Losing Weight by Changing the Food You Eat

Healthy diet and exercise is the key to losing weight. You can experiment with your diet and see faster results. It is possible to reduce weight by regularly changing the kinds of foods you eat. You should especially avoid or reduce foods made up of white sugar or white flour. You must also refrain from refined foods from which the fiber content has been removed.

This is necessary because these foods quickly raise the levels of sugar in your blood. They are termed ‘fast-releasing’ foods. They tend to have a damaging effect on your blood sugar and consequently your weight.

You must remove all artificial sweeteners and sugar from your diet. You’ll need to be smart while doing this because sugar tends to be added to any kind of food like tomato ketchup, baked beans or even bread.

It will be really good if you chew your food well and take your own sweet time when eating. This is because your brain takes more than 20 minutes to realize that your stomach is full. Therefore the more slowly you eat, the less you will end up eating.  

Low Fat Diets

Consuming fat results in weight gain and has limited nutritional value. Therefore people are advised to consume fat in low quantities.

When you are on a low fat diet program, you should limit the amount of calories you consume. When on a low fat diet, only 30% of the calories you consume should come from fat. On an extremely low fat diet, only 20% of the calories you consume should come from fat.

Poultry, fish and meat are not to be consumed when on a low fat weight loss diet. However you can consume dairy products like fat free milk, fat free yogurt, egg whites and cheese. Foods that you must absolutely not consume are seeds, nuts, all kinds of fats and refined carbohydrates like white flour, sugar and white rice.

The bright side is that you can eat an unlimited quantity of other foods like grains, vegetables and fruits.

However, the belief that fat is mainly responsible for weight problems and obesity is being seriously challenged by modern research findings.

Prepackaged-meal Diets

If you go in for pre-packaged meal diets you will need to purchase pre-packaged meals. You will learn about the correct sizes of portions you must eat but this type of diet will prove to be a heavy burden on your pocket.

Another disadvantage of this type of weight loss diet is that you might not learn much about correct nutrition and be unable to make wise meal choices for reducing weight.

Yet another problem is whether you will get this kind of meal everywhere. For example, what do you do when you are away from home?

It is difficult to lose weight but what is even more difficult is keeping it from coming back. It’s always the bigger challenge.

Fixed Menu Diets

A weight loss diet that provides you a table of foods that you should eat in order to lose weight is called a fixed menu diet.

When the food that you should or should not eat has already been chosen for you it becomes easy to just follow this kind of diet. This way, you do not have to make the difficult decision of ‘should I eat this food or not?’ 

However there is a down side to this kind of diet. The diet is very limited so it becomes very boring and difficult to follow. Moreover you could be away from your home and not have access to the ingredients you need.

Furthermore, everything is laid out for you so you don’t get to learn the skills of food selection when you follow fixed menu diets. You need to possess these skills especially when you are working so hard to reduce weight.

The best solution therefore is to begin with a fixed-menu diet and later at an appropriate time switch over to a food plan that encourages you to make food choices on your own.

That’s not all. A fixed menu weight loss diet restricts the required nutritional amount that your body needs. You need a minimum amount of minerals, micronutrients and vitamins so that you have good health all the time.

If your body does not get its share of nutrients it absolutely requires, your efforts to lose weight will slow down instead of accelerating. This is because when you abstain from some foods you end up reducing the quantity of certain nutrients as well.

Therefore to maintain both your diet and good health, taking food supplements might be the most simple and best solution.

Low Calorie Diet

It is best if the calorie level in your diet allows for a weight loss of one pound per week or less. Due to the water loss in the beginning, results are more noticeable in the first couple of weeks.

Just keep in mind that the preferred calorie level for every individual shall vary based on your weight and age. Therefore you may have to consume a bit more or a bit less, depending on your lifestyle and situation.

Supplements are meant to give you energy and vitality all through the day and should form part of you healthy diet and exercise plan. It is good to take these supplements when on a low calorie diet. 

Types of Diet Plans

Most of the weight loss diet plans that are tailored to help you in losing weight supply 1,000-1,500 calories every day.

Remember, the amount of calories that are best for you depend on your weight and on the degree of activity you are engaged in.

When your diet plan allows for this kind of calorie intake they call it a low calorie diet. Weight is lost due to calorie counting and hence reducing the amount of calories you take in.

The Kinds of Food We Eat

Research shows that those who are overweight are often found to consume the same amount of calories as those who are not. So what is it that makes the difference? ‘Healthy diet and exercise’ makes the difference. 

It’s a common assumption that too much fat will actually make you fat. This is right in a way because saturated fats are definitely not good for your health. However some fats are required for your body, therefore they are called ‘essential’ fatty acids. Believing in this assumption, some go on a low fat or absolutely no fat diet without realizing that food which has low fat has higher amounts of salts and sugar to make the food more eatable.

Sugar and fast releasing foods inevitably cause weight gain, which people don’t seem to realize.

The rate at which these foods let out blood sugar decides whether you will put on weight or not. This is because each time you consume food, your body has to decide whether to burn this food like energy or store it in the form of fat. Greater insulin levels will change your body. 

