Losing weight is a journey that requires a lot of dedication and constant effort. Only those who can maintain and sustain a healthy and balanced lifestyle are successful in losing weight.
In this article, I am going to share with you 10 habits that will help you to lose weight fast. These are minute lifestyle changes that have an immense impact on your weight loss journey.
So, get ready to change include these habits in your daily routine, and live a healthy life.
Hence, without any further delay, let’s begin!!
1. Control The Portion
The first and foremost step in losing weight is controlling the number of calories you are eating. It should be balanced neither too less nor too much.
Many people think that if they entirely cut down their calorie intake, they will be slim and trim in no time. This methodology is entirely wrong as our body needs a particular amount of nutrition to work efficiently. With this approach, you will be malnourished.
Also Read: 7 Habits Of Women Who Never Gain Weight
2. Cut Down High Sodium Diet
Do not indulge yourself in high sodium diets such as chips, canned foods, and processed foods. High sodium increases water retention in your body, making it look fat. Moreover, there are long-term side effects to such a diet.
One of the best ways to cut down on junk food is to refrain from buying it. We usually munch on these things when they are just lying around in our house, but if we do not have them, we will automatically look for something else to fill our appetite.
Also Read: 10 Most Effective Morning Drinks For Weight Loss
3. Store Fresh Fruits And Salads
Keep your refrigerator full of fresh fruits and salads. In between meals, when you feel like munching something, grab one of the fruit or cucumber and eat it. Not only it will fill your tummy, but you also will not have to regret it later.
Also Read: How To Look Taller When You Have Short Legs?
4. Always Go For Seasonal Fruits And Vegetables
We know mango is the fruit of summer, but we can still find it in December that does not mean we should be eating mango at that odd time because that mango will be filled with a lot of preservatives and chemicals.
According to Ayurveda, one should only consume those fruits and veggies that are available within a 50 KM area to your region. This is the best practice to stay healthy and active.
So, next time you are buying veggies always grab those which are seasonal and cheap. This way you will have good health and a happy pocket.
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5. Fill Your Plate With Salad and Sprouts
We usually take salad as a side dish that makes us completely ignore the salad and fill ourselves with other food. It is better to start eating a salad first, then move on to other food. This way your stomach will be filled with healthy, fiber-rich, and balanced food.
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6. Cut Down Sugar
Eliminating sugar completely from your diet will immensely help you to maintain your ideal weight. Sugary foods and drinks are very high in calories. So, even if you are regularly exercising, consuming sugar will cause weight gain.
Stop buying those energy drinks, foods, and beverages made up of sugar. You will see a significant improvement in your weight loss just by avoiding sugar.
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7. Try Intermittent Fasting For Fast Weight Loss
Intermittent fasting is an easy way to lose weight in less time. In this method, you allow your body to starve for 12, 14, or 16 hours. Intermittent fasting is usually done during the night when your body is resting. In this way, you will not feel the urge to eat anything because you are sleeping.
It is simple, if you are opting for 14-hour intermittent fasting, then eat your dinner at 7 PM in the evening, and the next day in the morning have your breakfast at 9 AM.
With this methodology, your body will burn the extra calories without doing any work. Try it for yourself and tell me in the comment section below, how does it help you?
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8. Move Move Move
In this busy life, it is really difficult to take out time for exercise, but it is necessary to keep you in shape. So, what to do?
Here is an idea, do the exercise while you are working. For example, if you are an office going person, then during the coffee break, go outside and take a brisk walk for 10 minutes, or if you are working from home, instead of sitting on the couch the whole day, take your mobile in hand and attend the meeting while brisk walking around the house.
A brisk walk will heighten your heartbeat and burn calories. You can do this thing for 10 minutes a number of times during the whole day. This way you will ensure that you will remain in shape even when you are busy.
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9. Watch The Plate To Lose Weight
Eating is not only a physical phenomenon but also a psychological one. Not only your mouth is eating, but your eyes and brain are also invested in it. When you take food on a big plate, you tend to eat more than required. Hence, it is recommended to ditch those big plates and buy some medium side plates.
You will soon notice that you are eating lesser and still feeling full.
