Fun Ways to Lose Weight Without Making Your Life Miserable
When you decide you want to lose weight, it is surprisingly easy for life to become a little bit… dull.
Suddenly you’re thinking about what you’re eating, whether you’ve exercised enough, what the scales are going to say and whether the meal you actually fancy fits whatever plan you’re following. Even things you used to enjoy can start feeling like another part of the weight-loss project.
I’ve definitely been there.
When I lost 10 stone, weight loss became a huge part of my life. There were times when seeing the scales go down was incredibly exciting, but looking back, there were also times when I became far too focused on numbers and doing everything “right”. These days I think much more about finding habits that can fit around an actual life rather than putting life on hold while you lose weight.
So if you’re looking for fun ways to lose weight, I’m not going to suggest that you spend every evening eating salad and running on a treadmill.
Instead, here are some ways to make the things that can support weight loss — eating well, moving more, trying new things and building healthier habits — feel considerably less like punishment.
Stop thinking of weight loss as one enormous project
When you have a lot of weight you would like to lose, looking at the final goal can feel overwhelming.
I know this from experience. When you’re looking at several stones rather than a few pounds, reaching your goal can feel so far away that it’s difficult to imagine ever getting there.
Breaking things down into smaller goals can make the process much more enjoyable. They don’t all need to involve your weight, either.
You could set yourself a challenge to cook five new meals, walk around five new places, try a new exercise class, increase the weight you’re lifting or complete a particular walking distance.
Those goals give you things to achieve while you’re losing weight, rather than making the number on the scales the only thing capable of giving you a sense of progress. This is something I wish I’d understood much earlier.
Turn trying new foods into a challenge
Healthy eating doesn’t have to mean repeatedly eating the same meals because they’re the lowest-calorie options you can think of.
In fact, trying to lose weight can be a brilliant excuse to become more adventurous with food. You could challenge yourself to try a new vegetable every week, cook your way through different cuisines or pick one completely new recipe each weekend.
If you usually order a takeaway on Friday night, you could start a fakeaway challenge and see how many of your favourites you can recreate at home.
Some will be amazing. Some will probably never be spoken about again. That’s part of the fun!
I have hundreds of healthy recipes on Just Average Jen if you need somewhere to start, including curries, pasta dishes, fakeaways, slow-cooker recipes and plenty of meals that don’t feel remotely like stereotypical “diet food”.
Make a weight-loss bingo card
If you like ticking things off, make yourself a little bingo card of things you’d like to do. I’m not talking about: Lose 1lb. Lose another pound. Lose another pound.
That would rather defeat the point. Fill it with experiences and habits instead.
Try a new recipe. Walk somewhere you’ve never been. Have a day when you eat five different vegetables. Try a new form of exercise. Make a high-protein breakfast. Cook something you’ve always assumed was too difficult. Go swimming. Pack a healthy lunch rather than buying one.
You could make 16 or 25 squares and see how long it takes you to complete them. It turns healthy habits into little challenges rather than another collection of rules you’re supposed to follow perfectly.
Find fun ways to exercise
If you hate running, please stop believing that the universe is waiting for you to become a runner. There are so many ways to move your body.
You can dance, swim, cycle, roller skate, walk, play badminton, try aerial hoop, go trampolining, join a class or put on some music and embarrass everyone else in your house.
Exercise doesn’t become more effective because you hated every second of it.
One of the best things you can do is experiment until you find something you actually look forward to. It might not be the activity a fitness influencer has declared the ultimate calorie burner, but if you happily do it every week, that’s considerably more useful than a supposedly perfect workout you avoid.
I’ve got a separate guide to fun exercise ideas with lots of different activities to try, so have a look at that if you’re bored of the usual gym suggestions.
Go somewhere instead of just “going for a walk”
Walking can sound incredibly boring when it’s written on a weight-loss plan.
Go for a 30-minute walk.
Thrilling.
But going to explore a country park, walking around somewhere you’ve never visited, taking photographs, finding a geocache or listening to an audiobook while you wander feels completely different.
The movement is still there, but the walk has a purpose beyond burning calories.
You could even challenge yourself to find ten new places to walk over the next few months. It gives you something to plan and look forward to, and you may discover places close to home that you’ve somehow never visited.
