Summer is typically associated with working on your "beach body" to look and feel your best. But prioritizing your health is important at any time of year, especially if there is a particular Halloween costume you want to rock with confidence. So, if you want to shed some stubborn pounds this spooky season, fat loss dietitian Maggie Hennigan, MS, RDN, has a few key tips. Read on for the four easy steps you can take to lose weight before Halloween.
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1. Prioritize sleep.
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While many people think that constant movement is necessary to lose weight, rest is equally important. According to Hennigan, it's vital to get the best sleep possible.
"The first thing I would do is prioritize sleep as much as possible, so aiming for seven to eight hours of deep, restful sleep every single night, " she says in an Aug. 22 TikTok video. "A lack of sleep impedes our ability to executively function—and executive functioning is essentially our ability to make decisions with a long-term goal in mind, which, as you can imagine, is pretty important for weight loss."
Hennigan explains that if you lack quality sleep, it can make you more impulsive. It can also increase your hunger hormone, ghrelin, and decrease your fullness hormone, leptin.
She adds, "That will contribute to increased calories over time [and] also impact the decisions that you're making food-wise."
2. Take a morning walk.
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We're finally starting to get a bit of a reprieve from the summer heat, and Hennigan says you should make the most of it by taking a walk every morning.
"A morning walk is a keystone habit, and a keystone habit is a habit that, when implemented, it paves the way for additional positive habits—it's kind of like a domino effect," she explains. "By checking that morning walk box, you are going to have a better day overall."
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3. Revamp your snacks.
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Hennigan cites this tip as a new recommendation she gives to clients, suggesting they introduce "the ultimate hot girl fat loss snack."
"This is an afternoon snack where you are having a cup of green or black tea with collagen peptides—because green or black tea contains polyphenols that increase your body's own production of GLP-1, which is the peptide in Ozempic," she says.
If you choose a caffeinated tea, it will increase your metabolism, as will the protein from the collagen.
Pair your beverage with "whatever kind of carby snack you happen to be craving," Hennigan tells viewers.
"Then, you're having something really nice and satisfying in a way that's not going to spike your blood sugar because you're having it with protein," she notes. In her TikTok, Hennigan shared her snack from the day, which was a piece of homemade cornbread and tea.
This snack pairing is also helpful for "long-term sustainability" because you'll look forward to it rather than dread it (as we so often do when making lifestyle changes for weight loss).
4. Eat more beans.
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Wrapping up her list of suggestions, Hennigan also recommends trying a dense bean salad. The salads, often referred to using the acronym DBS, consist primarily of veggies in a marinade, and have been popularized by fellow TikToker Violet Witchel (@violet.cooks).
"I'm also a really big proponent of those dense bean salads that @violtet.cooks has been posting her on TikTok," Hennigan says. "Beans are incredible for fat loss because they are satiating, and they also are really high in protein and fiber."
As a bonus, there isn't too much prep work involved in making the salads, which can be portioned out to last you an entire week. On her page, Witchel has a series of posts with different DBS recipes.
