Eat the required calories as if you were already your healthy weight (eating what you would need to maintain your healthy weight). The way you lose it is the way you keep it off. This rules out crash diets, fad diets and every diet under the sun that is not designed to continue as your lifestyle diet for the rest of your life.
You have become overweight due to taking in more calories than your calorie requirement per day. Planning to lose weight[1]by taking in way fewer calories than is required for your healthy weight is a foolish one.
I have seen weight loss programmes[2]suggesting calorie intake of 800 calories per day, where the required calories to maintain a healthy weight is 1,800 calories. This is disastrous for your long-term fat storage.
Restricted calories affect your fat burning and muscle building hormones, causing you to lose muscle and make your body more prone to storing fat.
2. Plan your eating:
Plan you eating times for each day. Leave no more than 4 hours between meals. Planning what you will eat each time will help drive you to eat according to the plan.
It has been proven that most people enjoy knowing when their next meal is and are less likely to search for other food when they know their schedule.
Therefore, it is important to set a meal time and stick to it. If you feel like eating when you follow a planned day, it is not hunger, it is emotion dressed up as hunger.
We can confuse “feeling uncomfortable” and “feel like eating”. We can mislabel emotions. Always wait for your next scheduled meal or snack time.
The most successful plan is one of three main meals and then a small filler between meals. This goes with the natural rhythm of hunger.
The filler snack should contain a healthy protein source and / or fruit. Keep yourself hydrated with water / flavoured water throughout the day.
- Protein source
You should include a protein source in all three main meals. You have learned already that no matter how many calories you eat in a meal, you can start to feel hunger if the meal does not a have a protein source.
Eating protein speeds up your metabolism. Protein takes a lot of work for the body to digest. When you eat 100 calories of protein, you will use up 25 of those calories just to digest it.
- Processed sugar
Foods containing sugar in high concentration will cause withdrawal symptoms. It will cause you to feel empty, drained of energy, restless, hungry and cause mood swings.
You may have believed in the past that eating more of it solved the problem. It did for a little while, then you were back shortly with the same symptoms again. Sugar does not solve the problem, it keeps it going.
Replace refined sugars with the natural sugars in fruit. Soon you will feel better, feel less hungry and on your way to a slimmer, healthier you.
- Calorie intake
If you are highly obese, do not cut your calorie intake by more than 25%. As your weight falls, keep cutting back on the calorie intake. You will finally reach the point where you consume the necessary calories to maintain your correct weight.
3. Start every day with a substantial, healthy breakfast.
If you are going on a long journey by car, you will first fill up the tank. Think of your body in terms of the car. People who start the day with a proper breakfast are 50% less likely to be overweight.
Fill your tank every morning and ensure it stays on green all day by eating on a regular basis. Remember you eat three main meals and a snack between main meals.
This is crucial to keep the sugar levels from falling to red on the dial. If the level falls, you body takes over and will drive you to eat a junk food that raises the sugar level quickly. You are then off on a spiking - crashing pattern for the rest of the day.
4. Drinking water.
Drinking a pint of water before meals can lead to a 75 calorie reduction in the calories consumed. Water makes your stomach feel full, so you are less inclined to clear your plate.
While 75 calories may not seem like a lot, if you do this before breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, it mounts up to losing over 20 lbs in one year.
If you increase your daily intake of water, your body will begin to shed its excess fat, including the fat stored as cellulite. The water will also help strengthen the collagen in your skin, helping to reduce the lumpy look.
5. Eating on the go.
Don’t do it, it is a very bad habit, you are breaking one of the most important rules about eating in the process: slow, mindful eating.
6. Make a shopping list:
Make a shopping list for the items you need at each shopping. Unless you do this, you will be influenced by the presentation of items, the choices made by other shoppers, etc.
Make sure that you are not shopping on an empty stomach.
Rule of thumb for shopping:
- Make sure to read the labels.
If the label lists sucrose, corn syrup, sugar, fructose, white flour, etc, they contain simple carbohydrates.
- Purchase foods that are not refined or highly processed.
You should choose fruit instead of fruit juice, which is very high in simple sugars.
- Factory produced versus nature.
Simple carbohydrates are created in a factory while complex carbohydrates are designed by nature. Many similar foods can have remarkably different levels of sugar. For instance, some yoghurts are sugar- free while others can be as high as 20%.
It is an excellent idea to make a shopping list of your regular foods and compare the brands. Purchase the ones with the lowest sugar and calorie content. You would be amazed at the difference this can make to your weight in one year.
Be careful not to consume calories in liquid form. Energy drinks are in vogue but the sugar content is extremely high in such drinks. These drinks are not particularly filling. You are just creating hunger by drinking them.
7. Prepacked lunch
If you are driving a long journey, going for lunch or even when shopping in town, have a healthy option available. When people don't have a prepacked lunch, there is the tendency to choose convenience food that is full of calories.
Always have a bottle of water in the car.
8. Choose real food
Choose Mother nature’s food which is natural, non-processed and good for you.
Those are three positives for naturally healthy food:
- you feel good as you eat it.
- you physically feel good after eating it when you are physically hungry.
- you feel good for making a good choice.
When you eat junk food:
- you feel good while eating it.
- you feel physically bad shortly after eating it and guilty for eating it.
That is one positive and two negatives. Healthy eating is an overall more pleasurable experience.
9. Mental food diary
Research shows that when you keep a written track of what you do, it tends to influence behaviour. However, writing a diary is a chore and it isn’t something that would continue.
Practice making a mental food diary instead.
10. Healthy home policy.
It means that only healthy natural food[3]is bought to eat at home for adults and children alike. “Treats” can be eaten when one is out for the day, etc.
You are not being “nice” or “loving” towards kids or adults by giving them junk food. Don’t train children in wanting unhealthy food.
Sugary food makes them hyperactive[4] , it affects their learning and emotional state and sets them up for long-term sugar addiction and life-long obesity - that is not loving tender care, is it?
When unhealthy food is in the house, it gets eaten. Even people who would never want to eat it, end up eating it when it is in the house after visitors coming or any other such reason.
Before you start:
It is important to know that certain medical conditions can affect your success. The first consideration in unexplained weight gain is the fact that some medical condition could be the culprit.
If someone is gaining weight without any change in eating habits, then it is important that consideration should be given to the possibility that some condition is the actual cause of the problem.
Footnotes
