Dr. Ian Smith's 10 Best Tips for Weight Loss

Fresh off the success of his New York Times Bestselling diet book, Shred: The Revolutionary Diet, Dr. Ian Smith is getting you motivated to living a healthier and happy life. He’s already gotten celebrity Steve Harvey to join his Shredder Nation diet, and today he’s sharing ten tips to help you get slim and trim.

Below Dr. Smith outlines his ten best tips to shed the pounds.

1. Meal Spacing
Eat four meals every day and make sure you space them out evenly every 3 to 4 hours. This will keep your hormone levels stable, thus preventing those insulin spikes that lead to weight gain. Don’t skip meals, especially breakfast. Doing this will lead to fat hibernation, and your fat cells will remain rather than burn.

2. Diet Confusion
This is a term and principle I’ve coined for increasing your chances of weight loss. By eating different types of food and quantities in the SHRED program, you can keep your metabolism revved and prevent that metabolic plateau that is frustrating and common when you eat the same food all of the time. Variety not only prevents dangerous food boredom that causes people to go off the plan, it also keeps your body off-kilter and seeing different foods, something critical to challenging your metabolism.

3. Hydration
Keeping hydrated not only will keep your skin looking good, but it can help you consume less calories. Make sure you drink one full glass of water before eating your meal. Try squeezing a lemon in there and that can help suppress the appetite.

4. Strategic Snacking
Snacks are great, but they must be done properly. Remember that snacks are bridges between meals and not meals in and of themselves. Try to keep your snacks to 150 calories or less, and this will help you from consuming too many calories when you sit down for your regular meal. You can find more than 200 snacks in the back of the SHRED diet book.

5. Journaling
Keep track of what you eat and when you eat it at least for seven to ten days of a new plan. This can make a big difference in changing bad behaviors. Honesty is important in this process, but so is recording what you eat and drink and your mood throughout the day as it relates to your meals. An honest journal can be a large, clear window into the causes of your weight gain or why you’re having difficulty losing weight. You have to know and understand the problems before you can fix them.

6. Fiber
This is a secret weapon in weight loss, and Americans don’t eat anywhere near enough, approximately 30 percent less than what’s recommended. Most people should be consuming between 25 grams to 30 grams per day. The best sources are beans, whole grains, brown rice, crunchy vegetables, berries and bran cereal.

7. Detox
Cleansing can be an important part of losing weight, especially on the SHRED diet. Detoxing your body means activating enzymes in your liver that help purify your blood. Increasing your fiber can also help with a physical cleanse. A seven-day cleanse just twice a year can make a world of difference. Remember, a cleanse and a fast are different. A fast eliminates entire nutritional categories, whereas a healthy detox means eating natural foods that do the work.

8. Cycling
Rotating through a plan can be effective when losing weight because you develop a better sense of what is effective and what is not. You can also modify certain elements that best suit your lifestyle choices. The SHRED 6-week cycle is one that feels different each time you go through it and gives you the necessary flexibility to make the program work for you rather than against you.

9. Calorie Roller Coaster
Your body responds better in its weight loss efforts by mixing up the calories. Eating the same level of calories all the time leads to weight loss plateaus that can become frustrating and an impediment to your weight loss goals. On the SHRED Diet I purposely move your calorie counts up and down for you and you don’t even know it. This maximizes weight loss.

10. Don’t Obsess Over the Scale
It’s important to weigh yourself, but do so in a way that is not going to drive you crazy. You should weigh yourself once a week only, on the same scale and in the same clothes (or not) at the same time of the day. Consistency is important for accuracy. Weighing yourself multiple times a week can be ineffective, misleading and psychologically disruptive. The body naturally fluctuates in weight several times a day, so weighing yourself at the wrong time could give you a misleading result. Don’t focus on the scale. Focus on doing what’s right as far as eating and exercising. The scale will show your progress in time.