The Basics of Weight Loss.Diet and Weight Loss

Archive for the ‘Diet Plans’ Category

There are many myths about foods – what you should eat and when you should eat them. We expose five myths as false!

1. Potatoes make you fat – false
It was once thought that the key to weight loss was eliminating all high-carbohydrate foods, including pasta, rice and potatoes. We now know that carbohydrates are the body’s preferred energy source. Eating a potato, or any type of carbohydrate rich food, won’t automatically make you fatter. However, if you are watching your weight, enjoy potatoes in moderate quantities and be careful of how you eat them (for example, butter and sour cream are high in fats).

You have to regularly eat more energy than your body needs to put on weight. This is harder to do with high-carbohydrate foods than high-fat foods. Eating a diet high in carbohydrate (and also fibre) is likely to push fat out of the diet.

2. Food combining diets really work – false
There are plenty of diets based on the belief that the digestive system can’t tackle a combination of foods or nutrients. Commonly, carbohydrates and proteins are said to ‘clash’, leading to digestive problems and weight gain. The opposite is often true. Foods eaten together can help the digestive system. For example, vitamin C in orange juice can increase iron absorption from a meal rich in plant-based iron like beans and rice, lentils and other legumes.

Very few foods are purely carbohydrate or purely protein; most are a mixture of both. The digestive system contains enzymes that are perfectly capable of breaking down all the foods we eat. Food combining diets should be avoided.

3. Breakfast should consist of fruit only – false
There is no evidence that eating only fruit at breakfast has any health or weight loss benefits. Most fruits are not very high in complex carbohydrates, which the body needs after an all-night fast. They are, however, a good source of fibre and vitamins. Cereal foods (especially wholegrain varieties) like bread, muffins and breakfast cereals are a much better source of carbohydrates to get you going in the morning.

4. There are some magical foods that cause weight loss – false
Some foods, such as grapefruit or kelp, are said to burn off body fat. This is not true. Dietary fibre comes closest to fulfilling this wish because it provides a feeling of ‘fullness’ with minimal kilojoules. High-fibre foods such as fruit, vegetables, wholegrain breads and cereals, and legumes also tend to be low in fat.

5. Drinking while you are eating is fattening – false
The theory behind this misconception is that digestive juices and enzymes will be diluted by the fluid, and this will slow down the digestion and lead to excess body fat. There is no scientific evidence to back this up. In fact, evidence suggests that drinking water with your meal improves digestion. Kilojoule-heavy drinks such as alcoholic beverages can be fattening if consumed in excess, but drinking them with meals doesn’t make them more so.

Fats contain approximately double the amount of kilojoules (calories) per gram than carbohydrates or protein. They are a very concentrated form of energy. If you eat a lot of fat you are more likely to put on weight than if you eat a lot of carbohydrates.

The type of fat you eat may also be important. Research shows that animal fats (saturated fats) may be more ‘fattening’ than plant and fish fats. Fish and plant fats appear to be more readily used by the body and less likely to be stored as fat in the belly. They can also provide some health benefits.

Excess carbohydrates or protein can also be converted into body fat. If you eat more kilojoules than you use, you will put on weight whether those kilojoules came from fats, carbohydrates or proteins.

Detoxing is all about ridding your body of not just toxins, but undigested food and stuff that is hanging around, usually in your colon. There are various means of achieving this, but one of the most people friendly ways is though your diet. In this sense, any diet that causes your digestive system to work towards eliminating any unwanted matter from your digestive tract can be labeled as a detox diet.

A detox diet plan then, is one that makes use of a diet designed to detoxify your body whilst eliminating all the bad stuff including whatever toxins have built up also.

The simplest form of detox diet is literally one that involves abstinence from all food for a period of time and only drinking plain water. This is also known as fasting and is an integral part of many Eastern religions, where one day a week is set aside for a fast. This process gives the body a chance to remove all unwanted food from the digestive tract without a load more being piled on top!

