3 Daily Practices for Natural Weight Loss

What if all of your weight loss habits were second-nature?

Wouldn’t that be awesome? Wouldn’t that make weight loss, dare I say, simple?

But that’s usually not our focus when we start out on a weight loss journey… we don’t think about how to make weight loss habits easy.

Typically, we jump right to thinking about the “strict regimen” that we need to do and how to totally overhaul our lives.

We worry about how to cut back on all of our favorite foods, rearrange our busy schedules to start unrealistic exercise routines, and prepare every perfectly portioned meal ahead of time to avoid the temptation of DoorDash…

No wonder it starts to feel overwhelming. And like clockwork, over a few days or even a few weeks, everything falls apart. 

You vow to try harder next time. You vow to be more strict.

This is backwards, friends.

Natural Weight Loss vs. Restrictive Weight Loss

The key to successful weight loss is to make the healthy choice the easiest choice possible. This usually means starting out small instead of making drastic, sweeping changes. 

When we adopt these small habit changes that lead to big long-term lifestyle shifts, the result is what I call “natural” weight loss instead of “restrictive” weight loss.

Natural weight loss means that the weight is released relatively effortlessly as a result of gradual habit shifts. These changes feel easy, doable, and like they don’t take too much additional time or effort out of your day. That’s what makes them sustainable.

When you’re engaging in restrictive weight loss, the changes seem overwhelming and overly-contrived. Usually this means forcing “unnatural”-feeling habits that will eventually cause you to crash and burn – for example, eliminating all sugar, or exercising for an hour 7 days a week when you’re not a gym-goer at all. 

I always recommend starting with natural weight loss strategies first, and as those new strategies become second-nature habits, you can add in more and more until one day, your life is totally transformed. But make no mistake – it’s best not to have it all change at once. 

So let’s start where you are. Below are three easy natural weight loss practices that you can start adding in daily!

Daily Practice #1: Hydrating Consistently Throughout the Day

We all need to drink – so let’s focus on doing it in a way that supports our weight loss goals!

Hydration is crucial for effortless weight loss. Not only does it aid in digestion and the flushing out of toxins and waste from the body, but it also makes our hunger and fullness cues more reliable. When we’re well hydrated, we can trust our body’s cues – when we’re dehydrated, there’s a chance we could mistake our thirst for hunger.

To get the benefits of hydration for weight loss, it’s important to hydrate consistently throughout the day (so no chugging 64 ounces of water right before bed to fit in your hydration needs).

Focus on non-sweetened, non-caffeinated and non-alcoholic beverages for most of your hydration needs. For an extra metabolism boost, try drinking chilled or iced beverages if you enjoy them – the energy your body spends heating up your drinks will contribute to a little extra calorie burn over the course of the day.

Daily Practice #2: Eat a Higher Volume of Low-Calorie Foods

This practice is a simple shift in the ratio of foods you are likely eating already.

Some types of foods are more “calorie-dense” than others, meaning that for their volume, they contain more calories. When we focus on less calorie-dense foods, these foods take up more space in the stomach but give us fewer calories (which in the case of weight loss, is usually just fine as we’re looking to create a calorie deficit).

How does this work without making us feel hungry? Because of the stretch receptors in the stomach wall.

Our stomach has receptors that respond primarily to food volume instead of calorie density. This means that when the stomach stretches to a certain point, these receptors signal to the brain that we’re full, and our brain turns off our hunger drive. 

This is why food volume, instead of just calorie-counting, is so important to feeling satisfied with our meals and snacks during the weight loss process.

The least calorie dense foods are fruits and non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, peppers, etc. You may already be incorporating these into your meals, so the shift here is to just eat more of them! Flip the ratio of food on your plate to contain more low-calorie foods and fewer calorie-dense foods. The volume of food remains the same (or greater), leading to the same feelings of fullness, while the calories are slashed.

Try using frozen mixed vegetable medleys, premade salad kits, and preparing roasted veggies ahead of time to keep in the fridge as easy ways to increase the non-starchy veggies at your meals!

Daily Practice #3: Lots of Low-Level Activity

One of the biggest secrets in weight loss is this: Low-level activity, like walking, helps us to keep off more of the calories we burn without our body attempting to recover them.

When we do hard or intense exercise, our body has all sorts of mechanisms that it uses to try to “recover” these calories – making us hungrier and slowing down our metabolism temporarily, just to name a few.

That’s not to say that formal exercise is bad. It’s actually great for boosting long-term metabolism and fat burning through its effect on building muscle!

But low-level activity serves a special purpose. It helps us burn more calories that day without the body attempting to recover them, which adds up massively over time.

Some of the low-level activities for weight loss include walking, using the stairs as many times a day as possible, and even changing positions frequently (moving from sitting to standing, back to sitting, for example).

You could even try taking “movement snacks” throughout the day – squatting 5 times after every meeting, or climbing that flight of stairs to your upstairs office twice each time instead of just once. These 10-20 second intentional movement intervals add to your low-level activity throughout the day.

The Bottom Line

Weight loss strategy doesn’t have to be dramatic – it’s typically the drastic measures that eventually fail us (is anyone still on keto?). 

Starting small and allowing for habit formation will allow you to build slowly on those habits to create bigger change over time. Once your daily routine incorporates more fruits and vegetables, consistent hydration and low level activity, you’ll be ready to move on to what’s next.

And what’s next? More targeted, gentle strategies to really get the scale moving. 

These include establishing a meal timing and frequency that works for your body, understanding the portions that you need to feel energized while losing weight, and tackling the mindset challenges that come with shifting to a healthier lifestyle (like emotional eating, cravings and more.)

My course The Plant Forward Plan walks you through all of it, step by step. And with lifetime access to the materials, you can take each step as slowly as you need to make that habit stick for life and see the weight loss success you’ve been waiting for. 

Join the waitlist here (PFP link) for $100 off the course when it launches again in March!