Diet is of paramount importance to weight loss. You are what you eat. If you eat junk food you will not have a healthy body, if you eat well you will be healthier, you’ll feel better and you will find it easier to lose weight.
One of the greatest ways to start your day right has been eating fruit such as strawberries. Bananas too, they will not only give you the potassium which you are required to maintain proper energy function, but can reduce your problems with cramps. This goes a long way in maximizing your workouts and weight loss program.
Fruit and veg like these are low in calories and high in fibre. They also have lots of vitamins and minerals.
Some research has shown that we will eat the same weight of food every day regardless of the calories content of the food, so make sure what you eat is the right type of food.
You should aim for five to six servings of fresh fruit each day. Make sure you get a good mix in. One portion is equivalent to about 80g. This is equivalent to one apple or two satsumas.
One great way to help jump-start your weight loss diet is to increase the amount of high fiber foods you consume. A diet high in fiber can help the body feel fuller on fewer calories, helping you to lose weight more efficiently.
You will need to eat a lot of cereal including oatmeal, tuna on wheat with a little mayonnaise, fish, grains, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables. For your oatmeal add some honey and cinnamon for taste. Use skim milk with your cereal. You can eat small amounts of the cereal high in sugar.
Fiber is a type of carbohydrate found in plants that humans actually cannot digest because we lack the enzyme. This will help us feel fuller while eating less.
Fibre also helps feed the friendly bacteria living inside us. This also helps support our cardiovascular health and the fibre helps keep things moving in our digestive tracts.
So, How much fibre should we eat? Women from 19-50 years old should get 25-28 grams daily and men from 19-50 years old should get 30-34 grams each day.
Some good high fibre foods include Bran Cereal, beans like French beans, Raspberries, lentils and chickpeas.
You will be able to find good high-fibre goods in your local supermarket.
Starch is a carbohydrate, it is a kind of sugar. Sugars are made up of simple carbohydrates that are just one or two sugar molecules linked together, whereas starch is a complex carbohydrate, there are many, hundreds to thousands, of sugar molecules linked together. Starch is digestible whereas fibre is not.
You will find starch in some plant based foods like breads, cereals, fruits, rice and many vegetables.
We often hear that we must avoid carbohydrates if we are to lose weight, but not all carbohydrates are equal. Sugary foods and highly processed foods with added sugar will have you put on weight, but some starchy foods could be good for you.
Starches can be good if you want to lose weight because they are low in cholesterol and saturated fats, also fewer calories from these foods are stored as fat in our bodies because far fewer calories are needed to digest these starches.
So, the main benefit of these starchy foods is that they will provide your body with plenty of energy while not making your body store fat.
Avoid caffeinated drinks like tea, coffee, soda pop. These beverages drain energy by flooding your body with stress hormones such as cortisol, which wears down your brain as well as other crucial organs and body systems. They make it more difficult for vegetarians to lose weight.
In the short term caffeine could boost the metabolic rate and increase fat burning because it is a stimulant, but after some time you’ll become tolerant to its effects and it will stop working like that.
Over the long term coffee will stop helping you expend calories.