The next best thing to fasting is to only eat fresh fruits and certain vegetables for a period of at least 24 hours, but longer is better as the detoxing process takes longer. This can be boosted by drinking green tea along with plain water during that period, as this provides plenty of detoxifying antioxidants to mop up the free radicals that cause cell damage. The process also boosts the metabolism leading to weight loss, so this is also a great way to lose some weight whilst giving your body’s health a real lift.

Propriety detox diet plans exist and should always be researched thoroughly before going on any of them. Often the best way to approach this is by visiting your nutritionist or dietitian who can advise you on a personal level on the best way of approaching a whole body detox. It means you will have to forgo any treats such as cakes, candies, chocolates etc or you’ll just be cheating yourself, whether anyone is looking or not!

The Mediterranean diet plan is one that consists of all the good foods that are typically eaten by many people who live close to the European shores of the Mediterranean Sea and mainly includes countries such as Spain, France, Italy and Greece. The typical summer cuisine of these areas is fresh fish caught locally with locally grown salad crops, tomatoes, onions and garlic all drenched in a simple olive oil and vinegar dressing.

It is mostly almost totally devoid of any artificial additives, trans fats or added sugar. The only side of this diet that lets it down (for the locals, that is) is the fact that they include white bread rolls with the meal. But you can substitute wholemeal rolls to bring it back into alignment. In Italy especially, there is also a heavy reliance on pasta, which used to be made only from wholemeal flour, but thanks to modern processing, is now almost all made from refined white flour, which is a weight gain problem ingredient. Again, if you like pasta, then substitute with wholemeal (wholegrain) pasta.

The Spanish have a popular dish called lentejas (lentil stew) which ought to be very healthy depending upon what you add to it, as in its basic form it is just lentils, onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes. The Spanish like to add chorizo, salchichas or chistoras, which as all forms of cured sausages and add a lot of animal fats to the dish, so should be avoided. The addition of a small amount of jamon serrano (parma ham) gives the dish more flavor without adding too many calories.

The French can finish off a really healthy Mediterranean dish with cream laden crepes to load on the calories, so avoid those at all costs!

The basic salad diet itself is wonderfully healthy and low in calories, as it is generally made up of fish and salad. The salad is the key, with its dressing of extra virgin olive oil and vinegar. Both these ingredients are known to reduce levels of bad LDL cholesterol while raising levels of good HDL cholesterol whilst normalizing blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

The garlic is often freshly chopped raw into salads along with fresh, raw onions and these are powerful immune system boosters and infection fighters, while being anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. They cleanse the blood and boost the metabolic rate, meaning your body burns calories faster.

Tomatoes are full of goodness and antioxidants and the big, salad variety that are popularly grown all along the Mediterranean coast are flavorsome and low calorie.

A glass of locally produced red wine is often an important accompaniment to this diet and is a provider of antioxidants and blood normalizing properties that make it an integral part of this healthy diet.

All in all the Mediterranean Diet Plan’s basis is sound and designed to keep the body healthy while promoting weight loss as long as you stick to the good parts and avoid the extras that can have the opposite effect.

If you are looking for the kind of diet that provides moderate carbohydrate levels, then you could do a lot worse than trying out this low carb diet plan without changing too much of the way that you already eat. That is assuming your diet isn’t just full of junk food and sugar laden snacks, of course. Well, the Sugar Busters Diet is a plan that contains about 40% carbohydrates and is purported to be super-healthy. Let’s see how it measures up to the claims made by its creators!

The recommendation for this diet is that around 40% of the calories come from high fiber, low Glycemic Index (GI) carbohydrates, 30% from proteins and the remaining 30% from primarily unsaturated fats. While that is the general line taken by this diet, it is flexible and allows you to mix the figures to allow up to 50-55% low GI carbohydrates and remain within the diet’s bounds. This would mean a reduction in the other areas, so personally, I would opt for reducing the levels of fats that are recommended rather than reducing the proteins to balance out the whole.

The diet forbids the usual high GI cabs such as white flour based foods such as white bread and pasta, refined sugars and foods containing them. It allows lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs and brown rice. It does cut out most root vegetables, such as potatoes, beetroot and parsnips as well as corn, as well as high calorie fruits such as bananas, custard apple and avocado, so you can’t have everything!

