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Weight loss can be a frustrating thing.  So all of us could use a little help from time to time in the weight loss process.  In light of this, here are 55 weight loss tips to help you in your endeavor to lose weight.  Good luck.

1.   Binge every once in a while so that you don’t feel constantly deprived. Try not to binge on an entire ice cream cake but reward yourself every now and then for all the hard work you have put in.  Actually this may help you start your weight loss machine again.  There is something called re-feeding that will jump start you calorie burning process.  Your body has an amazing way of adjusting to what you throw at it.  If you are constantly giving it low calorie meals your body will adapt and you need to shock it with a high calorie meal every now and then.

2.  Drink lots of water.  This will accomplish two things.  It keeps you away from sugary drinks and it helps hydrate your body.  You should drink at least eight 8 ounce glasses of water each day.  Or to put it another way you should drink at least 1/2 gallon of water everyday.

3.  Keep track of what you eat.  I mean actually write this down of paper.  You will not do a good enough job if you are trying to mentally keep track of it.  Write down everything that you eat.  If you walk by the candy jar and pick up a handful of M & Ms then write it down.  We don’t realize how much we actually eat until we write it down.

4.  Walk everywhere that you can.  If you live close enough to a store then walk there and back (if the weather is nice).  Instead of sitting at your desk on your lunch hour get up an go for a walk.

5.  In order to give yourself a head start on the weight loss overestimate the amount of calories that you eat.  The clock in my car is a couple of minutes fast but I don’t change it because it gives me the buffer I need.  If you have calculated that you eat 2000 calories per day, assume that you are really eating 2200 calories a day.  This is most probably more accurate.  It will give you a better understanding of the work you need to do.

6.  Eat five or six small meals each day instead of your normal three larger meals.  There are some that believe that this may help speed up your metabolism.  Whether it does or not is not necessarily proven, however, what we do know is that is helps control blood sugar better and as a result controls our appetite better.  If you are not hungry all the time you will eat less food.

7.  Exercise daily.  No list of quick weight loss tips would be complete without mentioning exercise.  You need at least 20 – 25 minutes of exercise each and every day.  The more you exercise the more calories you will burn and the more weight you will lose.

8.  Team up with a weight loss partner.  Many of us need someone to hold us accountable.  You need someone to motivate you when you don’t feel like exercising. You need someone to keep you accountable for what you eat.

9.  Reward yourself when you hit certain weight goals.  Give yourself a weekend away or treat yourself to the new piece of clothing that you had you eye on.  We all respond well if we know there is a reward awaiting at the end of a difficult journey.

10.  Use smaller plates.  I don’t know about you but we have two different size plates in our house.  If I use the bigger plate then I will have a tendency to fill it up.  If I use the smaller plate I will have the tendency to fill it up.  However, the smaller plate will contain less food.  Less food equals fewer calories.  Fewer calories equals more weight loss.

11.   Have a salad with every meal.  It will help you fill up a bit and provide some healthy calories in the process.  The more salad you eat the less other food you will eat.  You will simply feel fuller.

12.  Eat more vegetables with you meals.  Instead of having a second helping of lasagna or some other fattening main course eat more vegetables if you are still hungry.  It will provide you with more of the nutrients that you need and help keep your calorie count down.

13.  Stay away from the junk food.  I don’t thing I need to say anything more about this.  It is a no brainer.  Don’t stick empty calories into your body.

14.  Change you bread from white bread to wheat bread or whole grain.  Refined flour is too easy for you body to digest and will often get turned to sugar inside of your body.  White bread (also pasta and rice) can do some nasty things to your blood sugar as well.

15.  Eat breakfast every day.  For that matter don’t skip meals.  However, stay away from the sugary cereals.  Eat oatmeal or high fiber cereal of eggs.   Some might be tempted to skip meals if they were compiling a list of rapid weight loss tips thinking that skipping meals would lead to greater weight loss.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Your body will adjust and think you are starving yourself and will slow your metabolism to compensate.

16.  Cook more.  I could have written this as eat out less.  There is a less of a temptation to calorie dense food at home.  You also won’t have any of those delightfully decadent desserts at home either since they are too much of a pain to make.  However they are very easy to order.

17.  Look for low sugar variations of your favorite foods, condiments and the like.

18.  Take you time when you eat.  Don’t inhale your food.  The slower you eat and the more water you have at each meal the less you are likely to eat.  Your brain doesn’t actually know exactly when you are full.  There is a bit of a lag.  If you eat slower you allow your brain to catch up and let you know that you are full.  But if you eat your food at the speed of light this won’t happen and you are likely to overeat.

19.  Learn to deal with your emotions in more productive ways.  Often people respond to stress or boredom or depression with food.  This is not a positive behavior.

20.  Set reasonable weight loss goals.  If you set a goal of 30 pounds in your first two weeks then you are going to fail.  Set goals that you can attain.  The reaching of those goals will motivate you to continue.  But if you are constantly failing to reach your goals you will ultimately become discouraged and quit.

21.  Use non-stick spray on your pans instead of using butter or (even worse) bacon grease.

22.  Sprinkle in some athletic activities in your social calendar.  Instead of going to see a new movie maybe go play a game of tennis.  Or go for a walk in a state park.  Sign up for a volleyball or basketball league.  This way you will burn more calories that sitting on your backside in a theater and you will not suck down large amounts of buttered popcorn.

23.  Order smaller amounts of foods when you go out to eat.  Buy a 6 inch sub instead of a foot long sub.  Get a single cheeseburger instead of a double cheeseburger.  If you must eat french fries then eat get a small instead of a large.   Actually, if I were being consistent I should have avoid all french fries on this list of fast weight loss tips.

