Is there a diet-friendly holiday? A time each year when we are all encouraged to eat lean meats, fresh vegetables, and vitamin drinks? A festival that avoids sugars, salts, and fats?

Not on this planet.

It might be hard to lose weight successfully during the holidays. While it’s tempting to eat every treat in sight, there are a few ways you can help minimize your cravings for those forbidden items. You will read great tips for weight loss here.

Move More

People who want to lose some weight need to be sure that they working in some exercise as well. Many people are unaware of how easy it is to get some exercise to lose weight. It is tough for many of us to fit exercise time into your busy day. Just adding a short walk can help increase your chances for keeping weight loss over time. A way to get some exercise while accomplishing a necessary task is to clean house daily. The calories you burn doing simple everyday chores will lead to healthy loss of fat.

Savor Your Food

Food has pleasurable tastes and textures. Take the time to enjoy these sensations. Eat more slowly, chew more frequently. The longer you take to eat your food, the less food you’ll need to consume to enjoy your meal. Especially when snacking, this can reduce your calorie intake by hundreds or even thousands of calories each week.

Sip Sip Sip

Water is a great appetite suppressor. It helps make you feel full, and can satisfy your need to consume. Flavor your water with a few drops of lemon or some spice like cinnamon, nutmeg or even cayenne pepper. There are no calories, and these liquid snacks replace the empty calories of chips, candies and cookies.

And don’t worry about gaining water weight; by reducing your fat intake, you’ll retain less water. If you reduce your food intake and consume at least two quarts of water everyday for seven days, you are going to lose water weight. This is only temporary weight loss, but is a quick way to get the first five pounds off and quick-start your weight loss program.

Alternative Exercise Program

Joining a Pilates group or signing up with a gym membership is a nice way to formalize your exercise routine. But consider alternate programs. Join a bowling league or weekend volleyball tournament. Take up Judo, Karate or Tai Chi. Take walking tours through your hometown and nearby cities. You can perform many exercises at home during the day to stay healthy.

Protein Shakes

Protein actually sends signals to your brain that you are full, acting as a natural appetite suppressant. To take care of between-meal hunger pangs, have a protein shake or bar.

Rewards

Rewarding yourself for good behavior is an important part of dieting. Treat yourself to a new workout outfit, a massage or a little trip to your favorite store.

Pills

Avoid pills and potions that promise you lightning-quick weight loss. Any weight you might see disappear would only come back – and often then some – when you inevitably stop taking the supplement.

Salt

Reducing salt intake is an excellent way to lose weight successfully. When you cut out extra salt from your diet, you can get the natural flavors of food and it will help you to stay away from junk food, and it can even curb the craving for junk food. Fast food has a ton of salt, so steer clear of it.

Therapy

If you are having trouble losing weight, consider seeing a cognitive therapist. Sometimes we eat as a way to deal with sadness, loss, anxiety, stress, or just plain boredom. A therapist may be able to relieve the triggers that are making you over-eat.

Portions

A very effective step in changing your diet and cutting calories is reducing the portion size of what you eat. Today, much emphasis is put on the chemical and nutritional content of your food. So much so, it seems, that the very basic concept of eating less gets lost in the details. You can shed many extra pounds over time by simply eating a little bit less at each meal.

As mentioned in the above article, losing weight can be difficult, especially during holidays. Thankfully there are many strategies to help you stay on track. Use what you’ve learned here to help you through the tough times, and you will start to shed pounds as desired.