Keen to lose weight? We all know the gym sucks and sticking to brand-new work out routines turns into a nightmare within two weeks. Hence here are the most unconventional weight loss life hacks to lose a couple of pounds without requiring a low-carb meal plan, weight loss shakes or making you sweat (and without even mentioning the word ‘gym’).
Best of all: Most of these smart slim down strategies are not just free to implement, but even save you money. How brilliant is that?
What’s in it for you:
- Lose Weight Effortlessly
- Save Money Every Day
- Feel Better And Healthier
How To Lose Weight Successfully
To lose weight successfully, choose only one of these unconventional weight loss life hacks to start with. If you try to commit to all of them at the same time, chances are high you won’t stick to any of them. Committing to one single slim down strategy increases the chance of success dramatically. Stick to it for one month, then build up on that.
To ensure you keep on track, post the image of your favorite weight loss life hack on your Facebook wall, and tag two friends to remind you of your undertaking. (Or share it in private messages, if you don’t want the whole world to know what you’re up to.)
Once you made your favorite weight reduction hack a habit, come back to choose another trick. Simply save this article in your bookmarks and add a reminder to your calendar to visit again in a month’s time.
1) Brush Your Teeth More Often
Eating sweets right after having brushed your teeth feels weird. But not just does it feel weird, most sweets or salty snacks also taste strange when mixed with that refreshing mint-taste of your tooth paste. Hence brushing your teeth more often helps to avoid snacking. (And it reduces your dentist bills.)
Especially useful is brushing your teeth right after dinner. That helps to avoid digging into sweets or crisps when the just-before-bed munchies set in.
To save the planet, we recommend a bamboo tooth brush and plastic-free tooth paste. Ask your closest convenience store or order online.
Note: Brushing your teeth thrice a day is enough. Some dentists argue that brushing more often may gnaw at your dental enamel. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?
Tip: If you want to make brushing your teeth more fun, join the Dental Care Dare. It’s free. And fun.
2) Flex Your Muscles When You’re Bored
Make flexing your muscles a habit whenever you’re bored. This can be when waiting for the bus, while brewing coffee or even when sitting in a boring meeting. Advanced flexers even flex while answering emails or wasting time on social media.
Tip: Flexing your muscles is especially fun while flossing or brushing your teeth, since you can watch your muscles twitch in the mirror. And since you decided to brush your teeth more often from now on, you also have a lot more time to flex your muscles.
3) Become An Eco-Warrior
Becoming an eco-warrior saves nature and money – and helps you lose weight. Because let’s face it: Most snacks such as crisps or chocolate bars as well as sugary soft drinks are all packed in plastic. Buying more eco-aware makes you avoid these products. Your body will love you for it.
Tip: As turning completely eco overnight is close to impossible, start with avoiding single-use plastic for one single week. It’s not as hard as it seems.
4) Laugh A Lot
Laughing burns calories. Make sure to laugh a lot. In real life, with real people. Challenge your friends with the “Scream for Laughter”-Jallenge to make laughing hard a habit.
The only kind of laughter not helping you to lose weight is the Emoji laughter.
Share your funniest jokes, videos and memes in our weight loss life hacks discussion on Facebook. And crack up on the hilarious stuff others posted.
Such as this video on how nations laugh… hahaha. Which one is your favorite? And: Do you agree with your nation’s laughter?
Tip: Surely you knew that laughing a lot makes you more attractive, didn’t you? This may well be the stepping stone to weight loss life hack #11.
5) Always Carry A Water Bottle
Carrying a refillable water bottle with you everywhere should be a no-brainer, since it yields a lot of advantages. The three main pros are:
- You will drink a lot more in general as you always have liquids at hand. As a result, you feel more vital. Most people don’t drink enough.
- Drinking enough makes you feel less hungry, so you are less tempted to snack.
- You will save a lot of money as you can refill your bottle with free tap water everywhere. Projects like BlueW.org and refill.co.uk take care of that. Or just ask the closest convenience store or restaurant for a free refill.
- You help save the planet since you produce less plastic waste. (Yes, even recyclable bottles generate a lot of waste.)
If you love tea, buy a refillable thermos bottle. It very quickly becomes a habit to never leave home without it.
Tip: Carrying a reusable bottle everywhere is also a powerful means to stick to weight loss life hack #13.
6) One Size Down
In case you’re a hot choc consumption champion like me or a coffee addict like most humans, buy a re-usable coffee/chocolate mug – one size smaller than your regular take-away size. Again, it saves you money and calories, without requiring any effort at all. (Of course, this only works if you don’t go to Starbucks any more often than before.)
Make sure your mug is super easy to clean. “I can’t use my mug because it’s still dirty” is the lamest excuse of all. (Trust me – I used it before.)
Tip: Buy a really cool reusable mug, to ensure you really want to carry it with you everywhere all the time. Personal engravings or photo mugs from your loved ones work best in my opinion. My mug cost me four dollars at a drug store plus 30 Cents for printing a photo. What a worthy investment!
7) Shop Smart
Shop your groceries with a shopping list. Don’t go shopping hungry. Don’t buy sweets or unhealthy snacks. Whatever you don’t have at home, you can’t consume. Both body and wallet will love you for it.
Tip: Combine this with the unconventional weight loss life hack #15 for maximum impact.
8) Smooth As Smoothies
A family favorite at casa Kaiser: Get yourself a blender and start making smoothies. Some milk and a ripe fruit or two are enough to create a super healthy and incredibly delicious drink. No sugar or additives needed.
Advanced users experiment with a bit of natural yoghurt, honey and cereals. Or anything else that’s healthy and delicious.
