changing your eating habits

Cutting calories from your diet can involve two processes. One is simply to eat smaller portions. The other is to exchange one high calorie food source for something that is lower in calories and healthier. Your diet is made up of choices. It’s up to you whether you make good ones or bad. Just remember that the bad choices are the ones that put the weight on so making too many of them can have a negative impact on your ability to lose weight.
At mealtime, don’t overload your plate. Using a smaller plate can help with this because it takes less food to fill it up. Eat your food slowly. It takes around twenty minutes for your brain to tell your stomach it has had enough. If you eat too rapidly you will be overfull before you get the signal to stop. Wait for a while before you go back for seconds. The signal may not have come through yet and by waiting you may realize you don’t really want it after all.

Drink plenty of water in between your meals. Water not only fills you up but it keeps your system cleansed, aids in the digestion of your food, keeps your skin well hydrated, and helps flush the fat out of your system. Foods that contain plenty of water such as fruits, vegetables and clear soups are also good. They assist in getting your daily supply of water and are generally more nutrient dense since water has no calories.

Make a note of the foods you eat daily. Cut back on saturated fats such as butter or margarine, foods containing simple sugars or high fructose corn syrup, and foods that are high in calories, low in nutrients. Make every calorie count by eating nutrient dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, and complex carbohydrates. Foods like carrots, apples, and whole grain breads contain plenty of fiber which helps fill you up while giving your body the nutrients it needs.

A twenty ounce bottle of cola contains around 250 calories of nothing but sugar. If you are drinking two of these a day that’s 500 empty calories. For the same 500 calories you could have eaten four large garden salads full of nutrients and drank two glasses of water. Cutting cola and other simple sugar drinks from your diet can have a big impact on your weight. Try drinking flavored waters that contain no calories if you need something with more flavor to it.

An average serving of French fries contains around 350 calories and one third of your daily fat allowance. By contrast, a baked potato with one tablespoon of margarine has only 140 calories. By substituting the baked potato you would have cut 210 calories from your calorie intake for the day. Simple substitutions such as this are the key to cutting calories and eating healthier.

A healthy diet is simply a matter of being smart about your food choices and quantity you eat on a regular basis. At first it may seem hard to give up those low nutrient and empty calorie foods. In time, though, you will feel better and look better and the choices become easier to make. You won’t lose all your weight overnight but gradually it will come off and it will be easy to maintain the loss because you are changing the habits that make you overweight with new habits that will make you healthier. You learn to make the smarter choices on your own so that they simply become a part of you. In time you make healthy choices without even thinking about it.

To find out about nutritional content of food

The Complete Book of Food Counts, 8th Edition

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