Foods to Avoid in Your Healthy Meal Plans to Lose Weight
People get excited about a lot of things, but I have never in my life met anyone who’s thrilled about being overweight. I have however, met folks who are sick of the up and down rollercoaster of so-called healthy meal plans to lose weight. Rather than deal with more dieting disappointments, some of these people conclude that living “large” is simply in the cards for them.
Throwing your hands up in defeat and deciding to spend the rest of your days (unhappily) overweight is no way to live. A decision like this can beat your self-esteem into the ground and shave years off of your life. C’mon, you owe yourself and your loved ones so much more than this.
There’s no magic formula to losing weight – if there were, everybody and their mama would be slim. The best way to achieve successful weight loss results is to know what types of foods to keep out of your diet.
Just Say “No” to Processed Foods
Processed foods are cheap, convenient and easy to prepare. Unfortunately, these foods are bad for your health. Of course, you’d never know this by watching those hyped up television ads. Since manufacturers aren’t going to give you the dirty on the ingredients they use in processed foods, I’ll gladly do it for them.
Let’s start with trans fat. This ingredient lowers good cholesterol, raises bad cholesterol, and can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. Considering heart disease is one of the leading killers of men and women, trans fat is one ingredient you want to steer clear of.
If you’re wondering where that double chin came from, the high fructose corn syrup used in some of your favorite processed foods may be partially to blame. This ingredient has been getting a lot of press lately because it is believed to be a major player in the rising obesity epidemic.
Don’t even get me started on the chemicals manufacturers use in processed foods. If I tried to name some of these chemicals, I’d be tongue tied for days. Besides, you’d probably think I was reading the label on a can of bug spray instead of the ingredients in your favorite microwavable meal.
Send Sugar Packing
The average person consumes about 150 pounds of sugar per year. When you think about the fact that sugar is in almost everything, it’s easy to eat tons of this stuff without even realizing it. So what’s the big deal? There isn’t enough time in the day for me to tell you about all the damage sugar can do to your health. However, I can give you a quick rundown.
Sugar contains nothing but empty calories. When you eat this stuff, a large portion of it gets stored in the body as fat. If your goal is to slim down, being heavy-handed with the sugar isn’t going to help. This is not even the worst of it. Sugar can also depress the immune system, feed cancer cells, contribute to heart disease, raise your risk of osteoporosis and make you look decrepit.
Give Artificial Sweeteners the Boot
Before you run out and stock your fridge with a bunch of those zero-calorie diet drinks, there’s something you should know. The artificial sweeteners used in diet drinks and other low-calorie products are lab-created. Yep. You heard me right – mixed up in a lab like something out of a Frankenstein movie.
These chemical sweeteners can cause or contribute to a laundry list of neuropsychiatric disorders and chronic illnesses – depression, anxiety, migraines, mood changes, panic attacks, vertigo, memory loss, Alzheimer’s, brain tumors – should I go on? And if you think you’re going to shed a few pounds using artificial sweeteners, think again. These sweeteners stimulate your appetite and make you eat more food.
When you’ve tried diet after diet and not one of them delivers results, it can certainly make you want to give up. But you owe it to yourself and to your family to live the healthiest life possible. Processed foods, sugar and artificial sweeteners are the main culprits of weight gain. When you eliminate these foods from your diet, you greatly improve your chance of losing weight.
Make dieting disappointment a thing of the past. Let the Diet Solution Program arm you with the tools you need to create effective healthy meal plans to lose weight and live healthier.
How Will Proper Nutrition Help Me Lose Weight?
If you’ve tried diet after diet and you’re still hollering, “Please! Help me lose weight!” It’s because diets don’t work (obviously). Sure, they may help you drop a few pounds in the beginning, but the results are often short lived. Most diets require you to restrict your caloric intake to the point where your body is literally starving.
Not getting enough calories slows your metabolism down, causes the loss of lean muscle tissue, deprives you of the fuel you need to perform, and causes your body to hold on to stored fat for energy. In addition, diets are miserable, depressing, frustrating and not sustainable over the long term. Seriously, how long do you think you can survive off of grapefruits and cabbage?
Take it from a gal who has tried almost every diet on the market. Proper nutrition will give you better weight loss results than simply going on a diet. Here are three good reasons why.
Healthy Foods Are Naturally Low in Calories
Unlike processed junk, healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, legumes, beans naturally raised meats, organic poultry, raw nuts, seeds and organic eggs are naturally low in calories. When you eat reasonable portions of these foods, you automatically reduce your caloric intake and lose weight without feeling hungry, deprived or bitter.
There is so much nonsense in processed foods. When you eat them, your body doesn’t have a clue what to do with the calories; so they just get stored as fat. When you eat nutritious foods instead of processed junk, your body actually benefits from the calories so they are less likely to get stored as blubber.
