Why Weight

The Elements of a Healthy Diet

By Marie Watson


With so many fad diets today, dieters are often at a loss when it comes to knowing what is healthy and what isn't. Not only that, the advertisements lure people in with promises of overnight success, and for those who have failed at every possible diet, they are willing to try anything. The key to success does not revolve around losing weight quickly but of changing your lifestyle so that your weight loss will be permanent.

Avoid Diets with Special Foods

It may seem simpler to choose a program where you buy the food such as NutriSystem or MediFast, and although these programs may work to help you lose weight, unless you are very structured, you will gain the weight back after you reach your goal weight. The reason this happens is because you are not learning to change your lifestyle with the foods you eat. The portions are pre-measured for you, thus when you go back to eating real food, you don't have an idea how to cook the food and how to develop portion control in the foods you eat.

Diets that Eliminate Foods Groups Are Unhealthy

Many diet programs including that of the Atkins Diet place their emphasis on eliminating entire food groups at least during the early weeks of their programs. In addition, these programs tend to severely limit carbohydrates, the energy foods we need in order to be able to function during our waking hours. Although any healthy diet, even for weight maintenance, should restrict simple carbohydrates, reducing all carbohydrates is not a healthy practice. Simple carbohydrates such as white rice, pasta, white bread, bleached flour, and white bread can be replaced with whole grain varieties that do not turn into sugar when you consume them.

Quick Weight Loss Programs Do Not Promote Permanent Weight Loss

Despite the claims of many fad diets, losing ten pounds in less than thirty days is not going to help you keep the weight off. Remember, the key to permanent weight loss is changing your lifestyle, and that includes not only the way you eat but your activity level. Reducing your caloric intake to fewer than 1,000 calories a day will certainly help you lose weight, but it will not teach you how to keep the weight from returning. Permanent weight loss involves learning how to control the portions you eat as well as the kinds of foods you eat as well as establishing an activity level that keeps your metabolism working efficiently.

Choose a Healthy Diet that Incorporates Portion Control and Lifestyle Changes

The best way to lose weight is to learn how to control the amount of food you eat and choose healthy foods. That means choosing healthy snacks such as raw vegetables and fresh fruit instead of cakes, cookies, and other sweets. That doesn't mean you can never have those things again, but by making lifestyle changes while you are losing weight, you will learn to enjoy them more by eating them less. Programs such as Weight Watchers show you how to incorporate your favourite foods into your diet program so that you can lose weight without depriving yourself of your favourite foods.

When you deprive yourself of your favourite foods as you do on some diet programs you will quickly become frustrated, especially if you have a good amount of weight to lose. When you are able to have your favourites in smaller quantities, you will have a better chance of continuing to your goal. In addition, a program that includes healthy foods from all the food groups will provide you with the essential nutrients you need in order to remain healthy.

Marie Watson writes weight loss, diet plan, health, beauty and general well-being articles for the Slim Eazy website at http://www.slimeazy.com/
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posted by Cheryl Levesque @ 11:23 AM