Diet Tips on Eating Healthy

Know What You're Eating

• It is better to eat 5 meals of 200 calories each in one day than 2 meals of 500 calories each. This will speed up your metabolism.

• To give your body a fat-burning boost, you can try incorporating more food from the negative calorie food list. Negative calorie foods means that the body burns more calories digesting the food than the calorie content of the food! These include Cauliflower,carrots, celery, garlic, cucumbers, hot chilli, lemons, strawberrys, tomatoes and watermelon.

• Variety- Whatever diet you're on, mix and mach as many different things as you can. If you can eat fish, theres an army of variety. You are likely to get bored of your diet quick if you think the food you are eating tastes bland or is too much of the same. Many herbs and spices are low cal, and they make SUCH a difference to the tastes of your foods. Don't be afraid to experiment. I love chilli and I put it on everything! The way you cook veggies can also affect the taste. In winter it's great to eat soups, they taste great and warm you up. Liquidizing veggies into soups tastes great, especially if you add the right ingredients. Don't be afraid to look up health recipes on the internet. There are a ton!

• Try eating your food out of smaller plates, sometimes we just eat how much ever food a plate contains.

• Drink water if you are tempted to eat, this will give you a fuller sensation.

• Make sure you have low sugar or low fat chewing gum (if it is applicable for your diet). Gum can surpress hunger because you can chew it for so long.

• If you are on a diet that involves counting calories, make sure not to eat less than the minimum amount of calories your body needs. If this happens, you are slowing down the natural fat burning process of your body, and you might even engage into starvation mode, which can have bad side effects to your organs.(you can check how many calories your body needs from your nutritionist. Also ,if you search around some nutrition websites provide calorie counters that can give you an average of what your calorie intake needs to be)

• If you are counting calories remember to write down the amount of calories you ate after each meal or snack! While doing this you are ensuring that you have the right knowledge of each food type and also it is much easer to add up your calories like that at the end of the day. What i usually do is leave Notepad.exe open at work, write down everything i've eaten, e-mail the file to myself, then write dinner down on my home pc. I do this because i am very likely to lose small bits of paper :). On the other hand, if you are more organised than I am, I suggest you keep a small journal that you can carry around with you.

• Remember that different brands of the same kind of food have different amount of calories. Some companies put extra sugars or sodium in their products to make them more tasty. Be sure to check the nutritional information on the packet of food for the correct amount of calories. If you are unsure, remember that there are many lists available on the internet with the relevant information.

• You can start off a diet simply by replacing your sugary sodas, iced teas, beer and alcohol with water, diet sodas, skimmed milk and green tea. Also note that not all fruit juices are good for you, what I mean is some of them are just loaded with sugar. Always read the labels of an unfamiliar product.

• If you are used to snacking bits of food often, prepare a large cold salad in the morning or prepare a big bowl of grapes and berries, and snack on those every time you feel hungry.

• If you are a carb-counter, remember that most diets recommend that you get 75% of your daily carb intake from fruit and/or veg. If you consume all your carbs from sugary foods will have a negative effect and might slow down your metabolism.

• If you eat a meal at fast food restaurants, you'd be surprised to find out that soda and chips have more calories than the burger itself.

• If you have a slow metabolism, try incorporating more citrus fruits, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, spinach and beans.

• Drink iced water often! try to make this a habbit in summer, as your body burns calories to turn the water back to body temperature. Do not assume that this will make you lose weight fast, though making this into a habit will certainly help.

• If you are on a night out, try steering away from beer or cider. Instead of mixing vodka with redbull, try mixing it with diet coke, its much less fattening!
  

• If you carry around alot of water weight, remember to cut down on the carbohydrates, especially white bread, pastas and noodles. Extra sodium can result into extra water weight too. Drinking tall glasses of water on a regular basis helps, sounds funny but it works.

• Do not eat before going to bed. Stay clear of food, at least 2 hours before bed time, same goes for large amounts of liquids. It's ok to have small snacks during this period, but avoid large meals or high fat food. When you do this you are basically giving your body alot of energy that it's not going to burn because a) you're going to bed, and b) the metabolism tends to slow down in the evening, and thus the food will be stored as fat.

General Diet Tips

LifeStyle

• Differentiate between cravings and hunger. Never feed your emotions!

• If you are in a relationship, its always helpful to do things together; eating healthy together and going to a gym together will be beneficial as you can support each other.

• If you are looking for support, join an online support group. You will meet many people with the same goals as you, and you can learn a lot from these people. A good exercise is to blog about your result every week or two. Looking at the results and at your progression will help you feel a sense of fulfillment and can give you the drive you need to progress further.

• Keep yourself busy! - if you have many things to do, you will often think about food less often.

• Know what you are putting into your body. Your body is not a rubbish. Start reading labels. Check the calorie and fat content before you put it in your mouth - Yes this includes beverages. Try comparing the calorie content in beers and sugary sodas, with things like hot dogs, burgers, fries and crisps... you will be surprised!

• Family- It's a good idea to tell your family that you've chosen to eat healthier, however not all your family members may be on board... particularly the ones that are secretly unhappy about their own weight. Make them understand how YOU feel, and that you aren't happy with the way you are treating your body. Make them understand that it is an important journey for you to lose weight and be healthy. It really helps having the support of your family. What definitely does not help is having your aunt forcing you to eat her pudding on xmas day. Maybe letting them know how you feel will also mean that you will have healthy food waiting for you when you go over to their place.

• Don't set over-the-top goals. If you want to lose 50 pounds, you need to break it down. Set an initial goal of losing 10 pounds, see how that goes, then based on the results, decide what your next goal will be. If you know that you are far away from your goal, you are more likely to give up early.

• Never go to the grocery store hungry. Seriously. That place is just a pool of cravings. You need to go there with your defenses ready. Make sure you're not hungry, otherwise the cravings there might get to you.

• Successful weight loss is an equation: exercise+diet = success. You cannot replace "diet" with diet pills, and you cannot lose weight without doing both diet and exercise at the same time. Everybody knows this, but not everyone accepts it.

• Sometimes when you've had a bad day or something's gone completely wrong you end up stuffing yourself with food to relieve stress. It is important to find an alternative to this as you can never know if something might go wrong in the middle of a diet! A very helpful way of relieving stress is playing an instrument or talking to a friend on the phone and "letting everything out". If that doesn't work, buy a punching bag and a set of gloves and the rest will take care of itself~

• It is always helpful to record your eating habits. Habits become so integrated with our every day lives, that we often do not realize that we are doing them, and we only realize that we are doing them when somebody else points it out! Recognize your habits, keep a look out. A habit of simply putting mayo on your veg or extra sugar in your cereal and grated cheese on your mac and cheese- these stop should try to be stopped, if you have a habit of frying your eggs, try to use canola oil or olive oil instead of the fatty oil (canola oil usually comes in the form of a spray and is much more low cal than olive oil). Or even better, boil the eggs.

• If you're having a really bad craving -smell something stinky that will kill your appetite

• When feeling discouraged, think of people that are thin and in shape, motivate yourself, and think that you can be like them soon.

• Spend as least time as possible in the kitchen, it's hard to resist temptations with the fridge a step away.

• Before each bite ask, do I REALLY need this in my body?

• Buy pants or a skirt that don't fit you. Yeah that don't fit you, buy it one or two sizes smaller, leave it in your closet where you can see it. Every time you change clothes, think to yourself "I WILL fit in that". It's a great reminder.