Saturated fats are not completely eliminated, so you can have a little butter or even cheese, although these should never account for more than 10% of the total. To be honest, you’re better off avoiding them altogether if you can. Stick with unsaturated or mono-unsaturated fats such as olive oil and you’ll be better off for it.

As with some structured diet plans like the Sonoma Diet, you are allowed dry red wine if you must have something alcoholic, but no beer or spirits with mixers. Caffeine beverages such as tea and coffee are okay in moderation, so two or three cups per day are okay if you want them. No putting sugar or cream in them, though!

Overall, this type of diet is reasonably sound as long as you stick to it and keep your meal portions to a sensible amount. As always, you will do better for taking some daily form of exercise that gets you out of breath and makes you sweat and you can keep it up for more than 20 minutes without stopping. That will help you burn more calories and boost your metabolism so that you will continue to burn calories and lose weight.

The cabbage soup diet plan was originally formulated to cause heart patients to lose weight fast prior to life saving operations. This was necessary as they were often far too overweight to be considered safe to undergo the anesthetic needed while being prepped for the operation. The diet was seen as so successful that it became taken up my mainstream dietitians as a means to provide a way to lose weight fast.

The plan itself revolves around a base meal made from cabbage soup, hence its name. The soup itself contains very little in the way of nutrients and almost zero calories while making you feel full. The great thing is that you can eat several bowls of this soup a day but its pretty boring to do that. Not only that, but in the first few days, you eat very little else!

To this end, the soup can have other vegetables added to it to improve its flavor and nutrient content. However, whatever you add to it reduces its effectiveness as a rapid weight loss food.

The best additions to the soup to retain its very low calorie properties include onions, garlic, tomatoes, water cress, herbs and spices. Sure, that doesn’t sound like much but it at least improves the flavor! If you include any of carrots, turnips, parsnips, beetroot peas or beans, you increase the calories some, but it makes a more nutritious and flavorsome soup. Its your call how you make it, but if you want to know how to lose weight fast and effectively, then go for the most minimal soup you can.

The downside to this diet is that it only works in the short term. There are no long term benefits to be obtained by this kind of diet so it is not recommended as a way of achieving a long lasting slimmer body. It is purely to kick start the weight loss process to cause the body to drop a few pounds over a period of a week. After that it must be stopped and a normal diet resumed.

The main reason for this is that the soup itself contains few nutrients. Prolonged use can result in malnutrition, which is a dangerous state of heath and could bring with it dangerous health related problems.

Certain diet plans have grown up around the base cabbage soup that provide nutritious foods by altering the types of foods you eat each day. These systems are more successful in the longer term it you stick to them. However, unless you’re prepared to exercise as well to augment any low calorie diet, you are highly likely to put the weight back on again as soon as you stop the diet and resume normal eating.

As its name implies, the no carb diet plan means the complete removal of all foods containing carbohydrates. This can be a difficult thing to do as for one thing, there are relatively few foods that don’t contain any carbohydrates and for another, you body will naturally crave foods containing carbs soon after embarking upon this kind of diet. There are also health risks that go along with the complete elimination of carbs from you diet as they form a part of the nutritional makeup of your food that your body needs for normal functioning.

So, what does this mean exactly?

Well, most importantly, this is a diet that you really should not continue with for more than two weeks. That is because you will degrade cell structure with prolonged abstention from carbohydrates and could suffer the effects similar to those experienced with malnutrition or starvation.

The good news is that this is a diet plan that bodybuilders use to burn off all their excess fat a week or two prior to a competition, so the benefits to your overall body shape, weight and ratio of fat to muscle are great. It this case, they exercise hard while only consuming large amounts of food high in protein and some fats.

Eating foods containing fats may sound like a counter-productive way to lose weight, but without any carbohydrates in your diet, you’ll need low levels of fats to keep your body working as it needs to gain energy from somewhere and proteins do not provide enough on their own. Proteins are the building blocks of muscle tissue and that is why bodybuilders eat a diet plan rich in them as their primary aim is not to lose weight but to gain muscle bulk.

