Lose weight fast. Top 5 strategies, plus tone thighs & butt with these exercises

I struggled for years to lose the excess pounds I packed on from eating fried foods, candy, and large portions. I hired trainers, exercised several times a week (sometimes daily), read weight loss books and followed their worthless tips, but nothing I tried resulted in fat loss. After earning a certification in fitness nutrition, and trying practically everything under the sun, I finally found what works for me, and, more importantly, works for everyone who tries and sticks to these tried-and-true weight-loss methods consistently. If you’d rather watch a video instead of reading this long post, scroll down this page towards the end to watch the YouTube video I created.

To lose weight fast, my top five weight loss strategies are:

Strategy #1. Omit dairy

Omitting dairy means eliminating animal milk, butter, cheese, cream, whey protein powder, ice cream and yogurt. Dairy products are high in calories and fat. Milk contains lactose which leaches calcium from your bones; drinking milk can make your bones brittle. If you are worried about not getting enough calcium, take an all-in-one calcium supplement, which contains D3 and magnesium. Cow’s milk has been shown to contain lead, pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones, which damage our health. Whole milk and butter contain saturated fats, which are the bad fats. Dairy causes belly bloat and acne. Once you remove dairy from your diet, you will have clearer skin, better digestion, and lose excess weight quickly.

If you’re wondering how you can possibly enjoy foods free of dairy, there’s lots of good dairy substitutes like almond and coconut milk. I use Parma instead of parmesan cheese, which is made from nutritional yeast flakes, on pasta and soups. Instead of sour cream, I buy plain vegan coconut yogurt (SoDelicious brand is my favorite vegan yogurt). If a recipe asks for cream, whole canned coconut milk, works well.

If your favorite recipes are high in calories and won’t work without cheese, and you would like dairy-free recipes, my two cookbooks, The High-Five Diet and Slimming Dairy-Free Desserts & Smoothies, have over 80 dairy-free recipes, combined. These recipes are calorie and carbohydrate-controlled, so they help with weight loss (links below).

Strategy #2. Reduce or eliminate alcohol.

Alcohol contains seven calories per gram, whereas carbs are four calories per gram. So, alcohol is almost twice the calories per gram as carbs. Protein contains four calories per gram so that busts the myth that carbs cause weight gain. It’s excess calories that cause weight gain. Alcohol suppresses fat burning, increases appetite, belly fat and breast cancer risk.

Fat and excess food accumulates in the liver. If your liver is trying to get rid of alcohol, which is a priority, because alcohol is a poison, the liver is not going to be metabolizing fat, which makes it extremely difficult to lose weight.

Strategy #3. Reduce oil consumption.

Oils contain a whopping 120 calories per tablespoon. If you cook with oil, and have a dressing that contains oil, those calories add up fast. Measure oil each and every time so you can minimize how much you put in your meals, better yet, avoid oils completely. Watch my 60 second video below on how to sauté and stir-fry without using any oil.

I make my own salad dressings with little to no oil and I like them so much better because they aren’t greasy or heavy. I can modify almost any dressing recipe to make it a lot less calories, and I can use more dressing, by using an almond milk or coconut milk beverage instead of oil. My favorite salad dressing is drizzling a little balsamic vinegar on my salad.

Strategy #4. Add riced cauliflower to rice.

Allowing rice to cool, and heating it back up, increases resistant starch. Resistant starch is indigestible, so the end result is that you end up absorbing fewer calories and fewer carbs.

Since rice contains a lot of calories for a small portion, add an equal amount of riced cauliflower to your rice in the pot, five minutes prior to cooking. This will add fiber, make you fuller, and if you normally eat a cup of rice, and eat ½ cup of rice and ½ cup of cauliflower, you are cutting your calories almost in half.

Strategy #5. Keep a food diary.

It has been proven that tracking what you eat, results in better food choices and fat loss. When you write down everything you eat, you might be shocked at the findings. While people say, I hardly eat anything, when they review what they’ve eaten at the end of the day, they realize how much more food they are eating. Some people are horrified to find that they are eating eight or more times a day. You don’t want to eat more than six times a day, because eating shouldn’t become an obsessive habit, or to fill a void; it should be to provide sustenance, and make your body, not just your tastebuds, feel good.

