Fresh from the Holidays, most people, including you, must have put on some weight from the quick lunch meet-ups, dinner dates, and late-night binge drinking that didn’t seem to have an end. Whether you are trying to lose those excess pounds or, you’re finally braving dieting to promote your general health or, forced into it because of obesity or other health reasons, there are some things that remain constant and should be part of your weight loss strategy. It’s important to ask yourself questions like: “What diet suits your health condition?” or if a highly restrictive diet like a keto induction meal plan is safe.
What are the best dieting tips?
You have good intentions, no doubt, for wanting to lose weight. However, even when your top reason for wanting to shed off extra inches is vanity, that redounds to both short-term and long-term benefits. Here’s the caveat: you have to do it right.
Here are the top tips to go on a diet and be on it for the long haul:
Drop the processed foods from your grocery list
How about a quick challenge? Get yourself a pen and a piece of paper. Head to your fridge and make a quick list of all the foods you’ll find inside. Do the same for your cupboards and other places where you stash your goodies (including under your bed). Now, go through the list and cross out everything that’s processed – that includes your carton of milk, the bottled “fresh” juice, even the granola bars that you munch on when you skip lunch to lose weight. Chances are, you’ll end up with very few items on the list that’s fresh and unprocessed.
This is the first thing that you should change. Stop living off processed foods. In fact, you should stop going to the grocery at all if you have a local farmers’ market you can go instead. There, you can find the freshest foods at their unadulterated conditions. An organic market will give you even better opinions.
Get your health care provider’s opinion
Dieting can be good or bad for you depending on how well or how badly it complements your health condition. Some extreme diets can even be outright dangerous for you. Meantime, dieting with existing health conditions, including diabetes, and heart, liver, and kidney related diseases can drive your health condition from bad to worse. Not to mention, dieting can also react with your medications, most especially when you are taking supplements with your diet. Listen to your health care provider. In cases where you desire extreme weight loss, your health provider may recommend you to consult with a nutritionist to make sure that you will keep getting all the necessary nutrients while you get on your diet plan.
Learn to prepare healthier foods
How? There are all sorts of classes available but, you want the ones that specifically teach healthier cooking, including vegan and gluten-free diets. You can also easily check out healthy recipes on the Internet, the ones that do not use processed foods as ingredients. Drop the frying and embrace more raw, boiled, and steamed meals.
Go on an extreme diet
When you want fast results, this can give you the most benefits over the shortest period of time. However, this is one of those diets that can force your body to take extreme measures to help you survive through the deprivation so make sure to get the nod of your health care provider first before you get on any extreme dieting.
If you are a good candidate for benefiting (not being harmed by) a keto diet then, you should learn a keto induction meal plan simply because it isn’t so easy to teach an old dog, like yourself, new tricks. This dieting plan is particularly not recommended for people who have diabetes or any form of insulin resistance.
Keto Diet is an extreme dieting method where a dieter goes on a low or no carb diet. The term “keto” is derived from the word, “ketosis” which describes a state the body goes through when it releases significantly more than normal levels of ketones in the bloodstream. When there isn’t sufficient glucose or glycogen to break down as a result of going through a low carb or no carb diet, the body switches metabolic pathways to supply the level of energy your body needs to keep functioning efficiently. Then, it turns to fats. This is what’s making keto diet so popular because many people who have tried it attest that it helped them lose weight and lose it for good.
Dr. Gianfranco Cappello, a surgeon based in Rome, Italy, is the brain behind the Keto diet. The dieting strategy started gaining adherents when the results of the study1 he did showed that more than 19,000 patients put on a Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition lost as much as 10 percent of weight where 57 percent is fat mass. The study further observed that there were no significant adverse side effects noted, leading Dr. Cappello and his team to conclude that the keto diet is safe.
How do you get on a keto diet?
- Do not eat: sugar, fruits, grains, and tubers
- Eat: meats, nuts, and seeds, avocados, chicken broth, cream cheese, heavy cream, beef (steak cuts), bacon, fatty cheese
So unhealthy? You will definitely see plenty of proteins, salt and processed foods in this diet. These foods increase your fat consumption because that is what your body will access, including the stored fat in your system, when you are deprived of carbs and sugars.
Always compliment your diet with exercise
Regardless of which dieting route you are led to, exercise will remain important simply because you need to create a caloric deficit when you are trying to lose those extra pounds. Burning off more energy by working out is a great way to achieve that.
Conclusion
Dieting should be viewed more as a health and well-being lens rather than just perceived from an aesthetic perspective. Nevertheless, if your vanity goals will help keep you on track with your weight loss goals then, by all means, keep those dreams of a cinched waist and firm buttocks coming but, you should never compromise your health in the name of vanity.
