10 Easy Ways to Burn Almost 1000 Extra Calories Per Day

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The warm summer weather, and the attire that goes along with it, provides extra incentive to keep ourselves in tip-top shape. So now that we're rounding the corner into fall and the hearty foods that it brings, we need some strategies to keep the extra pounds from finding their way back onto our waistlines.

To lose one pound, you need to either burn 3500 calories or cut 3500 calories from your diet. The 10-step plan below will help you eliminate 1000 calories per day without changing your schedule.

1. Get Your Fiber Early

Calories Saved: 53

Although a lot of traditional breakfast foods are protein heavy (eggs, bacon, dairy), a breakfast rich in fiber is the way to go to get and keep slim. Fiber keeps us feeling full longer, so we consume fewer calories throughout the day and is an excellent way to keep our whole digestive system healthy. Replace your usual protein in the morning with a high fiber cereal such as oatmeal. One egg and a strip of bacon contains 136 calories. One-half cup of oatmeal contains 83 calories.

2. Skip the Bread at Lunch

Calories Saved: 216

I have to give credit to Steve Harvey for this idea. He lost a noticeable amount of weight last year and recently explained some of the key ways he cut his calories. A sandwich is one of his favorite lunch go-to items. To slim down, he replaces the two slices of bread with romaine lettuce on either side. Two slices of whole grain bread contain 220 calories. Four lettuce leaves (two for each side of the sandwich) contain four calories.

3. Toss Your Salad, Literally

Calories Saved: 43

The typical serving size for salad dressing is two tablespoons. Most of us pour the dressing on top of our dinner salad once we make it, and rarely do we toss it. I use this trick: I place one tablespoon at the bottom of the bowl and then toss my salad thoroughly so that every single item in the salad is thinly coated with salad dressing. At 43 calories per tablespoon, I get all of the taste and use half the recommended serving size.

4. Greek, Please

Calories Saved: 42

Yogurt is one of my favorite midday snacks. I used to go for traditional fruit yogurt that contains 153 calories. Then I discovered Greek yogurt has 90 calories and is a much creamier alternative. To dress it up, I add a quarter cup of blueberries for a total of 111 calories.

5. Hold the Half and Half

Calories Saved: 67

I'm a big coffee drinker though having it black is just too bitter for my taste buds. I used half and half in my morning cup of joe and that added on 39 calories. Since my typical morning has two cups of coffee, I was adding 78 calories to my morning. I recently replaced my half and half with skim milk so that each splash only adds 11 calories per cup of coffee for a total of 22 calories.

6. Rejoice in Fidgeting

Calories Burned: 100

I have a hard time sitting still. Even when I'm home writing, I pace around the room with my notebook and pen in hand, tap my fingers and toes, and wiggle around in my chair. According to several medical studies, fidgeters are onto something big. Scientists found that people who fidget can burn about 100 calories more than people who remain sedentary for most of the day.

7. Take Your Meetings on the Road

Calories Burned: 200

At a corporate job, I spent a lot of time sitting in meetings. Over time, I found that I would have stomach aches and headaches at the end of the day. I wouldn't have these symptoms on weekends or when I worked at home. I soon deduced that sitting so much in my corporate office was the cause of those pains. To combat that, I took my one-on-one meetings outside. The pains disappeared and so did some excess calories. My regular walking pace is about 15 minutes per mile, so in a 30-minute meeting, I would get in a two-mile walk. We burn about 100 calories per mile walked, so each 30-minute walking meeting burned 200 calories total without taking any more time than my typical seated meeting.

8. Grab Those Weights

Calories Burned: 100

Every day I get in a bit of weight training. I have simple free weights at home, and I use them when I'm watching TV or talking on speaker phone. While cardio burns more calories during a workout than weight training, weight training has the added benefit of helping you burn calories throughout the day long after the workout is over. The heavier the weight, the better.

9. Get Some Shut-Eye

Calories Burned: 100

Skimping on sleep has a number of effects on our health, but one that's often overlooked is weight-gain. A recent study showed that people who regularly got nine hours of sleep at night and then were reduced to five hours per night, gained an average of two pounds at the end of that first week. Another study found that women who were sleep deprived gained an average of 11 pounds over a year versus women who regularly slept seven to nine hours. It appears this arises because sleep deprived people eat more and feel more sluggish during their waking hours, so they also burn fewer calories. On a daily basis, sleeping well helps us to keep about 100 calories at bay.

10. Turn Down the Thermostat

Calories Burned: 33

If only you could burn more calories while sleeping! A recent study shows that may be the case. People who slept in a 66-degree room burned 33 more calories during eight hours of sleep than people who slept in a 75-degree room. Over the course of a year, that adds up to almost 3.5 pounds of weight loss!

By implementing these 10 strategies in a day, you burn or cut almost 1000 calories per day, and they don't add any extra time to your to-do list! That amounts to as much as two pounds of weight loss per week!

Have you had success with small lifestyle changes that helped you lose weight and keep it off? Please share them in the comments section below.

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