Tip: Take your smoothie with you in your reusable bottle.
9) Active Office Work
Get a standup desk. And something to move your feet on while sitting down. This might mean monetary investment, but it’s worth it. And you can always talk to your bosses whether they want to chip in. Standing up while working improves blood circulation and increases productivity.
Tip: Find more productivity hacks.
10) Say Yes More
Saying yes more does help to lose calories. Say yes to playing pool, laser tag, bowling, a long walk in the park or going to the cinema with a friend. Even the latter burns more calories than staying home on the couch. (Unless you use your couch for hack #11.)
Tip: Following weight loss life hack #4, read ‘Yes Man’ by Danny Wallace. It’s one of the most hilarious books of our time, hence all the laughing will make you finish the book with a six pack.
11) Make Lots Of Love
Kissing and making love activates lots of muscles and hence burns tons of calories. Plus getting naked regularly motivates people to stay slim in the first place.
If done right, this is the only weight loss life hack on this list that will make you sweat. But also, if done right, it’s the most fun way to get sweaty anyway. So please: Do it. And do it right.
Tip: If you don’t break a sweat making love, consult a doctor. Something must clearly be wrong here.
12) Take The Stairs
Take the stairs for up to five floors. And keep walking on escalators. (One fact I never understood about London: All day long people are hectic and super busy, but whenever stepping on an escalator they stop and stand still.)
Tip: Combine this with the unconventional weight loss hack #18 for best results.
13) Skipping Soft Drinks
Remember weight loss life hack #5? Here comes the perfect extension.
Drinking water and tea instead of sugary soft drinks, alcohol and hot chocolates is not the most unconventional weight loss hack of all, but certainly one of the most efficient ones. You probably know that there’s a significant difference in calories between the former and the latter, don’t you?
Related: F*** Fast Food
Even better: There’s also a significant different in costs.
Give it a shot. You can easily lose weight by simply skipping soft drinks.
14) Go For A Topless Photo Shoot
One great counterintuitive weight loss life hack is signing up for a topless photo shoot in 2-3 months’ time. That’s enough time to get in shape – and certainly a great motivation. Post your favorite photo in our slim down social media discussion (preferably G-rated pics, please – X-rated you can send directly into my inbox).
15) Pay Cash
Handing cash to someone always hurts a tiny little bit more than passing a plastic card over the counter. Plus, you’ll get a much better feeling about how much money you still have left to spend. Once the wallet is empty, it’s empty. Hence paying cash helps to buy less.
Advanced users who have already implemented weight reduction trick #7 only take as much cash to the store as they’ll need for the items on their shopping list.
16) Smart Snacking
Start snacking smart. Buy a food dehydrator and snack dried fruit. Stack a sack of nuts. Find a (new?) favorite fruit that you can’t go without. Smart snacking is a lot easier than you think.
17) A Chili A Day
Chili’s aren’t just healthy, they’re also spicy. And spiciness doesn’t just keep you healthy (see diet hack #21), but also burns calories.
Make it a habit: One chili a day. At least. In the best case, right in the early morning before breakfast. It’s a fantastic way to jumpstart the day.
18) Make Bigger Steps. Literally.
Literally: Make bigger steps. Wherever you walk, make bigger steps. In the best case big enough to feel your muscles stretch marginally. Not only will you reach your destination faster, but you also burn more calories along the way. Plus, it’s an uplifting feeling to be the fastest pedestrian in town.
19) Sell Your TV
Yes, you read that right. Sell your TV.
I know you won’t do it. But you should. Or at least put in in the cellar for a month. I haven’t owned a TV since 2010. It’s brilliant.
TVs are fantastic time wasters, and they make you fat, since you usually don’t do much while watching TV. (Except for flexing your muscles, since you read weight loss life hack #2.)
Related: Digital Detox
Even worse, TVs suck you under their spell, and once you watched that great film you always wanted to see you start zapping around and get stuck on another movie you never intended to care about, and which isn’t quite as funny/dramatic/fast-paced/romantic as it should be. But it’s the best choice of the currently shitty program and now that you’re already here you might as well watch it ‘til the end.
Honestly: Sell your TV.
Tip: You can still watch your favorite movies and series online or in the cinema (remember slim down strategy #10?). Nothing wrong with a good movie. But at least you’ll actively choose what to watch, and don’t get tempted to zap around.
20) Get A Dog
Most people don’t think of getting a dog as a means to lose weight. However, with all the care and walking they need, dogs certainly help you to become more active. Obviously, the best diet dogs are those that need a lot of walking…
Tip: Same applies to having babies. But I’m a bit hesitant to nominate ‘having babies’ as a long-term weight loss life hack.
21) Stay Healthy
Few healthy people consider ‘being healthy’ the most revolutionary weight loss life hack of all time. And it might not be. Nonetheless, falling sick and lying in bed doesn’t help to stay in shape, so monitoring your health and taking care of your body is not just great to not put on pounds, but generally a sensible thing to do.
22) Last But Not Least: Make It A Challenge
Whichever weight loss life hack you commit to: Challenge your partner, a friend, family member or colleague to weigh the weight with you. Or at least to hold you accountable. Feeling accountable to someone makes all the difference. For an easy-to-implement way to stick to your plans, check out the Jallenges concept.
What’s Your Favorite Unconventional Weight Loss Life Hack?
Which one is your favorite unconventional weight loss life hack? And which smart slim down strategy is missing on this list?
Let me know in the comments below or join our grand diet discussion on Facebook. Sharing is caring.
I’ll continually update this article with the best diet hacks of them all, and I’ll credit all innovators (if you so wish). So send me your best shot – and keep checking back once a month.