There is no question that losing weight is hard. Not hard as in strenuously difficult but hard in the sense of commitment. It takes a strong desire to lose weight and keep it off. If it were easy everyone would be thin and healthy. The hard part doesn't come because of the slow results, but when some people hit those plateaus where they seem to only lose about a half a pound in a given week. We all have those weeks, and those that can persevere through them are the ones that will be successful.
Today I want to talk about the nutrition program you should be on if you want to maintain positive results in your weight loss program. You do not have to starve yourself, in fact you actually need to eat more. You just need to eat more of the right foods in order to lose weight and keep it off.
It is a lot more simple than you think, the difficulty comes in is trying to stick to it as we all know can be trying at times with a busy lifestyle.
The first thing you need to do is understand that you must eat six meals each day. That means you will eat one meal every two and a half to three hours each and every day. You might think, “wow that is a lot of food”, or “I just do not have the time to prepare size meals”, and that is fine because we are all in the same boat. You overcome this by preparing your meals in advance. In other words the night before or even every Sunday night, lets say, you make up all of your meals for the next day or the entire week. Then you take your meals with you to work or school or where ever you are going. This process will help you get by this and keep you moving forward.
The next thing you need to know is what foods to eat. Very simply put you need equal portions of protein, carbohydrates and green veggies with every serving. Good proteins would be baked or grilled chicken breast or lean meats, egg whites, egg substitutes, cottage cheese, tuna and other fish.
Your carbohydrates need to come from good sources also as they can be the leading factor as to why you may be gaining weight. For example, switch to a multi-grain bread instead of white bread, eat yams instead of white potatoes, brown rice instead of white rice. You should also take in two servings of fruits throughout the day as your source of carbohydrates. Fruit is high fructose which is sugary carbohydrate, however fruits have a lot of vitamins that your body needs.
In what to eat make sure you get plenty of green veggies with every serving, such as spinach, broccoli, and asparagus and so on. Obviously you will need to find the foods that you like the most. Then go ahead and prepare them in advance so they are ready, waiting for you to heat them in the microwave.
Finally how much should you eat of each food category? As a rule of thumb each portion size should be the same size as your clenched fist. This takes out the guess work and cumbersome measurement process. You can however eat as much green veggies as you would like if you still feel hungry at the end of a meal.
So there you have it, there is your formula for weight loss success, getting through those plateaus, and giving your body the ability to shed that extra weight almost effortlessly.
