23 Golden Tips for Fast Weight Loss

In this article I will teach you to lose excess pounds quickly in one or a few weeks, and that in a healthy way without unsubstantiated claims.

I give you the 23 golden tips to lose weight healthy and fast. All tips will be scientifically substantiated .

You will also receive psychological tips, information about how fast you can lose weight and answers to frequently asked questions.

The 23 golden tips to lose weight quickly

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Nutrition: how much you eat (amount)

These tips actually all influence how much you eat, by influencing your hormones or psychological tricks. Without exercise, you can lose weight quickly with these tips.

Tip #1: eat slower

I know this sounds silly, but you’ll be surprised at the impact of this simple tip.

People who eat fast are about twice as likely to be overweight compared to people who eat slowly ( source ). In another study of 529 men, participants who reported eating ‘very fast’ gained twice as much weight in 8 years as compared to participants who ate at a ‘slow’ or ‘medium’ pace ( source ). This effect can also be seen in children, a study found that children who eat quickly were 3 times more likely to be overweight ( source ).

The effect of eating more slowly on weight loss is therefore large. This has a number of explanations, namely:

You suppress the feeling of hunger, so that you feel full faster and therefore consume 10% fewer calories ( source ) ( source )
You chew more intensively, so you consume up to 15% fewer calories ( source )
Your blood sugar peaks less, making fat burning more possible

Summary Tip #1 : Eat slower so you feel full faster and consume fewer calories.

Tip #2: breakfast with proteins

Many people start the morning with carbohydrates such as bread or muesli. This is a missed opportunity to lose maximum weight in one or more weeks.

Instead of carbohydrates, it is better to eat proteins in the morning. Studies show that it makes you feel full. The consequences are as follows:

People think 60% less about food ( source )
People feel 50% less in the mood for snacks in the evening ( source )
People eat more than 400 calories less per day! ( source )

A high protein intake increases the metabolism, reduces appetite and stimulates the production of appetite-suppressing hormones ( source , source , source ).

This is therefore an excellent way to reduce the number of calories consumed and lose weight quickly.

Summary tip #2 : start the day with proteins such as in the form of a fried or boiled egg, meat, tuna or poultry!

Do you want an example slimming weekly menu incl. recipes and shopping list?

click here and I will send them directly to you for free.

Tip #3: drink water before meals

Drinking water can greatly accelerate weight loss, especially if you drink water before a meal.

For example, a study among adults and the elderly showed that drinking half a liter of water before a meal accelerates weight loss by 44% in a period of 12 weeks compared to people who did not ( source ).

There are two explanations for this:

By drinking half a liter of water before a meal, your feeling of hunger decreases and you eventually eat less
Studies show that you burn 24-30% more calories an hour after you drink half a liter of water ( source , source )

It is also common for people to confuse the feeling of hunger with thirst. So first take a glass of water (or cup of green tea ) and wait ten minutes to see if you were really hungry or just thirsty.

Summary tip #3 : drink half a liter of water half an hour before every meal and boost the burning of calories by over 40%!

Psychological Tips:

Tip #4: use small plates

A series of studies show that you automatically eat less when you use small plates. This is because you look at the portion on your plate in a different way ( source , source ). People fill their plate the same way, whether it’s small or large ( source ). If the plate is large and there is little food on it, you get the impression that you have eaten little. If the plate is small… then it quickly seems full and you have the idea that you are also eating more. By replacing plates with a diameter of 32 centimeters with plates of 24 centimeters, you eat on average 27% less ( source ).

Tip #5: use tall, narrow glasses

A study showed that if you used tall, thin glasses you drink up to 57% less ( source ). Therefore, use tall, narrow glasses if you drink alcoholic or high-calorie drinks. Instead, use low, wide glasses when drinking water and tea.

Tip #6: use red plates with unhealthy food

Another trick: if you eat unhealthy food on a red plate, you eat less food than on a white or blue plate ( source ). One possible explanation for this is that our brains associate the color red with ‘stopping’.

Tip #7: scoop less

Research shows that if you scoop 45% less (500 instead of 900 grams) you eat almost 40% less ( source ). In most cases, you will no longer be able to catch up on these calories with a next meal, just like with intermittent fasting.

Tip #8: Don’t watch food commercials

People exposed to food commercials while watching television choose unhealthy snacks 28% more than people who watch non-food commercials ( source ). So watch out for watching food commercials just before you decide what to eat and avoid these commercials while eating!

Nutrition: what you eat (type)

Tip #9: stop with (light) soda and fruit juices

The tip that you should eat little sugar is obvious, but it is not always clear what sugar is in it.

What you need to know is that soft drinks and fruit juices are your worst enemy because they are really packed with sugar. That is why I often refer to soft drinks and fruit juices as ‘liquid candy’.