For slimmers, gaining some muscle bulk is desirable as it means your body will burn more calories resulting in fat loss which converts to overall weight loss. Without carbohydrates providing the energy the muscles need to burn in order to exercise, the body will take that energy from stored fat, which causes the rapid reduction in the body’s levels of stored fats and leads to a net reduction in weight. So the key to the no carb diet plan then is exercise.

If you think you won’t be able to exercise hard daily for at least thirty minutes, then you should probably not try this diet.

By exercise, in this instance I’m not talking about walking or any other form of light exercise. I’m talking about serious aerobic workout that raises your heart rate, makes you breathe hard and sweat a lot. And you have to sustain this without a break for a minimum of thirty minutes every day. Longer is better as the longer you can sustain hard aerobic exercise, the more fat you will burn. At the end of the day, you also must sleep for eight hours so that your muscles can repair and grow, which continues the calorie burning process.

So what foods are allowed and what are not?

It would be better to tell you what you can have rather than what you can’t as the latter list will be so long I’ll still be writing this next week! Well, here goes and it doesn’t look too appetizing!

Egg whites (not yokes), soy products such as tofu, all green leafy vegetables, some root vegetables (not potatoes or parsnips), lean chicken breasts, fish, onions, garlic, herbs and spices. That’s about it, folks! None of these food can be fried or roasted, by the way, only steamed or grilled.

Still want to do this diet? Then get your exercise program organized first and then plan to do this for a maximum of two weeks, after which you must resume a diet containing carbohydrates, although you should continue with your exercise program to ensure the weight stays off.

This is a diet plan that sets out to increase the level of protein rich foods that you can have in your daily diet. its one often used by bodybuilders to gain muscle strength and bulk while cutting fat from their bodies in readiness for a competition as well as a general bodybuilding diet.

That means this type of diet is perfect to combine with an exercise program that will not only help you to lose weight, but also to tone up your body and build your muscle strength and stamina. With any diet, you need to remember that exercise is still necessary in order for you to sustain your loss of weight while boosting your body’s ability to burn more calories more efficiently more of the time.

Once you get to a stage where your daily exercise routine is causing your body to naturally burn more calories than you are consuming through your diet, you can say you have mastered the art of weight loss!

Keeping that methodology going is the part that requires you to make that exercise program a part of your everyday life while then working on your diet to maintain sufficient calories to feed your muscles so that you can maintain a healthy weight. This means that you will get to a stage where the amount of calories you consume through your diet exactly matches the amount of calories you are burning through exercise and your general day to day stuff.

So back to the high protein diet plan. What does it entail? Well, it is not as harsh as the “no carb diet plan” in that you are allowed to include some carbohydrates in that diet, but if you’re going to do that, you might as well make them low GI (Glycemic Index) carbohydrates as they provide slow burning energy for your body rather than the fast hit of blood sugar and the resultant dangerous reaction of insulin which you get from high GI carbs like white bread, pasta and other refined wheat products such as cakes, biscuits etc and sugar.

Protein rich foods make up the bulk of this diet, which will include, lean meat, fish, eggs, spy products such as tofu, vegetables and fruits. These can be combined with small amounts of nuts, seeds and dairy products, although they should not make up more than about 10 to 20 percent of the total for the best results.

Then its all down to getting hot, sweaty and out of breath as you exercise that body for more than 30 minutes without a break. It is preferable to be doing aerobic exercises or weight lifting exercises to burn calories and force your body to use up its store of fat and shed those excess pounds!

The first thing you need to know, if you didn’t already is that vitamins are good for you and beneficial to your health. When you’re trying to lose weight, if you’re thinking about taking any pills, do make a point of letting them be natural dietary supplements. These can be things like essential fatty acids such as omega 3 and omega 6 or good quality multivitamins. They will boost your body’s ability to metabolize food better and provide all the nutrients you need and may lack, especially if you are taking on one of the diet plans that advocate cutting out groups of foods.