Try geocaching
If walking for the sake of walking doesn’t appeal to you, geocaching might. Think of it as a giant treasure hunt. People hide small caches in locations all over the world and you use coordinates to try to find them.
Some are extremely easy to spot. Others have apparently been hidden by people who take enormous pleasure in watching strangers search the same bush for twenty minutes.
The nice thing is that you’re concentrating on finding the cache rather than how far you’ve walked. It can also be something you do with a partner, friends or family, which makes it feel more like a day out than exercise.
Make cooking something you look forward to
Meal planning can be useful when you’re trying to lose weight, but it can also become incredibly repetitive if every week starts with:
Right, what am I allowed to eat this week?
Try planning around what you actually want instead.
Maybe you fancy Mexican food this week, so you make fajitas. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about a curry, so you find one you can make at home. Maybe everyone wants pizza, so pizza goes on the meal plan.
Healthy eating doesn’t mean every meal has to be chosen solely because it contains the fewest calories.
In my experience, meals that actually satisfy you are much easier to live with than endlessly eating things you don’t particularly want because they’re supposedly better for weight loss.
Have a fakeaway night
This is one of my favourite ways to make healthier eating feel less like dieting. Instead of thinking you have to stop eating all your favourite takeaways, learn to make versions at home.
You can make curries, Chinese-inspired dishes, burgers, kebabs, pizzas, fried rice and all sorts of things without needing them to become sad little “diet” versions.
Invite friends over, get everyone involved or turn it into a family cooking night.
You might save money too, which is never a bad thing.
Turn meal planning into trying rather than restricting
One thing I’ve changed my mind about enormously over the years is the idea that successful weight loss means becoming brilliant at saying no.
- No chocolate.
- No takeaway.
- No eating out.
- No snacks.
- No fun until you’ve reached target.
That can make weight loss feel like something you’re enduring rather than a way of changing your habits. Instead, think about what you can add.
Could you add more vegetables to a meal you already enjoy? Could breakfast include more protein or fibre so it’s more satisfying? Could you learn to make a meal you’ve always bought ready-made?
It’s a very different mindset from constantly looking at your food and deciding what needs to disappear.
Why Fibre Is So Important for Weight Loss
Get other people involved in fun ways to lose weight
Weight loss can become quite isolating if everything you’re doing feels separate from everyone else’s life. Your family don’t need to be “on a diet” with you.
Go for walks together. Cook something new. Play a game outside. Try a new activity. Visit somewhere that involves plenty of walking. Put music on while you’re doing housework and dance around like idiots.
If you have a friend who also wants to become more active, you could set yourselves a challenge together. Just be careful about turning it into a weight-loss competition.
Bodies lose weight at different rates, and comparing your weekly losses with somebody else’s can very quickly take the fun out of things.
Make the challenge about what you’re doing, not who can make their body smaller fastest.
Try a new active hobby
This is where weight loss can actually introduce you to something you end up loving completely independently of your weight.
Maybe you’ve always fancied learning to dance, perhaps you’d like to try roller skating again.
You could join a photography group and go on photo walks, try gardening, learn to swim properly, take up cycling, try climbing or join a recreational sports club.
You don’t have to be good at your hobby. I think adults sometimes forget that.
Children are allowed to do things simply because they enjoy them. Nobody watches a seven-year-old drawing a wonky horse and tells them they probably shouldn’t bother with art because they’re not talented enough.
Adults deserve the same freedom. Be rubbish at something. Laugh about it. Get a little bit better. That’s a far more interesting goal than simply trying to burn calories.
Give yourself non-scale challenges
When weight loss becomes entirely about weigh-in day, one disappointing number can make the whole week feel like a failure.
I know how powerful those scales can become. I’ve had periods of my life when the number affected my mood far more than it should have.
That’s why I now think non-scale goals are so important.
Maybe you’d like to walk further without stopping, lift something heavier, cook more meals at home, improve your sleep routine or feel more confident trying a particular activity.
Those things can improve even during a week when your weight hasn’t changed.
And sometimes your weight will fluctuate for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with whether you’ve “been good”.
