How to Choose your Weight Loss Diet

If you want to lose weight, there are many dietary approaches that work. There are many diet books out there that offer great ideas and practical step to lose weight. I really recommend you to use them, as they can help you immensely. I encourage you to critique them as a scientist, though. As you may know, there are many authors that promise quick fixes and make irrational claims. Here I give you some guidelines to filter those books and diet plans.

Avoid a diet book or diet plan if:

1. It tells you to avoid a major food group. For example, if they’re telling you to avoid carbohydrates at all cost. I don’t even need to explain anything more about this. Read my articles about carbohydrates, protein and fats to learn why you need all of them.
   
   
2. It claims “quick fixes”. I’m sorry to tell you the bad news, but quick fixes don’t work. If you want to lose weight and keep it down, you’ll have to work your way.
   
   
3. It gives irrational food instructions, like you have to combine your foods, or “you can’t get this food with that food”. Your gut is a very sophisticated organ, and you can digest most food combinations. There are books out there that say “don’t eat protein and carbohydrate together, because when it gets in your gut, it putrefies and becomes rancid”. If you know anything about digestion, you know how ridiculous this is. Your body is an amazing food-processing center. Think about this, if your body couldn’t digest protein and carbohydrate together, all the country would be thin.
   
   
4. It claims to cure diseases associated with weight loss. Anything that claims something like the “diabetes cure” or “the cholesterol cure”. These are diseases that you developed over many years, and they can’t be cured with 3 months of dieting, in most cases.

Ten Easy Ways to Cut Your Calories

Here I’ll share with you ten easy ways to cut your calories. They are very practical and easy to apply, hope you find them helpful.

1. Get the facts. Foods that seem healthy can be loaded with calories and fat, so check the nutrition facts. In terms of weight management strategies, calories rule. For example, although nuts are unbelievably healthy for you, most of its calories come from fat. A cup of nuts can be as much as 600 calories.

2. Limit sodas and alcohol. Although it is fat free, alcohol contains about 70 calories per ounce. That goes also for sweet drinks. One glass of sweet tea and one glass of soda a day contain 320 additional calories that don’t do anything for you. You can eat about 4 medium apples and you’ll get the same amount of calories. You can gain 30 pounds in a year because of those extra calories. As a rule of thumb, don’t drink your calories.

3. Switch to smaller plates. Do you have a regular-size dinner plate? What does that mean? Put your food on a smaller salad-size plate. In that way you reduce your portion sizes and save a lot of calories.

4. When you go out to eat, don’t be embarrassed to order child-size portions. We tend to eat what is front of us. If you order a big portion, that’s what you’ll eat. You won’t die if you eat a smaller one.

5. Serve in the kitchen, eat in the dinner room. If you eat in the kitchen you’ll be tempted to pick from the serving bowls in front of you. You can easily pick yourself into an entire meal.

6. Eat slowly. This is unbelievably hard for a lot of folks, including myself. Put your fork down and calm down while you chew your food.

7. Use plates. Snacking from packages is absolutely deadly. Your brain only remembers what it sees. If you decide you’re going to have a cookie, put it on a plate, sit down and enjoy it. Don’t grab the cookie out of the package.

8. Fill up with plant foods. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains take up stomach space. They take time to chew and time to eat. As a plus, they are incredibly healthy for you.

9. For every member in your family over the age of 2, switch to lower-fat dairy products. Reduced fat, low-fat or fat-free dairy products contain significantly fewer calories. That reduced fat in your milk can represent a significant change in weight over time.

10. Dull is good. I don’t mean dull as in boring, but dull as “not shiny”. When you see a salad that is shiny, it usually means that a lot of vegetable oil was added to the vegetables. You can save a lot of calories by avoiding these fats.

7 Quick Weight Loss Tips

Weight loss is quite easy, in theory. You’ve got to reduce the calories you’re taking in, and increase the calories you’re expending. Calories come from three sources: carbohydrate, protein and fat. Total energy expenditure is determined by your basal metabolic rate, the thermic effect of food and your physical activity. To learn how to calculate your basal metabolic rate and how many calories you need you may want to visit this link. Now, how do you go about losing weight? Here are 7 quick weight loss tips:

1. You should strive for a bodyweight that optimizes your health. Even though people talk about an “ideal bodyweight”, that may not be a practical goal for you. The first step is to stop weight gain. If you’ve been gaining weight on a regular fashion over the last couple of years, your main goal should be to stop that.

2. You also want to aim for metabolic fitness. Metabolic fitness means that the biochemical risk factors (high blood pressure, triglycerides, etc) improve. You can do that loosing 5% to 10% of your total bodyweight. Let’s say you’re trying to lose 10% of your bodyweight. You ideal bodyweight may be 120 and you weight 200. Even getting down to the range of 180 pounds is going to help you reduce your risk factors.

3. Focus on creating a lifestyle that includes eating healthy foods, getting exercise, thinking positively about your food choices and body image, and learning how to cope with stress (having time of rejuvenation). Most of the problems we have are lifestyle problems. If you develop a lifestyle for successful weight management during early adulthood, healthy behavior pattern are very likely to take hold. You also need to adopt behaviors you can maintain. What might work best for me isn’t what is going to work best for you.

4. Losing weight is simple: take in less calories than you burn. This is the MOST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY. Watch your portion sizes! Most of us significantly underestimate the amount of food we take in. You should also take care of the balance of foods. Crash diets don’t work! These are diets that contain minimum calories. You may set the goal of eating 500 calories daily, but you’re not going to be able to control it when the hunger kicks in. When this happens we beat ourselves up, we think there’s something wrong with us and become depressed. This is not very intelligent.

5. Fat, with 9 calories a gram, is the easiest place to reduce calorie intake. Fat is the most concentrated source of calories. Fat calories are also more readily converted to body fat than calories from protein and carbohydrate. Fat intake should be lowered to 20% to 35% of your total calories. High fat, low fiber diets tend to make us feel not very full and encourage overeating. Foods that are labeled low-fat or fat-free can actually be high in calories. Despite lowering their fat content, manufacturers often increase the sugar to make it taste good.

6. To balance your energy sources you also need to look at the carbohydrates in your diet. Between 45% and 65% of your total daily calories should come from carbohydrates. However, some people are going to do better with a reduced carbohydrate intake, those who have insulin resistance. High-sugar foods provide calories but really few nutrients.

7. Eating an all-protein or almost-all-protein diet is not going to promote optimal wellness. Aim to balance your energy sources. Focus on creating a healthy lifestyle. Diets that are high in complex carbohydrates and moderate on protein are better paths to take. Protein helps promote a sense of fullness, but be careful, because foods high in protein can also be high in fat. Protein should be in the range of about 10% to 35% of total calories.

More tips to come! Stay tuned!