Its important to remember, that specific vitamin supplements are not much good without the specific minerals that complement them. You need to approach this on a whole body plan and not just try to boost any one vitamin or group of vitamins. That means sitting down and taking stock of what you are doing. When you can see it all written down in front of you, you’ll have a better vantage point to get things right rather than just relying on memory or random purchases.

By way of an example, you will only get the maximum antioxidant effect from selenium if you take it with vitamins A, C and E. Vitamin C uptake is improved by having the right mineral levels of iron, magnesium and zinc. It has been proved that vitamin d linked to weight loss and a deficiency is linked to weight gain. All things are relative and you should ensure that you aim for a minimum of at least the RDA of all vitamins and minerals plus essential fatty acids to supplement your existing diet.

One thing you should be careful of and that’s overdoing it. You don’t want to overdose on vitamins as too much of a good thing in this case can actually be harmful. When taking herbal remedies, you need to be similarly cautious of taking too much. If you think it through, too much of anything can be a bad thing.

To be on the safe side, you should consult a professional nutritionist so they can advise you on what the best things are to take for you personally. After all, you will want your own supplement plan set out for you by someone who is doing it for your own benefit and not that of the supplements companies. Your own nutritionist is the perfect person to do that for you as they will know your specific needs and be best placed to advise you.

Moderation in all things is so the way to go, especially when dealing with diet, supplements or even exercises.

A bodybuilding diet plan is based around providing the body with as much protein as it can metabolize in order to build up muscle while at the same time cutting fat from the body to create a result where the body’s muscles stand out with good definition in response to a set of poses that causes them to flex and tighten to create that image. Of course to the average person who is looking to merely lose weight, this is actually a very sensible type of diet to use.

The other side of this coin is that this type of diet will only work if you do. That means you have to exercise hard in order to build muscle strength if not so much of the bulk of bodybuilders. Their bulk will increase by a relative amount depending upon how hard you exercise, for how long at at what rate.

For bodybuilders to build muscle size and bulk, they need to perform low reps with very heavy weights, eat a large volume of protein rich foods and sleep for a minimum eight hours a day for those muscles to grow during the repair process while sleeping.

For dieters who want to lose weight, a similar pattern needs to be established, although you will not be working out with such heavy weights. Instead, to cut fat from the body, you’ll need to exercise to the extent where you are burning more calories than you consume. At the same time, you need to be working to build up muscle strength so that the stronger your muscles become, the more of the calories from your diet they are capable of burning off during exercise.

The high protein diet will consist of egg whites, whey protein drinks (as these are the two highest most concentrated forms of protein), coupled with lean meat, fresh fruits and vegetables and only very low levels of low GI carbs such as oats. Cakes, biscuits, pizzas, burgers, takeaways and in fact any junk foods are totally off the menu as are all forms of bread, dairy products and fatty meats.

If you think you’re game for this type of diet and exercise plan, then it is perfect for long term weight loss and improved fitness levels.

Well it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that by cutting out all meats from your diet, you are effectively cutting down on a lot of animal fats that you would otherwise be consuming that in some but not all cases can lead to weight gain. That’s because not all fats are bad for you and some are very good for you! Its just a case of making sure you get the right ones and avoid the bad ones. By cutting out meat, you pretty much make sure you get rid of a lot of the bad ones. But not all of them!

Remember there are some bad fats contained in dairy products. So if you are starting on a vegetarian diet variant and you are increasing your intake of cheeses to counterbalance your sudden lack of steaks, you could actually be doing your self more harm than good from a health perspective.

But a well managed vegetarian diet can bring with it many health benefits as well as the ability to lose weight too. When your food consists mainly of fruits and vegetables as well as fungi (such as mushrooms), eggs, nuts, seeds and grains, as well as olive oil and plenty of plain water, you will find you are getting plenty of the nutrients that your body needs without all the additional weight gaining extras. Not only that, but there is a high level of dietary fiber contained in fresh fruits and vegetables which will give your body a long term detox while you’re about it.

