howcaniloseweight
Dieting 101
Dieting 101: Guide to Setting
Up the Perfect Fast Weight Loss Diet
So you’ve finally made the commitment: After months or years of
bad eating, you’re ready to get rid of your excess weight. There’s
just one problem–you don’t know how to lose weight.
That’s definitely a problem. Luckily, you needn’t need a nutritionist or personal trainer to set up the perfect weight loss diet for yourself.
Setting Up the Perfect Fast Weight Loss Diet
In order to lose weight, you’ll need to keep two rules in mind. These rules are:
- You must eat fewer calories than you need to sustain your weight.
- You must exercise to increase your caloric deficit.
Losing weight is actually very simple: You simply need to eat fewer calories. But weight loss simply isn’t decreasing the number on the scale; it’s finding a diet plan that makes you healthy, isn’t hard to follow, and is something that you truly like following. As the old saying goes, the perfect diet is the diet you follow the best–not the diet that helps you lose the most weight fast.
Tips for Creating the Perfect Diet
As humans, we love flexibility and the ability to do whatever we want–and studies show that people who go on flexible diets tend to have the best results (fad dieters usually rebound quickly). To help you create your perfect diet, here are 4 tips to make it right:
- Practice flexibility. Your diet shouldn’t have too many rules or restrictions, such as restricting entire food groups, such as grains or meats. Instead, learn to eat flexibly, including all of the important food groups in your diet. You’ll find you’ll have an easier time following the diet, and your body reaps the reward too–flexible diets also contain the biggest variety of micronutrients, nutrients you need to stay healthy.
- Practice moderation. Processed junk food has no place in any diet plan, but that doesn’t mean it has to be off-limits–you just have to limit your intake. For instance, if you love chips, consider having a handful of them as a treat once a week with a healthy salad. Cutting out junk food completely could cause cravings that could trigger binges, but by allowing yourself to indulge once in a while, you cut that urge to binge.
- Natural is best. Good diets are healthy diets, and you’ll only find the best, richest abundance of micronutrients in natural foods–foods that are minimally processed and are as close to its freshest state. For instance, a raw apple is very natural; dried apple chips are not. For an even better twist, go organic–some foods, such as eggs, contain better nutrients in organic form (organic eggs usually contain more omega 3 fatty acids).
- Don’t forget appetite suppressants. Now we’re not talking about pills here–instead, use natural foods and beverages that help keep your appetite on the down low. Good solutions: Capsaicin can increase your fullness during a mid-day day; caffeine and green tea are also good day-long solutions for keeping your stomach full on few calories. Just don’t use it as a replacement for diet or exercise–it’s not intended to replace your diet!