By definition, a diet is any severe restriction of food or calories that’s temporary. Most conventional diets call for severe calorie restrictions. They essentially starve the body of necessary nutrients by severely limiting the amount of calories you consume.
Unrealistic calorie restrictive diets:
Make you lose muscle because when your body goes into starvation mode, it draws its energy from muscle since it is an active tissue.
Slows down your metabolism because your body is responding to the lack of calories. When you eat less, your body burns less. They key to weight loss is not to restrict your food intake, but to create a full functioning metabolism. When I say restrict food intake, I mean restrict healthy foods, not junkfood.
Restrictive diets increase cravings
They decrease energy which will keep you from getting exercise
Change the way you view losing weight. The first and the most important strategy to effective weight loss is to change your mind set of temporary weight loss to permanent weight loss. Think about all the times you’ve heard people around you saying they were “going on a diet to lose weight”. The very phrase “going on a diet” implies a temporary solution at which point they will have to “go off the diet”. This will not work. Losing fat and keeping it off can only be achieved by adopting new exercise and good nutritional habits that will stay with you for the rest of your life. By replacing bad habits with good habits and not trying to overcome the bad habits by going “cold turkey” will yield the most desirable results. At first, new habits will seem a little strange and uncomfortable but after a few weeks they’ll become second nature. Adopting new eating and exercise habits will be the number one factor in your success at weight loss.
You need to have "negative" calories or slight calorie deficit. This means that you must be consuming less calories needed to sustain your current body weight. The Way I figured what my calorie goal should be is I took the weight I wanted to be, and multiplied it by 11. That is my calorie limit.
It’s important that you want to keep lean muscle tissue, therefore, try to keep your weightloss to 1-2 pounds per week. Anymore than that will be coming from muscle loss, bone density loss and water loss; not fat.
Remember that you should never drop below 1200 calories per day. Anything less will put your body into starvation mode and you will be depriving your body of essential nutrients required to sustain good health. Some experts believe that you should never go below 1,000 calories of your base caloric intake.
While cutting calories alone will help you lose weight, it is very important to incorporate exercise into your program. Exercise, mainly aerobic exercises, will burn the optimal amount of calories. Fat is only used as fuel so long as oxygen in present in the body. The only way to get oxygen into your body is through continuous exercise. By doing cardiovascular exercise for 20 minutes or more, you are filling your body up with oxygen. This in turn, will trigger the body to start using it’s body fat as a source of energy.
Take good care of your muscles. Muscle will always be your number one metabolic fat burning machine. Your goal is to build and maintain as much lean muscle tissue as possible. Since muscle is a very active tissue, it will aid in burning fat because it will always be used in just about any activity or exercise you do. The more of it you have, the more fat you will burn. This is why it is so important to include resistance exercises such as weight training or Tae Bo workouts that use resistance bands.
Never skip or skimp on breakfast. Studies show you can lose 7 years off your life span for skipping breakfast and that by skipping it, your metabolism never gets burning to burn the food you eat later in the day. I make breakfast my biggest meal, lunch my second biggest and then eat a very light dinner. I also stop eating after 8pm because not only does this help your metabolism, but it gives your pancreas a rest during the night.
Track your food. Use a free online program like www.sparkpeople.com to track what you eat. It was so shocking to see what I was eating in not only calories and fat, but in sodium. It really trained me to make better choices in food and stay within my goals.
You can eat all junkfood and stay within your calorie and fat goals, but if it is high efficiency foods like chips, cookies, French fries, etc, then it will still turn to body fat. Low efficiency foods like whole grains, fruits, veggies and lean meats will turn to energy.
If you plateau in your weight loss, change things up. I always keep my body guessing. Some days I eat a little under my goals, some days I eat a little over. Try new foods. I might exercise in the morning one day and at night the next. Try different types of exercise. Go running one day, do Tae Bo the next, do swimming the next, lift weights the next. As long as your body never knows what is coming, you won’t plateau.
When you are feeling hungry, eat protein, when you are feeling tired, eat carbs. Balance your food out so you won’t experience either. For example, let's say I had a choice of donuts or an English muffin. Had I chosen the donuts, 2 chocolate cream filled donuts and two coffees with cream/sugar would have been close to 1000 calories and 20g of fat. ¾ of my calories and ½ my fat for the day and because it was all fat and bad carbs, I would have been hungry an hour later. Instead, I choose a whole grain English muffin with jam and milk for about 300 calories and 2g of fat and the balance of the good carbs and the protein kept me full until lunch!
Don't forget to drink your water! You hear this all the time, but there is a reason why. If you don't keep yourself hydrated, you will bring on all kinds of problems to your health. One of them being retaining water which can put the pounds on you. Divide your current weight in half and that is how many ounces you should be drinking each day. I carry a 1/2 gallon bottle of water around with me all day and that way I can monitor how much I am getting. If you dislike water, find ways to make it more appealing like adding lemon or lime to it, crushed ice or some even put things like cucumbers and grapefruit in it! Change your view on water just like you need to change your view about exercising. It should be as standard as taking a shower each day.
Again, I want to stress that I am not a nutritionist, dietician or doctor and therefore it is always best to discuss these topics with them. This is the wisdom the Lord has given me and I am sharing it with you. It is what I believe to be true and work based on His wisdom and the research I have done. Learning to eat right is the most important thing you can teach yourself to do as it will give you lifetime results.
