Best 9 Best Morning Habits for Weight Loss

Here are the nine best healthy morning habits for weight loss to include in your daily morning ritual.
But first off…
Why Are Mornings Important To Optimize With Good, Healthy Habits?
It’s simple: mornings are so important for health and weight loss is that this is the best time to get things done. If you leave things for later in the day, you might not actually get to them.
Another thing about mornings is that it’s the start of the day, and it being the start, you have the power to make it a good day straight from the beginning.
Even if you are not a morning person, keeping up with a few healthy morning habits will set you up to have that healthy lifestyle you’ve been wanting.
Can morning routines support your weight loss and wellness goals?
Absolutely – a healthy morning routine is critical in setting up you to succeed big time with your weight loss and wellness goals. Let’s get started with what morning habits to include in your routine:
Morning Habit #1: Plan what to eat for the day.
If you want to lose weight, you should eat fewer calories than your body needs for maintenance so that you are on a calorie deficit.
Planning is a habit you can do that morning or alternatively, you can make it happen the night before in under 5 minutes.
And you don’t have to plan your whole day, meaning, you don’t have to plan all your meals.
Plan for what you know you’ll eat, like breakfast, or maybe you already know you’ll have your leftover dinner for lunch. You may also know what snacks you’ll have.
As you’re journaling, or simply listing, write at the very least, a rough skeleton. See if it makes sense for you, if it meets your goals. If there’s some meal you don’t already know, then this is your chance to think about what you’ll eat!
What are you going to be eating? Does that meet your goals? That is planning ahead.
The more you plan, the less likely that either hunger or lack of preparation will urge you to choosing a food in a rush.
This way you will make fewer emotional decisions that can adversely affect your calorie and body fat goals. Not to mention, you will decrease weekday stress of not knowing what to eat and then having to figure out what to eat on the last minute, when you lack the ingredients and might be already hungry!
So planning daily is one of the “Reloaded Seven”, the first seven healthy habits to start when you’re trying to lose fat. Fat loss is an organization game, and the more organized you are, the faster you’re gonna reach your weight loss goal.
Morning Habit #2: Use your morning to cook lunch or do the prep for dinner, so you can swap a great meal in half the time after you get back from work.
Most people don’t think about this. They just don’t think that they can wake up in the morning and that’s when they will make their lunch, or they will wake up in the morning and they will prep some things for what they’re gonna be needing later on to make dinner. But it will save you a tremendous amount of time and stress.
This again goes together with planning, because if you know what you’re gonna be eating, then you can actually take steps to make it happen. While if you don’t know what you’re gonna be eating, then you’re just leaving yourself unprepared – unprepared with the environment against you, trying to make you gain weight.
So, preparing your meal is extremely helpful, and decreases stress tremendously. And it will help you reach your weight loss goal faster.
Morning Habit #3: Strength-training exercise.
Now most people have heard about it – do your morning workout!
Most people who exercise in the morning, actually get their workout done. I strongly recommend that you build that habit.
Now, this morning routine might require you to wake up a little earlier, which can be a problem for some people, but it’s definitely something that you can do and you can learn to do, as long as you adjust your bedtime.
If you work out in the morning, you feel like you’re winning and then because you get used to the daily movement, if one day you don’t do it, you’ll feel like something’s missing, a little stiff even.
Morning Habit #4: Go for a walk.
Another one of the best morning habits is to go for a walk so that you increase your daily physical activity.
Walking is a great way to relax your mind. You can listen to your favorite podcast or you can enjoy the scenery. You will not just be sitting all day, and in case you didn’t hear, sitting kills.
Especially if it’s summertime, sometimes morning is the only time when it’s not hot, and hence more appropriate for walking.
So if you think that makes sense for you and you want to increase your activity level – so you’re not sedentary – then you should go for a walk.
Most people with office jobs are sedentary at around 5000 steps a day or less, which increases their risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and back pain – just to name a few!
See if you can surpass 5000 steps every day and move away from the sedentary category!
So even if you do five minutes, or go around the block, it’s a good morning exercise, and it will make a difference. Steps add up, so don’t shut this habit down just because you don’t have 30 minutes, or 45 minutes, or an hour.
Morning Habit #5: Go for a high-fiber, protein rich breakfast.
Here’s the thing; you do not need to eat breakfast to lose weight and get to your ideal BMI. Some people say you have to eat breakfast, and if you don’t eat breakfast, then you’re gonna have huge cravings at night and that your hunger hormones will be elevated. But, at the end of the day, it’s whatever works for you, and experimenting with eating vs skipping breakfast will give you a better picture of what actually works for you.
However, if you’re the type of person who likes to have breakfast, then the best type of breakfast to have is a high fiber, protein rich one.
High fiber, high protein will help you feel satiated for longer, which is what we’re trying to do when we’re losing weight but don’t also want to be hungry. We want to make our calories worth it; sustain us and make us feel content. Plus, it tastes delicious.