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10. Eat Slowly For Healthy Weight
It takes approximately 20 minutes from the time you start eating for a signal to reach the brain that your appetite is full. If you are one of those who eats very fast and finishes their meal in just 10 minutes, then my friend you are unknowingly eating more than required. Source
This is why it has been said by our elders always to eat slowly. You should allocate at least 30 minutes time to your meal and eat slowly by properly chewing the food. This way, by the time you finish your meal, you will be full and will not have the guilt of overeating.
I hope you liked the article, if you have any queries or suggestions, please write them down in the comment section below. I love to read and reply to them.
It’s the toxic relationship too many of us can’t quit. An impulse purchase here, a pick-me-up there. A quick scroll, a flirty click, a casual add-to-basket. Who are we hurting?
Recent news linking the budget fashion giant Boohoo (which also owns Coast, Karen Millen, and now Oasis and Warehouse) to claims of “modern slavery” in one of Leicester’s garment factories has served to remind us of the sobering answer to this question. Not only is fashion one of the world’s most wasteful and polluting industries, but it’s also one of the most exploitative. Less than 2% of clothing workers globally earn a fair living wage, with most trapped in systemic poverty at almost every stage of the long and shadowy supply chains. While we enjoy the ease, speed and abundance, it’s they who are paying the price.
Although that word, “enjoy”, is debatable, let’s be honest. The past few months have given us pause to take stock, literally in the case of many overflowing wardrobes, and confront our consumerist urges. Do high street hauls make us happy any more? Did they ever? Life on the neverending treadmill of trends is a tiring one, and there’s nothing like a pandemic to shift your priorities.
But as lockdown easeshow do we walk away? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution – we’re each working with different lifestyles, different tastes and different levels of privilege. And while some people would have you believe that the only way to dress ethically is to spend £500 on a linen boilersuit and wear it every single day, there are plenty of other solutions.
As Paul Simon sang, there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Here are20 ways to ditch fast fashion for a slower, fairer style.
1. Have a clearout
This might sound counterintuitive, but nobody can make the most of their clothes if they have to wade through a sea of crumpled polyester each morning. It pays to do a regular audit of everything you have, so you know exactly what you need – and what you don’t. Plus, you’ll find treasures; clothes you’ve forgotten you have and clothes you don’t (hello, post-cocktails Zara trip) remember buying. As the global campaign group Fashion Revolution likes to remind us, the most sustainable garment is the one already in your wardrobe.
2. Play dress-up
Who says the makeover montage is just for teen romcoms? A good old-fashioned dressing-up session is one of the best ways to tackle wardrobe ennui, and remind yourself just how many options you have. Most people wear 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time, and the waste charity Wrap says that extending the active lifespan of a garment just by nine months could reduce its carbon, water and waste footprints by as much as 30%. So dedicate an evening to experimenting with different combinations and mastering new styling tricks. Try dresses over jeans, shirts under dresses, vests over shirts, scarfs as belts. Put a jumper on over that sundress, and congrats! A new skirt.
3. Learn from your mistakes
Resisting the lure of quick-fix purchases … ask yourself, ‘How many times have I worn this?’ Photograph: Gpointstudio/Getty Images/Image Source
Go through each item in your wardrobe and ask: “How many times have I worn this?” If the answer is in single digits, ask why. Interrogate those unloved garms, and be honest. Is it the colour? The shape? The length? A fabric that has you sweating like old lettuce by lunchtime? Did you buy it for an invitation that never arrived, or a lifestyle you don’t lead? Is it emotional collateral, bought out of insecurity, sadness, hunger or boredom? Learn to identify your most common shopping triggers and it becomes so much easier to resist the lure of the quick-fix purchase.
4.Wear and repeat with pride
Wearing the same outfit to two different parties should not be a revolutionary act, and yet a Barnardo’s study found that 33% of women now consider clothes “old” after wearing them three times. In 2019, UK shoppers spent an estimated £2.7bn on clothes we wore only once. We have confused clothes with disposable items. Let’s stage an amnesty and make outfit-repeating a source of celebration, not shame. I like to think of it as “playing our greatest hits”. If Paul McCartney still gets a standing ovation for Hey Jude, then your three-year-old dress deserves a few more nights out.
5. Aim for #30Wears
In the immortal words of Dua Lipa, you need new rules. The #30Wears rule coined by Livia Firth, founder of sustainability consultancy Eco-Age, is a benchmark to help you make savvier choices and give your clothes the lifespan they deserve. Before buying anything, ask: will I wear this at least 30 times? If the answer is no, don’t buy.