24.  Drink skim milk instead of whole milk.  You might need to work your way down the ladder stopping on the 2% rung first and then the 1% rung before getting to skim milk.  Skim milk has about half the calories of whole milk and hardly any fat.  I used to think that skim milk was water mixed with milk flavoring.  However, it you take it in stages you can easily get used to drinking skim milk.

25.  Don’t eat after 7 pm.  You don’t want to be eating right before going to sleep.  You won’t be able to burn it off overnight by sleeping.

26.  Eat healthier snacks.  Nuts are always a great snack.  They are also a source of good fat.  Use almonds, walnuts, macadamian nuts and the like.

27.  Watch less television and get up and go for a walk.  When you are done reading this article get off the computer and go put some of this stuff to practice.  Start by taking a walk.

28.  Stay away from alcohol.  Lite beer or night there are a lot of calories in alcohol.  They call it a beer belly for a reason.

29.  Reduce the amount of fat in your foods.  Keep your intake of fat at no more that 25% – 30% of your overall calorie intake.  Try to stay away from all saturated fats.

30.  Eat plenty of fiber.  How do you do this?  It is quite simple; eat vegetables, fruits and whole grain foods.  Fiber fills you up and as a bonus it helps keep you regular.

31.  Know what you basal metabolic rate is.  This is the number of calories that you will burn in an aveage day.  There are many different calculators on the internet that can help you calculate this.  Once you know your number you can now reduce it and help promote weight loss.

32.  Know how to read a food label.  In case you haven’t noticed, Americans have gotten fatter since we have gone to fat free foods.  This is because fat free foods are not sugar free.  They are not void of calories.  I have seen people think they were OK because they were eating fat free danish.  It still has just as many calories as regular danish it just has less fat.

33. Consider exercising in the morning.  Morning is the time of day when your glycogen stores are the lowest.  What does this mean?  It means that you will burn fat quicker.  Your body will use your glycogen stores for energy when exercising.  If your glycogen stores are low your body will have to turn to something else for energy.  It is then that it will turn to fat to burn for energy.  This is good for you.

34.  Recognize that weight loss is not easy.  If it were easy then everyone would be thin.  However, 2/3 of the American population is considered overweight.

35.  Develop the desire to lose weight.  You need to be willing to put the work in.  Weight will not fall off of your body magically.  It will require work.  You need to have the desire to change.  Apart from this you will fail.

36.  Stay away from gimmick diets.  These things are nearly impossible to follow and as a result you will give up and get frustrated.  Eat a sensible diet with controlled portions and equally proportioned between proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

37.  Mix vegetables in with your food.  Put them in your soup or your salads or your pastas.  You are more likely to eat them in your food then you will eat them on the side.

38.  Reduce your calorie intake by 500 calories per day.  If you eat fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight.  One pound is about 3500 calories.  Therefore, if you decrease you calorie intake by 500 calories per day you should lose about one pound per week.

39.  Grill more of your foods rather than frying them.  This will get rid of some of the grease that you would have consumed if you had fried the food.

40.  Do not treat exercise as punishment.  Learn to enjoy exercise and see the positives.  It provides you with a better quality of life, it increases your life span, it gives you more energy, it keeps you out of the doctor’s office, etc.

41.  Eat more seafood.  Fish is a healthy source of protein.  Don’t fry it.

42.  Avoid the junk food aisle in the grocery store.  If you don’t buy eat you can’t eat it.

43.  Never go shopping on an empty stomach.  You will buy more food and most often more junk.  Make a grocery list before you go and stick to it.

44.  Stay away from sugary drinks.  We know that soda has a lot of sugar but so to things such as fruit punches, grape juice, etc.

45.  Stay away from buffets.  Restaurants like Golden Corral or Old Country Buffet may give you more bang for your buck but you will overeat.  Stay away from them.

46.  Lift weights.  The more muscle you have the more weight you will lose.  Muscle requires more calorie expenditure to maintain it than does fat.  Therefore, the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn.

47.  Stop looking for the secret to weight loss.  There is no secret.  It is all out in the open.  Burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight.  That is not a secret.

48.  Approach weight loss as a lifestyle change.  Incorporate exercise into your daily life and and eat sensibly.  Diets will fail; a lifestyle change of eating sensibly will succeed.

49.  Take photos.  Take a picture of what you look like today and compare it with a photo in the future.  This should help provide you with the motivation you need to press on.

50.  Tell your family your weight loss goals.  They will remind you (sometimes in not so loving ways) when you reach for that snack that you don’t need.

51.  Don’t compare yourself to others.  You are different than the next person.  You don’t weigh the same.  You don’t have the same metabolism.  You may not be the same sex.  You may not have the same willpower at this stage.  You will not lose the same amount of weight.  Be concerned with yourself.  Use others as motivation not as a way to beat yourself up.  The only comparison I want you making is telling yourself that if they can do then so can you.

52.  Ignore all the weight loss miracle cures that are advertised on TV or radio.  These things can have side effects that are detrimental to your body.  They are not something that you can do long term and since you have not learned life change then you will gain back any weight that you lose.

53.  Avoid fast food restaurants if at all possible.

54.  Don’t weigh yourself everyday.  Your weight will fluctuate.  Don’t get discouraged by fluctuating weight.  You don’t need to weigh yourself more than once per week.

55.  Get enough sleep.  In order to burn fat like it should your body needs rest.  If you don’t give it the rest you need you will hinder your progress.

I am sure if I spent more time I could come up with some more free weight loss tips but I think this will give you enough to work on.  Our problem is not having enough tips it is not following through on the ones we know to be true.