By fruit juices I do not mean fresh juices. Fresh juices are recommended because of the vitamins and minerals.

If you replace calorie-rich drinks such as soda and fruit juices with water, you will lose weight spectacularly quickly ( source ).

But diet soft drinks are also far from recommended. These contain artificial sweeteners.

Although artificial sweeteners give a modest weight loss compared to sugar ( source , source ), in practice I do not recommend artificial sweeteners in any way because of the following 4 arguments:

The long-term effects of artificial sweeteners are unknown
Virtually all studies on artificial sweeteners are industry sponsored
It is not advisable to get used to sweeteners (several hundred times sweeter than sugar)
It contains no nutritional value, so e.g. a cup of green tea is always healthier than a glass of diet soda

Summary tip #4 : Avoid all soft drinks – including diet sodas – and fruit juices.

Tip #10: avoid sugars with pseudonyms

In addition to fruit juices, there are even more hidden sugars.

Did you know there are…

44 lumps of sugar in a bottle of tomato ketchup?
40 lumps of sugar in a bottle of salad dressing ?
28 lumps of sugar in a jar of satay sauce?
25 lumps of sugar in a jar of pasta sauce?
Are there 13 lumps of sugar in drinking yogurt?
And so on…

Those are very high numbers, but there are also an incredible number of products with smaller amounts of sugar.

In fact, it would be better to say: a small number of products in a supermarket do not contain sugar.

Sugar is added to about 56% of supermarket products ( source ). At least, sugar or sugar pseudonyms .

There are a lot of pseudonyms for sugar. Usually the pseudonyms end with ‘ose’ or contain the term ‘syrup’ or ‘syrup’.

In my opinion, these pseudonyms have the sole function of sending unwitting consumers into the woods. This is done from two effective techniques:

If your consumer does not recognize the pseudonym, they are more likely to conclude that there is no sugar in it.
The ingredient that occurs most often in a product should be put first by the producer. If this producer breaks up the sugars into different names, it is much easier for them to put the different sugar names further down the list, so that the consumer is more likely to conclude that there is little sugar in it.

All these techniques belong to the concept of ‘ clean labeling ‘ in which producers do not improve their product but pretend to be better (or rather: less bad) than they actually are.

Summary tip #5 : Always read a product’s ingredient list and discover hidden sugars through pseudonyms.

Tip #11: eat low carbohydrate

People in the west eat way too many carbohydrates. If you compare our current eating pattern with the hunter-gatherer societies, we have lost our way.

In a 2000 study, scientists found out how many carbohydrates hunter-gatherer societies ate on average ( source ). If we put that next to our current diet, we get this:

So we should cut out a lot more carbohydrates and replace them with healthy fats and proteins.

In my article about the low- carbohydrate diet I discuss this in detail (reading tip!).

Summary Tip #6 : Go back to the original amount of carbohydrates with a low-carb diet.

Tip #12: eat more fiber

Eating sugar and little fiber guarantees high spikes in your blood sugar level. The result is a large production of insulin , which will store (abdominal) fat.

By adding fiber to your diet you reduce that. Fiber can be found in vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate, grain products and beans.

Fiber also makes you feel full faster and you automatically eat less ( source ). This is because fiber literally causes your stomach to empty more slowly ( source ).

It is therefore advisable to take one of the products mentioned with every meal. The best option is to eat a (small) salad with every meal. Of course you can add some nuts, or fruit, beans, etc.

Summary Tip #7 : Eat more fiber-rich products to accelerate weight loss and feel fuller for longer.

Psychological Tips:

Tip #13: hang a mirror in your kitchen

Research shows that if you hang a mirror in your kitchen, you eat 32% less unhealthy food ( source ).

Tip #14: make unhealthy food more difficult to reach

Research shows that if you put unhealthy snacks further away, the chance that you will actually eat them greatly decreases. This is for two reasons:

It takes about 20 seconds to think: do I really need that?
“Out of sight, is out of mind”, for example, if you store candy in a transparent drum that is visible, you open this drum 71% more and eat an average of 77 calories more per day than if this drum is not transparent ( source ) .

So put your unhealthy snacks somewhere high in the kitchen that is difficult to reach, or somewhere in the back of the basement. You will reap the benefits later. Or don’t buy any unhealthy food at all… then you ca n’t even be tempted.

Nutrition: when you eat (timing)

Tip #15: sometimes skip breakfast

Breakfast is the one most important meal of the day!

“Huh?” will tell you. But let me explain this…

Point 1: The Metabolism Myth

According to many, we should have breakfast because then your metabolism gets going. That’s a nice theory, but it’s diametrically opposed to scientific findings.