Proper Nutrition Helps Fuel Your Body
All nutritious (and I mean truly nutritious) eating plans will allow plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits and beans in the diet. These foods provide the healthy carbohydrates you need to fuel your body and keep your metabolism performing properly.
If you come across a diet that tells you not to eat healthy carbohydrates, run away from it as fast as you can. Your body absolutely has to have healthy carbohydrates (healthy being the operative word) to survive.
Eating Healthy to Burn Fat
Here’s some great news. Healthy diets that include protein can help you build lean muscle tissue, which can kick your metabolism into high gear. This is definitely a plus if you want to send that double chin packing.
When you eat protein rich foods, your body releases a hormone that helps you burn fat. Protein also helps make meals more satiating so you eat less (bring on the protein, baby). Some nutritious protein sources include naturally raised lean meats, organic poultry, beans, raw nuts and whole organic eggs.
Why put yourself through the drama of dieting just to be disappointed with the end results? Healthy eating is a much better option for dropping unwanted pounds. Remember though, nutritious eating is just one part of the weight loss puzzle. If you want to keep those results coming, get plenty of exercise and drink lots of water.
If you are serious about losing weight, watch this video to learn some of the things that help me lose weight and keep it off.
Your Diet Plan for Weight Loss: How to Keep Hunger At Bay
Let’s make sure we get one thing straight from the outset. When you’re dieting, you shouldn’t ever feel hungry. In fact, if you are hungry, you should consider eating more.
The perfect diet plan for weight loss isn’t about starving yourself, or depriving yourself of the essential foods you need to function at your prime.
In fact, it’s not even about counting calories—and if you follow my blog, you know how I feel about calorie counting. Instead, the right way to eat healthy means switching out the foods that are bad for you, and replacing them with foods that are good for you.
But even if you don’t reduce your food intake by that much, you may have an adjustment period as you begin to shed belly fat. It’s really more of a mind over matter thing than real starvation. If you’ve been used to eating large quantities of the wrong kind of food, you might go through a kind of withdrawal period once you begin eating healthfully.
So are there any ways to combat these hunger pains, without giving in to the urge to binge? Absolutely! Let’s look at a few techniques you should incorporate into your diet plan to lose weight:
Drink Your Water
First and foremost, you should be drinking plenty of water once you start your eating plan. In fact, you should be drinking at least half your body weight in ounces of water per day. So, for example, if you weigh 160 pounds, you should drink 80 ounces at a minimum per day.
Not only will water help flush toxins from your body, it can help combat edema and water retention. Need an even more compelling reason to drink water? Your body can often misinterpret thirst for hunger, actually causing your stomach to growl.
So before you reach for something more to eat check to see how much water you’ve had to drink. If you haven’t had enough for the day, drink plenty of H20 before you have anything else to eat.
Eat Healthy Fats
Yes, you can eat fat while you are on a diet. Does this mean you have my permission to run out and devour a bucket of fried chicken? Wishful thinking, but the answer is no.
You need to eat plenty of healthy fats, which are MUFAs or PUFAs, while you are dieting. These healthy fats will help contribute to a feeling of satiety between meals, as well as give you the essential fatty acids you need to function at your prime. Healthy fats include olive oil, organic butter, coconut oil, raw nuts, nut butters, and avocadoes.
Eat Lots of Fiber
Everyone knows that including high amounts of fiber in your diet helps while you are trying to reduce your weight, but no one really seems to know why it’s important. Well, there are two reasons.
- Fiber keeps you from becoming constipated, which can happen when you make a sudden dietary change—even if that change is for the better.
- Fiber helps you feel full more quickly, and helps you remain that way between meals.
As a rule, you should consider including a serving of fiber with every meal, even snacks. In fact, I usually recommend you include your favorite type of green vegetable with meals, such as a salad or celery sticks.
Stay Active
While exercising doesn’t have much to do with what you put in your mouth, it can have a huge impact on the success of your eating plan and how hungry you feel. I’m not a fan of long hours on the treadmill, as you probably know. In fact, I prefer shorter workouts with more interval training and strength training thrown in because I feel it gives you more bang for your buck.
But no matter how you choose to get and stay active, you should know that it will make your metabolism more efficient, allowing you to continue burning calories several hours after your workout has ended. So while you are working on eating a better diet, find ways to incorporate active movement into your daily routine. You’ll train your body to burn calories more efficiently over time.
The Diet Solution Program was designed with one focus in mind: to help people learn to eat better and thus transform their lives. If you want to learn more about how to lose weight without feeling deprived, consider downloading my program today!
If you are new to The Diet Solution program, watch this video to learn more about a diet plan for weight loss. It’s more than just a fad diet; it’s a lifestyle change that you’ll love!
Recent Comments