Celebrities are just like us! This is especially true when it comes to struggling with weight loss. In fact, it might be even harder on them with being in the eye of the public constantly. But this also means that we don’t need any hard science to see which one of their strategies have worked.
These A-listers have successfully shed the pounds, and have also shared some of their secrets with the rest of us. Keep reading to find out the best 10 celebrity weight loss tips that actually work!
1. Salad for Every Meal
This tip comes from Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, and her weight loss transformation is enough to convince you it works. She credits this simple trick to her postpartum weight loss. And when you think about it, it does make a lot of sense that increasing your intake of fresh vegetables and laying off the carbs will help shed the pounds.
“Salad is always on the menu with whatever dish I am making,” she told People.
2. Note Down Everything You Eat
Food journaling is one of the most effective ways of being aware of what you eat, which will help you control the amount of food you eat and how healthy your diet it. Carrie Underwood is one celebrity who has made use of this trick and found results as well.
“[It] helps me make better choices and pay attention to what I’m eating,” she says.
3. Get Two Appetizers, Skip Main & Dessert
When eating out, order yourself two appetizers and stay clear of main and dessert, which is where you’re most likely to get carb and meat-heavy options. If you’re feeling really hungry or have a raging sweet tooth, you can also opt for a main and shared dessert.
This tip comes from Jennifer Lawrence’s former trainer Dalton Wong, who is the one who helped her tone down for body-baring roles like Mystique in X-Men: First Class. The actress also penned the foreword for his book “The Feelgood Plan: Happier, Healthier & Slimmer in 15 Minutes a Day” in which she thanked him for teaching her life-changing weight-control lessons.
4. Plan Ahead for Hunger Pangs
It’s when those sudden hunger pangs hit that most of us let our healthy diets slip up, which is why this tip from Candace Cameron Burre is genius.
She says she plans her meals and snacks meticulously, especially for times when she’s out and about, whether it’s her regular commute to work from her home in Los Angeles to New York City, or on a cross-country flight. This way, she’d be able to avoid airplane food or junk food. She’d also have protein bars on hand to fuel up after a workout.
5. The Four Bs Workout Plan
Britney Spears shaped up for her Las Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood with the help of trainer Tony Martinez. He would push her to focus on the “four Bs”: 1. Basketball jump shots, 2. Backward walking, 3. Balancing on one leg while doing medicine ball slams, and 4. Bicycling.
While this plan worked great for her, Britney also added in her own fifth “B”: Basics. Her Instagram is often filled with posts of her doing basics like push-ups, squats, bar curls, and core work – moves that anyone can do!
6. Strive for Good Enough
Perfection sounds good, but putting too much pressure on yourself is how you fail. That’s why Blake Lively didn’t prohibit herself from eating foods like pizza or pasta completely even though she needed to get in shape pretty quickly for her role in The Shallows only a year after giving birth to her daughter in December 2014. Neither did she count every single calorie or obsesses over everything she ate.
Instead, Blake’s trainer says, she stuck to simple, homemade food whenever possible. She ate a balanced diet of proteins, vegetables, fruits, and slow-burning starches like sweet potatoes. Her meals also included healthy fats like avocado, coconut oil, and grass-fed butter. She tried to eat healthy and homemade at least 80% of the time, and when that craving for junk food hit, she indulged!
7. The Goal is Wellness, Not Weight Loss
Actresses like Lena Dunham and Melissa McCarthy have stated that the purpose of their weight loss wasn’t losing weight itself, but instead to get fit and stay healthy.
Posting to Instagram, Lena captioned a photo “Right now, I’m struggling to control my endometriosis through a healthy diet and exercise.” Her trainer Tracy Anderson has her doing activities like yoga and running and is helping her curb her appetite that’s made worse with stress.
Melissa McCarthy also stated back in 2015 that training for fight scenes in Spy helped her stop worrying about her weight. “I think there’s something to kinda loosening up and not being so nervous and rigid about it that, bizarrely, has worked,” she said.
8. Protein for Every Meal
You may be tempted to skip the protein and chose low-calorie options for every meal when trying to lose weight. But this leaves you with a calorie deficit, leaving room for unhealthy hunger pangs and cravings.
Kim Kardashian is proof enough that a protein-heavy diet is a great trick to losing weight. During her post-partum weight loss journey, she would follow a meal plan that included 6 ounces of protein 3 times a day. She’d have cheesy eggs for breakfast, fish for lunch, and lean chicken breast for dinner. And that’s one filling meal plan that proves you don’t have to go hungry to lose weight!
9. Avoid Eating Late At Night or Early in the Morning
Jennifer Hudson went from size 16 to 6, a whopping 80-pound weight loss, following her partnership with Weight Watchers in 2010. She’s managed to maintain her weight ever since and has stated that sticking to sensible meal times ha helped her do that.
In an interview on Lorraine, a UK TV show, she said, “If it’s early in the morning, [I tell myself] ‘OK, I would still be asleep right now, So I’m not going to eat.’” She didn’t divulge the exact timings, but research has suggested that limiting your eating hours can make a lot of difference in preventing weight gain.
10. Get Help
It’s no secret that celebrities have a lot of help when it comes to their weight loss journeys. While the bills can add up when it comes to childcare, personal trainers, diet counseling, etc. even one of those can help speed up the process dramatically. You can get advice from a close friend who’s a nutritionist, get your parents to watch the kids while you work out, or scour the internet for any piece of information you can get.
And if you can’t afford any of it, don’t be too hard on yourself. Your weight loss journey may not be as quick or as dramatic as these celebs, but you should be proud of whatever you achieve!
Appearing on the Today show in 2016, Chrissy Teigen had this to say: “We have nutritionists, we have dietitians, we have trainers, we have our own schedules, we have nannies. We have people who make it possible for us to get back into shape. But nobody should feel like that’s normal, or like that’s realistic.”