For example, oatmeal with fat free Greek yogurt and berries. I strongly recommend you eat a breakfast with things like that. So you have quite a bit of fiber from the berries and the oats, and quite a bit of protein from the fat-free yogurt.
If you add any sweetener, add a no-calorie sweetener like monk fruit, or a sweetener with fiber such as date syrup. If calories allow add some chia seeds on top.
It’s worth it for you to start thinking about how to optimize your breakfast to reach your weight loss goal.
Morning Habit #6: Journal about the reasons you’ll succeed.
Mornings give you a great opportunity – if you do have the time – to just sit down and write down about all the reasons you will succeed. You will talk yourself into taking positive actions for yourself, come up with more ideas about how to take better care of yourself, and you will build yourself up. Weight loss is self care.
Journaling is a healthy habit: thinking about why you will succeed, will reinforce your confidence, and address the self-doubt that might rise up arguing about how you won’t be losing any weight!
If that happens, please refer to my weight loss affirmations video so that you learn how to address the voice that tells you you’ll fail, criticizes your effort, and minimizes your achievements.
Morning Habit #7: Have a Low Calorie Coffee.
If you are a coffee drinker, please do not drink a high calorie coffee; drink a low calorie coffee. Yes, I’m talking to the people who invest 300 calories or more in liquid calories – the least satiating form of calories.
Any feeling of fulness will be temporary, and if you don’t believe me try switching those 300 calories with actual high-fiber, high protein food, like the yogurt berry breakfast I described earlier, and see for how much longer the healthy breakfast will last you before hunger hits.
But I’m not just talking about the people who put in a a lot of calories in their coffee. I want you to spend time thinking about how to optimize your coffee, even if the optimization is small.
Why?
Because small benefits add up and coffee is a daily thing, or maybe even a multiple times a day thing.
Even if you could save something small, like 40 calories from your coffee, it’s worth to optimize.
Here’s an example from a client of mine. She was not counting the calories in her coffee, at all. Now 40 calories, I think, that was the number, and that’s not a big deal. Who cares about 40 calories?
The problem was that she had six cups of coffee a day. So six times multiplied by 40 is 240 calories on a daily basis that she was not accounting for. So in the course of a week, that was almost half a pound that she was not losing while she was expecting she would be losing it.
If you are one those people who only have one cup of coffee a day, in the course of a year, a 40 calorie coffee gives us about 14500 calories – almost equivalent to 4 pounds of fat, that you’re either gaining or not losing because of those 40 extra calories.
You can save those calories by making adjustments to the type of sweetener you’re using. So if you’re using sugar, you can switch to let’s say monk fruit and get zero calories, and save yourself one teaspoon of added sugar.
If you’re just adding a high calorie milk or cream, switch to something that’s equally delicious but has fewer calories.
Now for you to find out what that’s going to be, you might need to do some trial and error, go to the store and review your options, experiment a little bit with your coffee, so you find the best way to drink coffee.
The goal is to minimize the calories and keep your coffee hopefully just as delicious as before. This is a small optimization that is worth it.
Morning Habit #8: Weigh yourself.
Weigh yourself first thing in the morning without clothes on. You do not need to weigh yourself everyday, but definitely weighing yourself a few times a week will help you have a better view of how your weight loss goal is coming to fruition.
And the reason is that because of water weight, our weight just fluctuates on a daily basis, and by having more measurements than once a week, that will help you have a more accurate picture of how you’re doing with your body weight.
Morning Habit #9: Drink water.
Why do we drink water in the morning?
We drink water in the morning because that is when you are at your most dehydrated. All night long you were losing water and clearly not drinking any, so you do need to have at least a glass of water when you wake up.
This is a healthy habit and not necessarily a weight loss habit. Yes, it is going to fill your stomach a little bit, but don’t expect you will be losing weight because you’re drinking more water. And I’m saying this because many people just emphasize we drink water for weight loss, and I’ve seen multiple folks who try to lose weight by drinking water without giving emphasis on what actually matters: a calorie deficit.
If you’re drinking water and you think you’re gonna lose weight, don’t expect too much from that. But it is a good morning habit for your health and that is why I included it in this list, because weight loss is not just about losing weight, we are doing it for a reason. The reason is to live a long healthy life. Take better care of yourself. Weight loss is self care, period!
Want to know how to create new habits? Please visit the Creating Habits Guide here.
Now that you’re done with the article, what healthy habits are you already doing and which ones are you more interested in starting? Leave a comment and let me know.
Hey,
Great article there! Very easy to understand.
Keep up the good work
Thank you!
Hey Maria,
I am too healthy. I am looking for ways to lose weight as soon as possible. I totally agree that morning walks and exercise affect body weight. Wish me the best of luck, and thanks for the above tips, I hope these will really help!
Good luck!