Choosing the Right Weight Loss Diet

You may not believe this but dieting can cause you to become fatter. When you lessen your food intake so that you can lose weight, your body senses a ‘famine alert’. It thinks that food is in short supply and hence reduces your metabolism so that it can make the best of whatever little food it is getting.

By “losing weight” we actually mean “losing fat”. If weight is lost too fast, nearly 25% of this weight loss will come from muscle, lean tissue and water.

The reason to this is that our body is designed to latch on to fat. Hence it focuses on losing water and breaking down muscle so that it can latch on to the fat content. 

If this is how you want to lose weight you are unlikely to succeed. Once you have lost your weight fast through some weight loss diet and you then return to your normal diet, your body will immediately start to store a greater amount of intake as fat. It does so because your body really wants to make sure that it has enough fat reserves when another ‘famine’ happens.

Dieting often implies reducing the intake of a particular type of food or reducing the total intake. Due to this the body does not receive some important nutrients it must have. This is the reason why we must take dietary supplements. The right supplements can actually make you lose weight faster and more easily. They keep you healthy and help you in losing weight naturally and quickly.

Muscle, Fat, and Water

Do you know that you lose not just fat but also muscle tissue when you lose weight by going on a weight loss diet? There have been umpteen studies in the field of weight loss and one of the proven facts is that you lose 75% fat and 25% muscle tissue in this process. Moreover, you lose IMMENSE amount of water too during this process of weight loss.

Water makes up more than 75% of our body weight. Even fats and muscle tissues contain large amounts of water.

All through the day, your body burns calories to generate energy for doing activities. When you walk up and down the stairs, when you lift things, when you sit down and type, and for just about any little activity that requires movement, you are burning calories.

When the intake and expenditure of calories is in balance, your weight remains constant and everything remains fine. But when you start consuming more calories than what you can expend, you start piling up weight.

Your body piles up fat wherever it finds it easy to, like your buttocks, waist, thighs, chest, neck, etc. As soon as you find yourself gaining fat, start working on it. If you continue to ignore the buildup of fat, soon you’ll get to a point where it becomes very difficult to lose it all.

A correct balance of diet and exercise is what you need to lose fat. The right combination of healthy diet and exercise is what really makes a big difference. A high fiber diet is the first thing you should adopt. Also drink 8-10 glasses of water every day. Water helps your system remain clean of toxins.

So this was a primer on weight loss. Now let’s find out the various different types of diets in the next posts.

Weight Loss - Regular Meals

Skipping meals is counter productive to losing weight because it slows down your metabolism. Your body thinks that you are starving and therefore it stores food. The best way to lose weight is to have several small meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism going and avoid fluctuations in blood sugar levels. 

Weight and Health Profile

Coronary artery complications, type II diabetes, and high blood pressure are few of the many consequences of being obese or overweight. Your girth and more scientifically your body mass index are sure signs of knowing how much body fat you carry and how prone you are to health risks and diseases.

Body mass index or BMI is a reliable method of estimating body fat, particularly for those between 19 and 50 years of age. The exceptions are pregnant and breastfeeding women, patients, athletes and bodybuilders.

With increase in waist size and BMI, the health risks shoot up. Waistlines more than 40 inches for men and more than 35 inches for women are considered dangerous for health. BMI can easily be calculated using a chart present at health care centers everywhere. Apart from BMI there are many other ways by which you can estimate your body fat. Your doctor will always be ready to help.

Setting a Weight Loss Goal

Overweight and obese people have often fallen back on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans that recommend eating low fat foods, grains, green vegetables and fruits. Some people also try and resort to dieting, but they need to be guided effectively on how to lose and maintain weight.

Unless you are really obese or extremely overweight, and need to shed fat right away, your strategy should always focus on the long term. By setting long term goals and dedicatedly following the basic rules of weight loss, you will see permanent results, which is what you want.

These are the typical steps that someone would take on a weight loss diet and exercise plan:

1.   Visit your doctor and check whether it is fine for you to reduce your calorie intake and increase exercise.

2.   Start a balanced diet plan that creates a calorie deficit and leads to losing 4 to 5 pounds a week. You should have around 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, and also include whole grain food, dairy products, and lean meat. This is a very good diet to follow and is sure to cause weight loss. Later in this blog post series I will present several diet plans to you. 

3.   Exercise or some kind of vigorous physical activity is a must if you wish to shed weight. You need not have to go to the gym and pump iron. You can start off by simple activities like taking the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, parking your car some distance behind your destination and walking the distance, and so on.

Basics of Weight Loss

Losing weight should always be a slow and steady process, which is the safest and most effective way to lose weight. You should never try and lose anything more than 10 pounds each week. There are many reasons why you weigh as much as you do.

To make things very clear to you, adopting a healthy diet and exercise plan is the only way you can ever lose weight healthily. There is simply no magic pill or drink that can do the work for you on its own.

How can there be such a thing? But marketers know that there are gullible people who can spend any amount of money to lose weight miraculously.

The effects that you may have seen with some of these products are temporary and unhealthy. Always turn a blind eye to products that promise results with little or no efforts. Losing fat is not an effortless job. It needs you to exercise and follow a health regimen. Without adopting a healthy lifestyle it’s very difficult to lose fat.