Our Must-Read List of Diet & Exercise Tips This Month

There is an almost endless amount of helpful weight loss articles at your fingertips. In fact, there may be almost too much to sort through as you realize your finger is hurting and look up to see that it's past midnight after scrolling through pages of Google results, Pinterest boards or hitting the bottom of your Facebook feed.

To help, we've put together the best of the best recipes, workouts and dieting tips recently read by the team at Diet Direct. We've also included a few of the most-popular posts from the blog. We found some excellent stuff this month, so jump in and learn something new below!

Best Reads on Dieting and Calorie Counting

• You've probably heard the weight loss tip to drink a glass of water before a meal. What may be surprising is that research studies show that it's not only true, but one found it helped dieters lose and extra 4 lbs. over 12 weeks! Read more.
• Calorie counters (including apps) are a critical component of a diet and exercise plan to track progress. Unfortunately, they may only be good at tracking diet- and you should consider not using them to track exercise. Read more.
• What if you could build willpower to change habits by saying "yes" to those temptations that aren't on your diet, instead of "no"? We recently posted about an interesting concept that builds better eating habits called "the 10-minute delay" rule. Read more.

The Tastiest-Looking Healthy Recipes

Grilled Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wrap image via Joyful Healthy Treats

• A party-appetizer favorite that's not as well-liked by the scale gets a healthy makeover. Check out how to make healthy Grilled Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps. Low-carb, low-fat and just 53 calories per cup! View the recipe.
• It's not delivery, it's...Portobella Pizza Caps. These little guys look like they have all the fun of pizza with way less of the guilt! The genius portobella mushroom pizza 'crust' wipes out around 60% of the carbs, 40% of the calories and 40% of the fat versus what the pizza delivery guy would show up with. View the recipe.

• If you're following the WonderSlim Weight Management Program and looking for plan-approved healthy dinner recipe ideas (or even if you're just looking for healthy recipes in general) browse our popular recipes section here. Be sure to check out this month's most viewed recipe on our blog, Stir-Fried Garlic with Shrimp and Veggies recipe here.

Awesome Exercises and Workouts

Kettlebell Periodic Table Chart via Stack 52

• Kettlebells offer an impressive amount of fitness gains for such a simple piece of equipment. While there are hundreds of kettlebell exercises online, we love this "periodic table" of exercises from Stack 52. It's a visual, comprehensive guide to getting a full-body cardio workout, organized by difficulty and body focus area. Bonus: click on the kettlebell exercises shown to view a video how-to. See the guide.
• An effective 5-minute workout with no equipment needed (enough said). Designed to sneak in before taking a shower. Learn about the Pre-Shower Workout.
• Can't sleep? Try out these quick 7-minute yoga workouts before you go to bed for better sleep..all of which can actually be done while you're in bed (just don't fall asleep)! View the workout.

Our Favorite Tips for Staying Motivated, Inspired (or Laughing it Off)

• Keeping it simple, this infographic on inspiration from Ultralinx visually outlines 12 basic (but the most key) tips for motivation to focus on each day. Divided into four categories (stay healthy, plan our day, keep learning, focus on what makes you happy), this straightforward presentation is great because it sticks in your mind when you need it, no notepads or long scrolling required. See the infographic.
• We've all successfully scrapped a workout because it was just too darn cold or we had plans come up. An interesting post on Daily Burn flips that script with 4 hacks to make fitness motivation a breeze. One of our favorite tips in this great read is to sign a "commitment contract" with a friend. Whether you're trying to avoid "slipping up" in a daily exercise routine or simply wanting to make sure a skipped class or two doesn't turn into bailing on exercise plans altogether, these simple ideas may help. Read more.

• Everyone loves great motivational quotes and there are some truly useful ones- new and timeless- to get you in the right mindset to tackle your personal goals. We dug deep and put together the top quote picks on our blog, whether you're looking for wisdom through inspiration or something more light-hearted. Read some of our favorite motivational quotes for weight loss here and check out some of the humorous quotes about dieting and exercise that also inspire, here.

If you found these articles helpful, be sure to follow us on Facebook where we share our favorite recipes, motivation, success stories, and much more throughout the week.