A study has shown that if you eat one meal of 2000 kcal a day or eat the same meal in 5 to 6 portions spread over the entire day, you burn exactly the same number of calories that day (all other factors being the same). ( source , source )

Your metabolism will only slow down if you do not eat anything for more than about 3 to 4 days (72-96 hours) ( source ).

Fasting for shorter periods speeds up your metabolism ( source , source ). For example, a study with 11 men shows that your metabolism speeds up by 14% if you fast for 3 days ( source ).

Point 2: You burn fat instead of sugar

The body has two energy sources:

Sugar (also called glucose, which you get from carbohydrates)
Fat

Your body can therefore also be in two positions:

sugar burning
Fat Burning

As soon as you eat sugars or carbohydrates, your body immediately starts burning sugars (exception to the rule can be found in tip 9). That’s because it takes less effort for the body to burn sugars instead of fat.

Unfortunately, you will not lose weight in the form of fat.

The solution is simple… increase the number of hours you don’t eat. The easiest way to do that is to skip breakfast, because then you’ve already slept 7-8 hours (if all goes well).

Point 3: Health Benefits

I could literally write a whole essay on all the health benefits of skipping breakfast.

Here is a list of benefits if you don’t eat those few hours:

Your insulin sensitivity increases, making fat burning more possible
The growth hormone HGH increases, which speeds up fat burning
Your blood pressure goes down
Your life expectancy will increase if you do this regularly (up to 30% in rats)
Etc.

Summary Tip #8 : Skip breakfast 1 to 3 times a week and eat only around noon. You do not necessarily have to eat less in a day.

Tip #16: eat carbohydrates and proteins after exercise

In the previous tip I said that the body will IMMEDIATELY burn sugars if you give them, including carbohydrates.

But there is an exception to the rule. If you eat carbohydrates after exercise, you will continue to burn fat.

This is because after exercise your sugar supply (also called glycogen) is partially or completely depleted. If you now eat carbohydrates, this is first supplemented ( source ).

So if you want to burn fat throughout the day, eat your carbohydrates after your workout. Carbohydrates also ensure that your muscles recover because they activate the growth hormone HGH.

If you do not eat any carbohydrates at all, you can suffer in the long term if you do intensive sports, because your muscles can then hardly recover ( source ).

You eat the proteins to gain muscle mass. I also recommend doing this for women, because the more muscle mass you get, the faster you will burn fat.

Summary Tip #9: Eat carbs after exercise to help your muscles recover and keep burning fat. Eat this together with proteins so that you build muscle mass and thus accelerate fat burning.

Here you will find the 9 nutrition tips to lose weight healthy and fast in video format:

Movement

Tip #17: do short high-intensity training

When it comes to exercise, people are going to do cardio blindly. Because yes, cardio is sports and so you have to lose weight with it.

One way of exercising that burns 7x more fat is short high-intensity training . This is a way of exercising where you don’t exercise at the same pace all the time, as with cardio.

In contrast, there are short periods of, for example, 30 seconds with intensive exercises, followed by 10 seconds of rest.

If you do a 5 minute warm up and a 5 minute cooldown, this workout is about 20 minutes.

If you do 3 times 20 minutes of short high intensity training, you will achieve A LOT more than equally long or even longer cardio workouts.

Do you have limited time and do you want maximum results?

STOP cardio and start with short high intensity training. Soon I will make a video with an example of short high intensity training.

Summary Tip #10: Do high, short-intensity training to burn fat much faster than cardio.

Stress management

Stress is an underestimated topic when it comes to losing weight. If you experience too much stress, you will be able to lose weight more slowly, because stress makes you retain fat faster.

Tip #18: avoid chronic stress

Stress increases the production of the anti-stress hormone cortisol. If this is short, such as when you are startled or something exciting happens, this is not a problem. It does become a problem if this is chronic/long-term.

When your cortisol levels are high, it leads to fat storage around the abdominal area ( source ). In addition, your blood sugar level rises ( source ), and this makes losing weight more difficult.

When you follow a crash diet in which you consume very few calories, you can also suffer from higher stress levels, which causes you to produce more cortisol ( source ).

Cortisol is not your enemy, by the way, because it is the hormone that reduces the harmful effects of stress. Cortisol is therefore not so much bad , but a sign that you are too stressed .

In this respect it is comparable to cholesterol. An elevated cholesterol is a result of an unhealthy lifestyle and try to help your body process still goes smoothly. Cholesterol is therefore also there to help you, and is not your enemy.

Here are some ways to drastically lower your stress levels:

Meditating: this can lower your cortisol level by 20% ( source )
Plants at home or at work: these can lower stress by about 15% ( source , source )
Listen to music
Don’t do a crash diet
Watch TV or a quiet or comedy movie

Summary Tip #12: Avoid chronic stress by sleeping better and relaxing more.