Why Weight Fluctuates (And Why One Bad Weigh-In Doesn’t Mean You’ve Failed)
Celebrate what your body can do
Weight loss has a habit of making us look at our bodies entirely in terms of what’s wrong with them. Too big. Too wobbly. Not changing quickly enough.
Exercise can provide a completely different perspective if you let it. Instead of asking whether your thighs look smaller, notice that your legs carried you further than they used to.
Instead of wondering whether your arms look more toned, notice that you’re stronger. Instead of judging your stomach in the mirror, appreciate that you’ve just danced for half an hour and had a brilliant time.
That doesn’t mean you suddenly have to love every inch of yourself every minute of the day. I certainly don’t. It’s simply about giving your body some credit for what it can do, rather than constantly judging it by how it looks.
Reward yourself with things that aren’t food
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with celebrating with food. Food is part of celebrations in virtually every culture, and I don’t subscribe to the idea that birthday cake somehow becomes morally unacceptable when you’re losing weight.
But if every achievement is rewarded with food, it can be fun to think of some alternatives too.
Perhaps reaching a milestone means buying a book you’ve wanted, going somewhere for the day, getting your nails done, booking a massage, buying something for a hobby or putting money towards a bigger treat.
You could even put a little money aside every time you reach one of your personal goals and eventually spend it on an experience.
Just don’t fall into the trap of refusing to buy yourself clothes until you’re thinner.
You deserve clothes that fit you now.
Buying clothes while losing weight.
Ways to treat yourself other than food
Try a healthy-habit jar
This is another silly little idea, but sometimes silly works. Write lots of small activities on pieces of paper and put them in a jar.
Things like:
- Try a new vegetable.
- Find a new walking route.
- Cook a fakeaway.
- Dance to five songs.
- Make a new breakfast.
- Try an exercise you’ve never done.
- Cook a recipe from another country.
- Go somewhere you’ve never visited locally.
When you’re bored or stuck in a rut, pick one. Not everything around weight loss needs a spreadsheet and a twelve-week plan.
Does exercise actually help you lose weight?
Being more active increases the amount of energy your body uses, so physical activity can certainly play a part in weight management. But exercise isn’t a magic switch that makes weight disappear, and you don’t have to find the workout that supposedly burns the most calories.
Weight loss happens when, over time, you use more energy than you consume. Food therefore plays an important part too.
I think that’s worth saying because I don’t want anyone reading a list of fun weight-loss activities and thinking they need to exercise constantly to earn their results.
Physical activity is valuable for reasons that go far beyond weight. It can help your fitness and strength, and finding activities you enjoy can simply make life more interesting.
If weight loss is one of your goals too, great. But your exercise doesn’t have to exist purely to make you thinner.
What if you can’t exercise?
You can still lose weight. This is particularly important because articles about weight loss so often assume everyone can simply start walking, cycling or joining a gym.
That isn’t reality. Disability, chronic illness, injuries, pain, fatigue and mobility difficulties can all affect someone’s ability to exercise.
You don’t have to exercise to create an energy deficit, and being unable to do the activities I’ve mentioned here doesn’t mean you’ve somehow failed before you’ve begun.
If you can safely become more active, finding movement appropriate for your body can have benefits beyond weight loss. If you can’t, your weight-loss approach can focus much more heavily on food and whatever other changes are realistic for you.
There is no requirement to suffer through exercise to prove you’re serious about losing weight.
How can you make weight loss fun?
I’m not going to pretend losing weight itself is endlessly entertaining.
There will probably still be days when you can’t be bothered, weeks when the scales annoy you and evenings when planning dinner feels like the most boring task imaginable.
But your life doesn’t need to become boring just because you’re trying to lose weight.
Try foods you’ve never eaten. Cook meals you genuinely look forward to. Explore somewhere new. Learn a skill. Find an activity that makes you laugh. Set yourself challenges that have nothing to do with your weight.
Most importantly, don’t wait until you’ve reached your goal weight before allowing yourself to enjoy things. I’ve done enough waiting for the thinner version of me over the years. Life is happening now.
Why I refuse to wait until I am think to enjoy life
Weight loss, if you choose to pursue it, needs to fit somewhere inside that life — not replace it.