Your colon with thank you for opting for a vegetarian diet plan. An ugly statistic states that:

The average American adult is walking around with seven pounds if undigested red meat in their colon.

If making the change to a veggie diet didn’t sound so great before you read that, I bet it does now!

Nuts such as walnuts and seeds such as flax (linseed) are high in omega 3 and 6 essential fatty acids. Peanuts contain, pound for pound, more protein than steak! Dark green leafy vegetables such as kale contain lots of calcium and other vitamins and minerals. Honey contains all the major B vitamins. Citrus fruits and kiwi fruits contain vitamin C. Carrots and squashes contain vitamin A. The sun helps your body make its own vitamin D. Vitamin E is in avocados and other fruits. Vitamin K is in bananas.

The list is pretty long as to all the vitamins and minerals contained in each fruit and vegetable to it’s not really feasible to go into them all here. That’s just an outline to give you some idea what you can get from foods when you cut out meat from your diet. So if you want to get serious about losing weight, then switching to a vegetarian diet plan will not do you any harm and can do you an awful lot of good!

At it’s most basic, losing weight is about burning more calories than you eat. That seems simple enough, but if were really that simple, none of us would have a weight problem. Too often we take drastic measures to see results — diets, pills or those weird fitness gadgets on infomercials that promise instant success. Maybe you lose weight but what happens when you go off that diet or stop that crazy workout program? You gain it all back and more. The real secret to weight loss is to make small, lasting changes. The key is to forget about instant results and settle in for the long run.

Rules of Weight Loss

To lose one pound of fat, you must burn approximately 3500 calories over and above what you already burn doing daily activities. That sounds like a lot of calories and you certainly wouldn’t want to try to burn 3500 calories in one day. However, by taking it step-by-step, you can determine just what you need to do each day to burn or cut out those extra calories. Below is a step by step process for getting started.

Calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate). Your BMR is the amount of calories your body needs to maintain basic bodily functions like breathing and digestion. This is the minimum number of calories you need to eat each day. Keep in mind that no calculator will be 100% accurate, so you may need to adjust these numbers as you learn more about your own metabolism

2. Calculate your activity level. For a week or so, keep an activity journal and use a calorie calculator to figure out how many calories you burn while sitting, standing, exercising, lifting weights, etc. throughout the day. Another, easier option is to wear a heart rate monitor that calculates calories burned. After a week, add your totals for each day and average them out to get a general idea of how many calories you burn each day.

3. Keep track of how many calories you eat. For at least a week, enter and track your calories online (e.g., with Calorie Count) or use a food journal to write down what you eat and drink each day. Be as accurate as possible, measuring when you need to or looking up nutritional information for restaurants, if you eat out. After a week, add your totals for each day and average them out to get a general idea of how many calories you eat each day.

4. Add it up. Take your BMR number and add your activity calories. Then subtract your food calories from that total. If you’re eating more than your BMR + your activity calories, you’re at risk for gaining weight.

Example:

Victoria’s BMR is 1400 calories and she burns 900 calories with regular exercise, walking around and doing household chores. To maintain her weight, she should be eating 2300 calories (1400 + 900= 2300). However, after keeping a food journal, Mary finds that she’s eating 2550 calories every day. By eating 250 more calories than her body needs, Mary will gain about a pound every 2-3 weeks.

This example shows how easy it is to gain weight without even knowing it. However, it’s also easy to lose weight, even if the process itself can be slow. You can start by making small changes in your diet and activity levels and immediately start burning more calories than you’re eating. If you can find a way to burn an extra 200 to 500 calories each day with both exercise and diet, you’re on the right track. Try these ideas:

Total Calories Saved: 532 (based on a 140-pound person)

How Much Exercise Do I Need?

Exercise is an important weight loss tool, but how much you need varies from person to person. The guidelines recommend at least 250 minutes per week, which comes out to about 50 minutes, 5 days a week. If you’re a beginner, start small, for example with 3 days of cardio for 15-30 minutes, gradually adding time each week to give your body time to adapt. Learn more about getting in shape and getting started with exercise.