Straighten up … something’s gone wrong when buying a new outfit feels easier than trawling through your floordrobe. Photograph: stevecoleimages/Getty Images
6. Order, order
As Joan Crawford once advised: “Care for your clothes like the good friends they are.” Something’s gone wrong when buying a new outfit in your lunch hour feels like an easier fix than trawling through your floordrobe for something that isn’t covered in creases, food stains or both. So take more time to organise your clothes, hang them up at the end of the day (Crawford also condemned wire hangers), and if ironing is your bete noire, consider investing in a handheld steamer. I also swear by storing winter and summer clothes separately, if you have space. It helps calm the “new season, must shop!” panic and feels exciting every time those old friends reappear.
7. Become a borrower
If you know you’re unlikely to wear an item more than once, don’t buy it – borrow it, whether that’s from a generous friend or a fashion rental service such as Hurr, ByRotation, My Wardrobe HQ or Rotaro. Some specialise in statement pieces for special occasions, while others, such as Onloan and The Devout, run a subscription model that refreshes your wardrobe with trend items for a month at a time. Ideal for the conscious commitment-phobe.
If a total ban on shopping is too big a leap, try this gentler approach. Before buying anything new, endeavour to find it secondhand first. This could mean rummaging in a charity or vintage shop, buying a preloved version from a resale platform, or even just borrowing something similar from a friend. If we all #chooseused more often (there’s no end to the pithy hashtags), it could reduce the demand for new manufacture and landfill.
9. Get stitching
Right said, thread … a wealth of online guides can get you started with DIY clothing. Photograph: Dougal Waters/Getty Images
The best way to understand how much work goes into one garment? Make it yourself. The Great British Sewing Bee has helped to herald a new generation of home-stitchers over the past few years, while John Lewis and Hobbycraft both reported surges in sewing machine sales during lockdown. If you haven’t threaded a bobbin since school, I recommend seeking the tutelage of Tilly Walnes, AKA Tilly and the Buttons. Her online guides are friendly and foolproof, while her book Make It Simple is full of versatile patterns for wardrobe staples, from a jumpsuit to the perfect white tee.
10. Make new and mend
Even if you’re never going to start making dresses from scratch, you can expand your wardrobe horizons with little more than a YouTube tutorial and a hotel sewing kit. Clothes are sometimes abandoned for the tiniest of reasons, such as an awkward neckline or a scratchy label, so don’t be afraid to get the scissors out. Learn a few basic skills and you can replace buttons and zips, turn up dragging hems, patch up the worn-out crotch of your best-loved jeans and alter secondhand finds to fit you perfectly. It doesn’t even need to be neat – you can join the visible mending movement, which turns your rips and holes into beautiful design features.
11. Give vintage a chance
Old is the new new … shopping for vintage clothes has never made more sense. Photograph: Tony Anderson/Getty Images
Vintage shopping has had a makeover, with a new generation of cool Instagram traders leading the way. While 1970s Laura Ashley is this summer’s hottest property, anything older than 20 years is considered vintage, which means 90s minimalism and minidresses from 2000 are circling back. Monthly events such as @AVirtualVintageMarket round up the very best sellers, while the Gem app allows you to sift out the best vintage treasures from across the internet – especially those elusive larger sizes.
12. Rescue the rejects
If you are squeamish about wearing a stranger’s hand-me-downs, deadstock is a sustainable compromise. Usually clothes that were never sold because of small defects or oversupply, searching “deadstock” on sites such as Etsy and eBay will return great items from across the decades that might have been destined for the bin or incinerator. Likewise, end-of-line clothes are an all too common sight in charity shops (you can spot them by the snipped-out labels). Until the brands stop producing too much, it’s better to give excess stock a loving home.
A visitor at a clothing swap at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma in the United States. Photograph: Ronald Karpilo/Alamy
Peer-to-peer rental app Nuw launches a new swapping feature this week, allowing subscribers to list clothes in exchange for virtual credit and use it to “buy” items from other people. Swopped.co.uk works on the same principle. Or there’s always the luddite version: gather a group (at a safe social distance) and trade cast-offs. Warning: seeing your old threads on your most stylish friend may induce regret.
