I think we’ve discussed before that weird diets don’t work. Sure, you might lose 10 or 15 lbs on the cabbage diet, then wham, a plateau and you’re stuck. That’s because your body adjusts to your new calorie intake and if it is too low your body shifts into “starvation” mode to keep you from starving to death and you lower your metabolism making you feel crappy and depressed because you aren’t losing weight. You need a diet that makes sense.

Most diets deprive you of something you need to be healthy. That’s why you can’t binge diet. To be healthy you need to:

Drink 80 to 120 oz of water per day

Yes, you can get water from coffee, tea, coke zero, etc, etc, but those other drinks add toxins and sugar that your system will need to fight to eliminate. Drink water. Actually, better yet, drink water with lemon in it. As much lemon as you want, just no sugar. Lemon in your water helps to neutralize your pH because even though lemon juice is acidic it is processed by the body making it a base.

Eat a diverse, well balanced diet 

We’ve heard that line all our lives, but what does that mean?  It means that you should have a protein at every meal.  Eat different proteins, mix it up.  Eat beef or pork for breakfast, chicken for lunch or fish for diner.  Don’t stop there.  Try new stuff.  Eat lots of vegetables.  All colors of vegetables.

Lots of fruit too.  Try eating vegetables or fruit for snacks.  You can almost eat a much as you can hold.  But its important to lower your desire to stuff your self to the gills.  You do that by not eating sugar or carbohydrates high on the GI scale.

Remember, sugar begets more sugar.  Yes, you do need carbs, but make sure they are complex carbohydrates, allowing your body to convert them to energy over a longer time, using more of the energy instead of storing it as fat.  That brings up the “f” word, Fat.  Don’t fear fat.  Eat natural butter, not margarine.  Eat lean meat but don’t worry about that too much.  Eat and use olive oil in cooking and salad dressings.  You get the drift.  We’ll talk more about it as time goes by.

Exercise when you can

Do what you can to exercise.  Take the stairs, walk the dog, etc. Exercise not only burns calories but also raises your metabolism making your body burn more calories even at rest.

Eat healthy foods

Most importantly, when you put something into your body, make sure it’s good for you.  Read the label, if you don’t know what the ingredient is don’t eat it.  Try to make your own food.  Don’t eat out as much.  If you eat packaged or processed food, don’t eat anything that has more than 5 ingredients on the label.

If you drink alcohol

Try to reduce your intake and drink more red wine than any thing else.  If you normally have a drink or two a night, don’t drink on Wednesdays for a couple of months.  You’ll be surprised at the difference.

It used to be thought that alcohol was treated by the body as a carbohydrate.  It isn’t.  When you take a drink, your body gives priority to metabolizing the alcohol first.  So alcohol is really treated like a fat in the body.

“This is because alcohol is oxidised by the body in preference to fat, thus ‘saving’ fat for storage. Therefore, alcohol affects the diet in the same way as an increase in the percentage of fat eaten. This is something to remember in your weight loss quest.” – BYC

 

In Conclusion

So, if you do all five of the things above and you still aren’t losing weight, the only thing left is portion control.  You are now healthy, just not at your ideal weight because of the stored calories in your past.

You only have one option:

1. eat fewer calories than you burn

But you can do that in two ways:

1. eat less

2. exercise more

Here at the Fat Farm we consider these suggestions as a diet that makes sense and recommend tracking your caloric intake at SparkPeople.com

Their online tracking method will tell you the number of calories you need and even calculate the nutrition for you. If you are diabetic they will track your glucose readings among other things.  Ask me how I use it to keep my recipes and normally eaten (grouped) foods charted.

Later – Jughandle