Choose The No Diets Diet and Still Lose Weight! There is a way to say NO to diets and still lose weight! While dieting can be an effective way to lose weight, you probably know someone or have experienced yourself that the weight often comes back once the diet ends. Often times, when a person reaches their goal weight, they discontinue eating the packaged diet foods and begin to eat the foods that were forbidden by the diet. The weight comes back because the individual goes back to eating the same things they ate before they started the diet. This happens because they did not learn how to incorporate healthy food choices into their everyday lifestyle. Instead of dieting and making a temporary change in your eating habits, it is much more effective to make a lifestyle change and choose foods that are low in fat and calories, but give you a sense of satisfaction and leave you feeling full. Add in daily physical activity, such as fitness walking, to your healthy food choices and the weight will melt off. Think it can’t be done? I’m going to show you it can!
A healthy weight loss goal is to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week. To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you are eating now. In general, women who are trying to lose weight should eat about 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day and men who are trying to lose weight should eat 1,600 to 1,800 calories a day. Let’s look at it another way... One pound of body fat equals 3,500 calories. Therefore to lose 1 pound a week, you must consume 3,500 fewer calories a week than you already do. Let’s break that down a little more. 3,500 calories divided by 7 days a week equals 500. This means you’ll need to eat 500 fewer calories a day to lose one pound a week. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it! If cutting that many calories doesn’t sound appealing to you, you can incorporate daily fitness walking into your lifestyle and burn anywhere from 200 to 400 calories in one hour. If you can burn just 200 calories in one hour of fitness walking per day, you’ll only need to reduce your daily caloric intake by 300 calories to still meet the goal of 500 fewer calories per day for 1 pound of weight loss in a week. The amount of calories burned in an hour of fitness walking depends on your weight and pace. Read this article to find out how many calories you will burn with fitness walking. Please be aware that if you eat even fewer calories than 1,200 to 1,500 for women or 1,600 to 1,800 for men, you will not have much success with weight loss. Our bodies are designed for survival and if yours doesn’t get enough calories to maintain energy for daily activities, it will act as if it is in starvation mode and cling to every calorie you give it to help you survive. The good news is that once you’ve reached your goal weight, you can increase your daily caloric intake. The amount of calories you need to maintain a certain weight is based upon your age, gender and level of activity. To find out how many calories you should consume on a daily basis to maintain your goal weight, please review this
chart.
According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a healthy diet is one that focuses on: · A variety of fruits and veggies – fresh, frozen or canned · Calcium rich foods that are low-fat or no-fat, such as milk, cheese or yogurt · Whole grains · A variety of lean proteins, such as lean meats and poultry, fish beans, eggs, peas, nuts and seeds · Limit fats, salts and sugar When you focus your food choices on these guidelines, you’ll begin to permanently change your eating habits and food selections instead of dieting for a temporary period of time. This is when you will achieve lasting weight loss because you are able to make smart choices about the food you encounter every day.
You can say no to diets and still lose weight when you choose to eat foods low in sugar, salt and fat because you will replace them with foods that are high in fiber and packed with nutrients. These types of foods leave you feeling full and satisfied. You won’t get hungry as often and won’t feel the urge to reach for your favorite sugary, fatty snacks.
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