14. Call your agent
The UK has more than 500 dress agencies – also known as consignment stores – which sell people’s unwanted clothes, shoes and accessories in exchange for 50% of the profit. Stock is usually in pristine condition and only a few seasons old, making it a great way to save money on premium labels and shop the high street at one remove. Meanwhile, luxury resale sites such as Vestiaire Collective are overflowing with worn-once wedding-guest outfits for half the original price. If you buy new without checking online first, you’re a chump.
15. Just stop shopping
It’s the cheapest way to downsize your fashion footprint. And yet for many of us, the mere idea of going cold turkey is enough to give us the shakes. I pledged to buy nothing brand-new for 2019, and documented the results in my book How to Break Up With Fast Fashion – but if a whole year is too daunting, start smaller. Challenge yourself to three months, or even just one. It takes time for your brain to break the cycle of positive association, and your fingers to stop twitching for the Asos scroll. But after a few weeks, it gets easier. Promise.
16. Remove temptation
Drop the online shop … unsubscribe from emails tempting you to buy garments you don’t need. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images
Just like deleting your ex’s number and blocking their Facebook profile, a fast fashion breakup involves admin. So go through your inbox and unsubscribe from all shopping emails – even those from the golfing supplies outlet you bought your uncle’s Christmas present from in 2012. Then, fillet your social media feeds. Unfollow all the influencers whose pastel-hued grids exist to seduce you into buying things, and replace them with slow fashion advocates such as @ajabarber, @venetialamanna, @theniftythrifter_, @enbrogue and @styleand.sustain. Cute baby animal accounts would work, too.
17. Shop small
If buying new is the only option, relax – the roll call of great ethical fashion brands is expanding. Where utilitarian hemp once ruled all, there’s now fairly made fashion to suit pretty much every personal style, from slick streetwear to prairie ruffles and maximalist prints. But beware brands that are all mouth and no trousers; the best ones should give details of their factories, suppliers and wage commitments online. Kemi Telford, Sika and Mary Benson are among my favourites, while Gather & See does a great job of curating the bunch.
18. Do your homework
As fashion brands cotton on to consumer demand for more ethical production, it’s getting harder to see through the greenwash and work out where we can shop with a clear conscience. Luckily, there’s an app for that. Good On You has rated more than 2,000 brands on their treatment of people, the planet and animals, providing an at-a-glance verdict from “great” to “avoid”. If only Tinder did the same.
19. Switch to pre-order
Brands such as Olivia Rose, Birdsong and By Megan Crosby prove that patience is a virtue, and made-to-order fashion is the future. By only making what customers demand, they can minimise waste and manage their labour more effectively – the antidote to fast fashion’s need for speed. Plus, it’s a good way to test your own commitment to a trend. If you can’t wait a few weeks for that new outfit, maybe it wasn’t such a must-have after all.
20. Ask #WhoMadeMyClothes?
Fashion Revolution’s rallying cry since 2013, this simple question can be a powerful weapon in the fight against exploitation. If we’re ever going to trust big brands again, we need answers. Where were our clothes made? In which factories? How much were their workers paid, and how much is lining millionaire pockets as a result? Full transparency is the only look to be wearing this year. Metaphorically, at least.
The UK has a new king of fast fashion; Mahmud Kamani, the founder of the billion pound Manchester-based Boohoo empire. Kamani also owns Pretty Little Thing and MissPap, and has hoovered up the dust of administration-bound high street stalwarts Warehouse, Coast, Karen Millen and Oasis in the last month alone.
Kamani’s specialty; fashion so fast it barely registers with much of the UK population. Unless you were in the target demographic of 16 to 24 year-old women, or had a daughter or son who shopped there, you may not even have noticed the Boohoo boom, for it has no physical presence on the bricks and mortar high street.
Steadily, since it was founded in 2006, Boohoo has become a force to be reckoned with in the UK fashion market. Now, in the midst of a pandemic, it is really flexing its muscles – profits have soared in lockdown as it quickly adapted to selling Instagrammable loungewear instead of party dresses (sales rose by 45 per cent to £367.8m in the three months to May) and its models have been praised for their at-home photoshoots, advertising new products without airbrushing. When the rest of the high street is crumbling, the Boohoo group seems to be on an unstoppable upward trajectory – in January, it was revealed that Boohoo is now worth more than rivals Marks & Spencer and ASOS combined.
These numbers, coupled with the photographs of crowds queuing in front of Primark stores when shops reopened last Monday, indicate one thing; the UK is still obsessed with fast fashion.
