoint, it’s often easier to aim to focus on being healthy and maintaining your weight. Another approach would be to put those extra calories to work and focus on building some lean muscle.

Whatever your approach, here are 5 tips to help you maintain your weight this summer:

1. Make Time For Exercise

Make it non-negotiable, block off a time in your schedule 2-3 times a week (or more), and commit to exercising then. It matters less what you’re doing and more to do something that gets you a little sweaty.

Outside of this committed time, it also helps to plan to do active things. Go for a hike, go biking, kayaking, etc. Get out there and be active.

2. Be NEAT-er!

NEAT is an acronym used in reference to a part of your metabolism: Non-Exercise Adaptive Thermogenesis. This describes the energy you burn from non-planned exercise. Your NEAT is largely dependent on your lifestyle and is larger for those that move around more, for example those with active jobs like nurses. They are on their feet a lot, and their NEAT will be a lot higher than say an accountant who is desk bound.

A good way to check how “NEAT” you are is to look at how many steps you get in a given day that aren’t part of planned exercise. If you aren’t that “NEAT” you can make yourself more “NEAT”. Here are a few ways:

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Instead of driving, bike, or walk if you can. Eg. Bike or walk to work.
• Park farther away instead of closer. This could mean when you go grocery shopping, at the mall, or even work.
• Go for a walk at lunch.

You should get the picture by now, do things that require movement – whatever that may be. It may not seem like it will make a big difference, but over the course of a month it will.

3. Easy On The Cerveza’s

And by Cerveza’s I’m talking about all types of alcohol, especially those sugary margarita’s – despite how tasty and easy they can be to consume. I’ve written about this before, but here are some general tips about how to limit the caloric intake when drinking alcohol:

• Avoid ongoing snacking while socially drinking. Eat a meal instead. Or, before going out to friends, family, etc. have a well-balanced meal beforehand. The amount of calories you can consume with snacking is often much higher than the number of calories consumed from alcohol. Also, having a meal will help you avoid the blood sugar crash that leaves you “hangry” and unable to avoid some of those poorer food choices later on.
• Keep your drinks simple. This is mostly in reference to highballs or spirits. Choose non-sugar “mix” for your alcohol, use club sodas or diet soda variations to soften the caloric load. Also, be wary of liqueurs, they are often quite high in sugar – on top of the alcohol content.
• Limit your intake. You don’t need to drink every day or to excess each time. Limiting your overall intake as a whole will help. Obvious, I know, but I had to say it.

4. 1/2 Plate Vegetables

Vegetables are high in nutrients, fibre, and low in calories. As such, they make a great tool to help fill your stomach with volume and help promote and sustain the fullness sensation to your brain so that you eat less – and less often. For at least 1 meal, if not more, try to have half a plate.

For the record, boiled and otherwise “raw” potatoes are included here but not a “loaded” baked potato or mashed potatoes with cream and butter.

5. Protein Focused Meals and Snacks

Protein has the highest satiety (the feeling of fullness it gives you) value between all the macronutrients (Carbs, Fat, Protein). As such, if you make your meals and snacks protein focused you are more likely to feel fuller faster and eat less overall. For a visual, aim for 1/4 of your plate to serve as your protein portion per meal; you can get your protein portion from a variety of different sources, whether it be beef, chicken, eggs, fish, or legumes like beans.

Implement as many, or all, of the above tips and you should have an easier time maintaining your weight this summer, and still being able to enjoy yourself along the way.

Till next time,

-Mike