Stress management

Stress is an underestimated topic when it comes to losing weight. If you experience too much stress, you will be able to lose weight more slowly, because stress makes you retain fat faster.

Tip #19: get enough sleep

This tip is in line with tip 12 to relax more so that your cortisol level remains low.

Sleep has a huge impact on the weight loss process. Here are some research results:

A sleep-deprived adults gives 55% more likely to be obese and children 89% ( source )
A lack of sleep leads to fluctuations in the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which means that appetite is poorly regulated ( source )
When pilots miss 15 hours of sleep in a week, their cortisol levels rise by 50-80% ( source )

A person needs at least 7 hours of sleep. Some need more, but never more than 9 hours.

Here are some sleeping tips:

Do not use screens after 20:00 or use the Flux program to filter out blue light, for Android phones you use Twilight and for Apple phones Night Shift (already as standard setting on Apple device after IOS 9.3 update)
Do not drink caffeinated drinks in the evening, such as coffee, cola, green tea, etc.
Sleep according to the biorhythm and go to bed at the same times
Don’t look at the clock if you can’t fall asleep, because this leads to stress

Summary Tip #13: Get enough sleep to avoid stress and better regulate your appetite.

Mentality/mindset

Mentality and mindset are also underestimated topics around weight loss. With the wrong mindset you will only lose weight for one or two weeks and then the yo-yo will be blown.

Tip #20: intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

Often people in my practice want to lose weight for the wrong reasons. They actually have to do it for others.

There are two reasons in particular:

Lose weight for your partner or others in your immediate environment
Losing weight to meet certain societal expectations

You are then losing weight for someone else, and so you are extrinsically motivated. So this should be intrinsic motivation. The one for whom you want to lose weight, be yourself!

So go from ‘I MUST lose weight’ to ‘I WANT to lose weight’ and also give reasons why you want to. It is best to write this down, because the chance that you will behave according to it is greater.

Summary tip #14: think in terms of ‘I WANT to lose weight’ (intrinsic motivation) instead of ‘I MUST lose weight’ (extrinsic motivation).

Tip #21: don’t see food as filling

Many people see food as filling their stomach. That’s a missed opportunity, because the food you eat actually serves other purposes.

There are two main goals:

Give you new energy
Giving you new nutrients

If you focus your mindset more on those two goals, you will automatically eat healthier.

A hunger signal is not the sign to stuff your stomach but to give yourself the right energy sources, including nutrients.

Summary tip #15: focus on feeding for energy and nutrients instead of just filling your stomach.

Tip #22: find support

To increase the chance of success, finding support is a very good idea.

This way you don’t have to do it all alone. You have several options here:

Find a buddy to exercise with
Share your weight loss goals with family and friends who may want to support you
Join a group, such as a group training or cooking club

All these ways can provide the necessary extra motivation and inspiration.

Summary tip #16: Find support from friends, family or groups who share the same goal as you.

Tip #23: set realistic goals for yourself

“People overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do in the long term.”

Often people have unrealistic goals, such as losing an extreme amount of weight in a short period of time. With this they guarantee themselves on a failed attempt because that is impossible.

I regularly see that people have very high expectations for the short term, then do not achieve them and thus lose their motivation.

Meanwhile, they forget the long-term goals, which are often underestimated in terms of expectations. You often see this with starting entrepreneurs: they want to become millionaires in the first year of their business, so to speak, but do not think about how big their company can become if they work on it for 5 or 10 years.

Set realistic weight loss goals and cut them down as much as possible so that every small goal you achieve can be seen as a victory over yourself. This positively reinforces your own behavior.

Summary tip #17: set realistic goals so as not to lose motivation and see every goal achieved (no matter how small) as a victory.

Here you will find the 5 mentality tips to lose weight healthy and fast in video format:

Here are again 18 good tips in an infographic (16 are from this article):

How much weight can you lose in a week? Don’t believe in fairy tales!

If you Google for terms about (healthy) weight loss or fast weight loss, you will see page titles with the largest possible claims.

For example, you often read the claim that you can lose 5 to 10 kilos in a week . Unfortunately, these sites do not give a realistic picture of how much weight you can lose.

There are many factors that influence weight loss. The rate at which you lose weight depends on your height, your fat percentage, your current diet, etc.

However, there is a general rule of how much weight you can lose per week.

Experts say that, as a rule, you can lose 0.5 to 2 pounds of fat per week.

Note: that’s fat! Of course you always want to lose fat, but you can also lose water or glycogen (a sugar stock in your body). The latter often happens when you are just starting a low- carbohydrate diet .