Part of the monumental surge in the weight loss industry hinges around the use of certain diets, or prepared diet food delivery diets such as those produced by Nutrisystem, Bistro MD or eDiets for instance. On the surface, these may look more like they’re going to help you to shed those unwanted extra pounds, but you have to remember they are advertised and marketed that way. In other words, if you think that special diet foods are all they’re cracked up to be, think again. They will help you to lose weight for sure, but there are more healthy, natural alternatives if you’re prepared to do a little extra work for yourself.

The alternative is to eat natural, fresh foods that have not been tampered with by weight loss food manufacturers that love to process everything they get their hands on. They like to pump it full of additives, artificial flavors, sweeteners, aromas and colors, bulking agents, salt and sugar. They do that so it looks, smells and tastes great while looking like its a lot of food for the money.

Well, you need to look past all the marketing hype and advertising wizardry that gets you not only to buy the stuff but to believe its the real deal. Things are not always what they seem to be. In fact the only way you can be totally 100% certain of what the food you eat contains is to prepare it and cook it yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, the diet foods industry is not feeding you bad food. It generally provides you with nutritious, low calorie meals that can help you to lose weight. Its just not as good as the real thing, which is food in its natural, unprocessed state.

After all, when it comes to the basic weight loss process there is only one thing you need to remember above all else:

To lose weight you must consume fewer calories than you burn

Its really that simple and when you get your head around this basic fact, then you’ll also realize that in order for you to get rid of your spare tire, you simply need to eat less. But if you want to maintain a good level of health, which you should, then make that food natural because it will contain more nutrients and fiber than processed food ever can.

So when I talk about natural foods, I mean fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh fish and meat bought from stores that sell those items straight off the counter and not in cans, packages or freezers. Food markets are a good place to start, or even better if you have a local farm produce store that gets all its stuff from local farms. That way, you know the food you buy has not been sitting on a truck being transported halfway across the country.

Better still is if that local farm is organic.

Organic food contains more nutrients and is almost totally devoid of harmful pesticides and other agricultural chemicals that food from regular farms contain. Best of all are the fruits and vegetable you grow yourself, because then you have total control over what goes on them. And if you are keen on being healthy, then nothing but water and natural fertilizers will go onto your plants. Of course, we can’t all grow our own stuff, so organic produce is the next best thing.

This is even better for your health and will help you maintain a healthy body that will find its own perfect weight as long as you stick to real food, avoid processed food and keep your portions small!

The Importance of Exercise to Lose Weight

While your diet has to be both nutritious, wholesome and filling while simultaneously restricting your calorie intake on a daily bases, your body needs to burn those calories as efficiently as it can for weight loss to come about. Sure, you can figure out how to lose weight fast by starving yourself. But what happens is that your body simply goes into a physiological state known as starvation mode. In this mode, all non-essential functions are reduced and all nutrients and energy are directed to the parts that are essential to preserve life. These include auto-muscle responses like heartbeat, lung function, digestion and excretion, brain function etc.

When all your body’s reserves of fat are used up, muscle tissue begins to reduce and your weight will drop dramatically. This is NOT a desirable state to get into as this is a serious danger to your life. You could die from malnutrition! There is a much better, healthier way to lose weight and tone up your body so that you can fit into that smaller dress size.

That way is to combine a healthy diet with exercise. Daily light exercise is perfect to begin with and can comprise long walks in the fresh air, swimming or other light, enjoyable activity that gets you out of the house and moving around. As you gain fitness this way, you can move up to more strenuous exercises like working out to a system such as the P90X extreme home fitness program, as your body becomes accustomed to working more than it used to.

The whole idea of exercise to lose weight is such an important factor in the process that it beggars belief that so many people who are trying to lose weight simply don’t want to do any at all. yet the all want to know how to lose weight fast! That’s crazy because by omitting exercise from your weight loss plan, you are only doing half the job and not giving yourself the best chance of success not just in the short term but long term too.

