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5 Ways Athletes Can Lose Weight Safely

Weight is something most athletes have to pay special attention to. It can affect their performance on many levels. Heavier athletes are more likely to develop injuries. You might also have to be under a certain weight limit to qualify for specific weight classes. The danger is using unsafe methods to lose weight fast. Weight loss should be gradual and controlled if you want to get the best results and avoid bad reactions. Let's take a look at a few ways athletes can lose weight safely. See also our advice and tips for athletes to lose weight.

Get Smaller Plates and Change Your Eating Patterns

If you have issues with calorie intake, two things we would suggest is that you eat from smaller plates and eat multiple small meals during the day instead of big ones. You can get slightly smaller plates and it will trick your mind into thinking that you had a full meal. Eating multiple times during the day helps curb hunger and keeps your metabolism in a higher gear.

Choose a Safe Diet

You should also consider looking at a few diet plans and see if you can find one that works for you. We would suggest you stay away from restrictive diets like the Keto diet or those that advocate for intermittent fasting. Only do intermittent fasting if you’re used to it. If you aren’t, you need to start slow and listen to your body.

At the end of the day, there are more chances that you will follow your diet if you like what you're eating. You don't have to sacrifice taste for calories. A diet like ‘diet to go’ would be perfect if you want to enjoy food and lose weight at the same time. If you want to know more about this diet and how it works, check out this diet to go review.

Snack Smarter

Snacks are usually viewed as a bad thing when dieting, but it doesn’t have to. When done right, snacking could actually help you reach your goal. The important thing here is choosing snacks with the right nutrient profile.

The first thing you should be looking for is protein. When you eat snacks that are high in protein, many things happen. First of all, calories from protein take a lot more energy and time to process. This means that you will be burning calories while you're digesting, and you will feel full for longer. 

Another benefit of loading up on protein is that it will maintain your muscle mass. Muscle mass plays a very important role in burning fat, which brings us to our next point.

Nuts make a delicious, protein-rich snack

Add More Strength Training to Your Routine

If you’ve been neglecting your strength routine lately or have been focusing on cardio so you can lose weight faster, you’re doing it wrong. Strength training and endurance training could be the best thing you could do right now if you want to lose weight fast and stay consistent.

This is because muscle demands a lot of energy to maintain. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories it will need to function at a base level. This means that you could get away with eating more and still lose weight. Or you could get an even great calorie deficit than you do now. 

Muscle will allow you to burn fat 24/7. Cardio, on the other hand, will only burn fat while you do it, and chances are it will come from your food reserves.

If you want to get the most out of your cardio, however, we suggest you do it on an empty stomach. This way, your body will start reaching straight for those fat reserves and you’ll get better results.

Making Better Decisions

We also suggest that you learn about nutrition as much as you can and make conscious choices in the future. For instance, you have to find ways to reduce the number of carbs in your diet. Low quality carbs and processed foods containing sugar are the biggest enemies of weight loss and don't even count as essential nutrients. Meaning that they're not essential for your body to function.

That doesn’t mean you should cut off carbs completely, however. But chances are you are eating way too much in your diet. If you have a full portion of carbs with every meal, try to replace half of it with veggies or protein. 

Also, don't make choices based on assumptions. You may assume that there's nothing wrong with grabbing a fruit juice, not knowing that these can have as much sugar as a can of soda. So, don't make choices based on what you think is healthy. Make sure that you run it by a nutritionist that will be able to give you better options.

If your goal was to lose weight safely and efficiently, all you have to do is follow our few tips. Make sure that you listen to your body and start paying better attention to your relationship with food.

Related Pages

• Weight Loss for Athletes
• Weight Loss in Child Athletes
• Making Weight: Tips for making weight using nutritional strategies.
• Intermittent fasting and diabetes.
• Weight Loss Diet Reviews
• All About Sports Nutrition

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