Finding the right diet to help you reach your health and fitness goals can be a challenge. With social media trends and hundreds of fad diets going around, it can be difficult to determine what you need for your body to get the results you desire.
Fortunately, to change your body composition and eliminate excess weight, the diet formula has never drifted away from the fact that calorie restriction and increasing your physical activity will always deliver outstanding results.
However, most people don’t succeed in healthy nutritional dieting because what they’re eating may not be sustainable; especially when they’re switching from heavily processed and high-carb diets. Since certain foods can be considered an addiction to most, it’s not always best to go from eating 2500+ calories daily, to only consuming salads and protein shakes.
Unless you’re a trained athlete who has practiced discipline and calorie-cutting for most of your adult life, going from one extreme to another may do more harm and damage to your mind and body leaving you feeling hungry, unmotivated, and disappointed.
As a beginner who wants to make lifestyle changes, the most effective way to lose weight through dieting is by observing what you currently eat to eliminate unnecessary calories and replace them with foods that support your transformational journey.
The three pillars of a perfect diet are eliminating added sugars, cutting starches in half while replacing them with vegetables, and eating protein with every meal to increase fat metabolism and keep you feeling full.
1. Eliminating Added Sugars:
Fructose, sucrose, and glucose are the three sugars commonly found in many of the foods we consume daily. Out of the three, fructose may just be the most damaging one. When our bodies intake a high amount of fructose through processed foods and hydronated snacks and treats, our liver becomes overcharged and overworked as it must break it down to make glucose for the body to use as energy.
Instead, much of the fructose gets converted into fat for later use causing our body to replace the energy it just burned with more stored energy (fat).
If you want to lose weight and decrease body fat, you must remove high fructose corn syrups from your diet. This includes sodas, cereals, pastries, fruit drinks, candy, and sweetened milk products. Be careful with choosing already-made protein shakes as many brands carry more added sugar than actual protein.
2. Cut Starches & Eat More Vegetables:
Too much starch in a meal can spike your blood sugar and cause your pancreas to release a great amount of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that lowers your blood sugar. This dysfunction of quickly raising your blood sugar and dramatically lowering it can cause a pendulum swing that can make you crave more of the same foods that got you there in the first place.
Since starch is essentially a sugar, craving starches can cause you to eat more sugar than you need causing more fat storage to take place. Instead, we should eat more green vegetables to prevent our blood sugar from rising and lower our chances of getting unhealthy cravings. Vegetables are also high in fiber which reduces our appetite and helps make the digestive process easier and faster.
3. Eat More Protein:
Since our body uses sugar as its main source of energy, it’s natural that most people have high-sugar diets.
In order to lose a significant amount of weight, our body must begin to metabolize our stored fat and use it as energy. This cannot take place if we continue to ingest high amounts of sugar with every meal.
When losing weight and changing our body composition, it’s best to fill your plate with mostly protein to help speed up the process. Not only does protein make us feel fuller while suppressing our appetite; but it also helps with building muscle mass.
The more muscle you have, the more energy you burn at rest.
Through exercise, the muscular system breaks down muscle fiber which is then renewed and rebuilt while we sleep at night. If we decrease the amount of sugar and starches we eat throughout the day and replace it with protein, our body can finally use more stored fat as energy to help repair our muscles at night. The more fat reserve we use, the faster we can reach our goals.
Before you begin any exercise program, take a few days to observe your eating habits. Take notes of your diet and decide where exactly you need to make changes. Prepare yourself by writing down simple meal combinations that are easily accessible to you so cravings and guilty pleasures won’t tempt you.
Always remember that is not how much you eat, it is what you’re eating that can prevent you from getting the body you’ve always desired. Don’t starve yourself, especially while working out. Instead, provide your body with the right nutrients it needs to turn into a fat-burning machine and fuel your every workout properly.