Shoppers queue in front of Primark in Rushden on 15th June, the day shops reopened in England after lockdown
No matter how much snobbery we fashion editors throw at it, no matter how much we learn about where our clothes come from and how they are made, the appetite for new clothes, quickly, now!, seems to be insatiable. That value proposition – ‘I bought all these clothes for £40 and still have money spare’ – is as irresistible as ever.
Britain, arguably, pioneered the fast fashion industry during the Industrial Revolution – Richard Arkwright’s spinning frame, invented in 1769, allowed yarn to be mass, machine produced, rather than spun by hand for the first time.
After more manufacturing innovations during World War II, mass-produced clothing began to become popular and retailers including H&M, Zara, Topshop, Primark were all established between 1947 and 1969. Pricing got competitive in the clothing market in the 1960s, meaning that off-shore manufacturing was utilised. By the 1980s, retailers were aggressively competing to deliver the new trends, first, and for the cheapest price; in 1989, the term “fast fashion” was coined by the New York Times after Zara boasted that it had taken them just 15 days to get a new idea made up, and into shops.
It’s a cycle which has whirred ever-faster – with plenty of consequences. The Rana Plaza factory collapse, which killed 1,134 garment industry workers found in appalling conditions in 2013, fuelled the Fashion Revolution movement which now campaigns to slow down the industry.
The Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in 2013
According to Keep Britain Tidy, around 10,000 items of clothing are still thrown into landfill every five minutes in the UK. There is still a rife culture of people who will wear something once before throwing it away. There is still a stigma that you can only be photographed in something once, perpetuated by celebrities doing so in public on the red carpet.
The mantra ‘buy less and buy better’, as championed frequently by The Telegraph’s fashion team, is sinking in for many, yet buying eco-fashion is something which, currently, many still cannot afford to do. The matter of shopping for sustainable fashion is a class dividing issue – it’s all very well to tell someone they should buy a £250 organic cotton dress, instead of a £12 one, if you can afford the former.
Livia Firth, sustainable fashion campaigner and founder of Eco Age, suggests though, that those queues outside Primark last week were not only filled with people who truly needed to shop at Primark. While there is, of course, no question that those who need to buy affordable clothing should be able to, her gripe is with those who could afford to do better.
“[The majority were] just there for cheap fixes,” she wrote on Instagram. “Fast fashion is like sugar, we are addicted, we buy without thinking or caring as it just makes us happy for 5 minutes. This may not be popular, but do not tell me the multi-billionaires owners of these fast fashion brands are SO rich because of people who can’t afford to buy expensive clothes…. [those] who can’t afford to buy a lot [don’t] buy a lot. The majority buy [tonnes and on] average every two and a half weeks.”
A 2018 advertisement for Boohoo, which featured reality television star Kourtney Kardashian
A shift in consumer mentality in the UK is happening. Many do now understand that they’ve got too much, and that cheap clothing doesn’t last very long, so they want to buy well-made clothes that last.
At the same time, the pandemic has shown what many already knew; several of the biggest high street fashion brands were already struggling. Over-producing was already sending many into a constant spiral of year-round discounting and the collapse into administration of Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston, Debenhams, Oasis, Karen Millen, Warehouse, Coast and more is reflective of the change that was already happening, before the coronavirus shoved them all over the cliff at a faster rate.
In swooping in and swallowing up brands that were already ailing, will the Boohoo billionaires have bitten off more than they can chew? The brands which they have bought appeal to an older customer than the one which they are used to dealing with (it’ll take more than an endorsement from a Love Island contestant, for example, to tempt the Karen Millen shopper to strike) and they will never shift the volumes they are used to unless they completely remodel these businesses to match Boohoo’s aggressive, micro-trend-led approach.
The pandemic, also, has afforded a moment of realisation for many British shoppers. A new survey conducted by The Seam in London determined that 45% of us have learned during lockdown that we ‘need less stuff in order to be happy.’
Could Britain’s obsession with fast fashion finally be coming to an end? If it is, Boohoo’s bubble might burst as quickly as it ballooned.
For more news, analysis and advice from The Telegraph’s fashion desk, click here to sign up to get our weekly newsletter, straight to your inbox every Friday. Follow our Instagram @Telegraphfashion
Do you shop at Boohoo? Do you think the fast fashion bubble will ever burst? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