Exercise works to bring about a reduction on your weight and an improvement in your body shape, which is, after all the reason you’re doing this! Here’s how it works:

When you exercise, you are forcing certain muscle groups in your body to work. When muscles work, they need a supply of energy which they get from sugars in your bloodstream. As the muscles work, they use up the supply of sugars in the blood thereby causing the body to replenish the supply of sugar from its store of fats. This reduces your “fat weight” while providing the muscles with the energy they need to work.
Burn Calories in Your Sleep

When you sleep, the muscles that were working hard during the day now start to repair themselves and build more muscle tissue in readiness for the next session of work, or exercise. While this process is going on, those muscles are still using more of your body’s store of energy, so in effect you are burning calories in your sleep – far more than you would normally burn if you had done no exercise.

Those muscles tone up your body too, reducing the flabbiness and allowing you to fit into those smaller size clothes. They also gain mass. This is a point that surprises many people who are trying to lose weight, because muscle weighs more than fat by volume you may not actually see much difference on the scales at least not to begin with, although you will see the difference in the mirror. Which is, after all where you want to see the difference!
More Muscle for Less Weight

As time progresses and you continue exercising daily if possible, your weight will reduce as more fat gets used up than muscle mass gets created. This happens as long as you exercise in a way designed to burn fat and not to build excessive mass, as bodybuilders do. Bodybuilding actually aims for weight gain and this is achieved by doing low repetition, heavy resistance exercises combined with a high protein diet. That’s how bodybuilders achieve the huge, muscle bound bodies they are aiming for.

If you are not aiming to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday, then your exercises should comprise many repetitions with low resistance so that the muscle work hard and use lots of energy but do not build excessive additional muscle tissue. This way you end up with a well toned, lithe and great looking body with lots of energy and plenty of strength and stamina. Your clothes will fit well and you will be the envy of all the other dieters who are not exercising!

What is the Right Diet for Me?

That is the sixty four thousand dollar question! The answer is not simple and often needs the professional expertise of a nutritionist or dietitian to work exclusively with you on a personal, one to one level to ascertain what is best for you, your character and your physical makeup.

However, there is hope.

There are a large number of diets and diet plans that you can choose from. Here are some examples, Zone Diets; the High Protein Diet Plan; the No Carb Diet Plan; the Sugar Busters Diet Plan; the Cabbage Soup Diet Plan; the Bodybuilding Diet Plan; the Detox Diet Plan; the Mediterranean Diet Plan, the Vegetarian Diet Plan; the Gluten Free Diet Plan; the Glycemic Index Diet Plan; several Diabetic Diet Plans; there is even a Raw Food Diet Plan! Added to these you could choose to take the easy option and go with one of the excellent Diet Food Delivery programs that are available for busy people who just do not have much time for cooking and preparing low calorie, nutritious meals. Choose from programs such as eDiets,
Nutrisystem, Bistro MD or the
Sonoma Diet to name but a few.

There is one rule that applies to everyone and I’ve mentioned it in some of the previous articles in this series but I’ll mention it again here and that is: When you consume fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. This is an absolute and fundamental fact of life and it can’t be gotten around with excuses or lies. Its a question of body mass and mass is something that cannot be made out of nothing.

In other more simplistic words, you cannot get overweight if you don’t eat more than your body is burning through the work that it does. To become overweight, you have to add mass. And in a living being, mass is added through the food you eat (and what you drink). If anyone tells you different, guess what? They’re just not aware of this absolute law of the universe, or they’re in denial! Ok, that’s a little harsh, but you see where I’m going with this.

So the only one real “one size fits all” diet weight loss solution is in the simple fact of mass. When you place yourself on a calorie controlled diet, you have to ensure that the number of calories you consume each day does not exceed what your body can burn off. But while you can fairly accurately measure the number of calories you are taking in, calculating the number you are burning in a day is a little more difficult to measure.

But one thing is certain that will help your diet to succeed, whatever you or your nutritionist places you on, and that’s complimenting it with exercise. And that’s the topic of my final top 100 weight loss tips, which I will cover in the next and final article in this series.