Before I figured out what would satisfy my hunger cravings and allow me to continue my rigorous workouts, I paid for customized bikini competition diet plans, where I ate six times a day, yet I was always hungry, felt weak, didn’t have enough energy and craved carbs. After reviewing my food diary, I figured out what works best for me, which is a higher carb diet with less protein. I determined the best times to eat, before I’m starving. At 3:00pm, I was so hungry, and ate too much, so I changed the times I ate certain meals, where I don’t feel like I’m starving, yet I’m hungry and can enjoy eating.

Instead of the six small meals that bikini competitors eat, I’ve reduced eating to four times a day. I now eat four larger meals, so I finally feel satisfied after eating, which helped me lose those last tough pounds. I probably wouldn’t have come to conclusion of the best changes I needed to make if I hadn’t written down what I ate and the times I was eating.

When it comes to tracking food, it’s also important to write down what times of the day, or night, you eat. It’s no wonder you’re starving if you haven’t eaten in five hours. When you fast during the day, it’s more likely you will binge-eat at night. You’re also going to be less likely to grab a few chips or crackers if you have to write it down.

Tracking what you’re eating, how often you eat, and what times you eat, will help you figure out if you need to eat larger or smaller meals, if you need to cut back on grazing, or eat more often. You’ll find what times you’re eating the most calories, and what times you end up eating more snacks and high-calorie foods.

We are all different, so tracking what foods you are eating, how many times a day you eat, and what times you tend to binge, or grab sweet and/or salty snacks, can help you pinpoint what to change. Maybe you need to eat earlier so you’re not starving by mealtime and end up over-eating. Maybe you’re snacking instead of eating nutritious meals. When you use a food diary, you might realize that you’re eating too little for breakfast and eating too much at dinner. The simple method of writing down what you eat, takes only a few minutes a day, and will help you see a pattern to help you come up with a solution that works for you.

If you want to start a food log, you can write everything down in a binder, or log it into an app, but I found that having everything already laid out and tidy, with appropriate-length lines and sections to write down what you eat, where you can put the date at the top so you can look back at what you ate on Tuesday or Saturday, and gives you the option of tracking your carbs, protein, fat, calories, and water, makes it much easier. My paperback food tracker includes all this, and I also included my proprietary High-Five Diet program so you can track not just the foods you eat, but also your weight loss progress. Preview and order this paperback food journal: Price $15.99

EXERCISES FOR WEIGHT LOSS & FLAT ABS:

Abdominal-targeted exercises don’t use a lot of energy so you’re going to see the most results with reducing calories instead of doing crunches. Cardio is not the best exercise choice because cardio tends to make people hungrier, so they end up eating more, which is counterproductive to weight loss.

If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you are taking in. To lose weight with exercise, choose resistance training, with bands and dumbbells, instead of cardio. Too much cardio can cause muscle loss, and the less muscle you have, the fewer calories you burn when you aren’t exercising.

You want to work every muscle in your body at least twice a week, but if you’re limited on time, spend more time doing lower body exercises instead of ab work or upper body exercises if your goal is to lose bodyfat. You want to perform exercises that target the thighs, butt and hamstrings, because these larger muscles burn more calories, and tone the legs.

Here’s exercises that will tone your thighs and butt:

1. lunges
2. squats
3. step-ups (not shown)
4. hip thrusts
5. resistance band exercises

Exercises that work the butt (the glutes) and the hamstrings (back of the legs), that you also want to include are:

1. bridges
2. deadlifts

I created a video, that goes over these top five diet strategies, and the best weight loss exercises that burn the most calories and tone the lower body. Press the play button below to watch this short video.  

If you’re looking for more weight loss strategies that work, and/or want lower calorie dairy-free recipes your family will love, order

Price $16.15. This also makes a great gift, just in time for the holidays.

Let me know in the comments below, if you’ve tried any of these strategies and how they’ve worked for you.

To lose weight fast, the top five weight loss strategies are:

1. Omit dairy
2. Eliminate alcohol
3. Reheat rice to increase resistant starch and replace half the rice with riced cauliflower
4. Avoid oils
5. Keep a food diary