Healthy Weight Loss Tips That You Can Use to Lose Weight

Losing weight can often be confusing, hard work and sometimes dangerous. I say dangerous because there are a lot of diets out there that people do that can damage their bodies. For this reason when dieting you should always be careful and use some common sense.

In this article I will give you some healthy weight loss tips.

1. Always try to eat real foods

There are many diets that promote juicing your foods or only drinking shakes. This is a bad idea, as prolonged dieting in this manner can cause damage to your gums and teeth. Dieters who often follow these juice diets will find themselves bleeding from their gums, due to them not having to use their teeth to chew. Eating real solid food will avoid this problem all together. It will also keep you feeling fuller for longer.

2. Don't cut out fats

A lot of diets are low fat or no fat. This is downright silly and dangerous. Our bodies need dietary fat to survive, without fat in our diets we would die. It is as simple as that. We can survive without carbohydrates and even without protein, but our body needs fat.

Dietary fat regulates many of our hormones. Not eating enough will cause serious problems and can even cause us our mood to feel off. For this reason many diets often make the people doing them feel horrible, therefor you should eat healthy fats in your diet.

3. Healthy food still contain calories

It makes me so angry when I see people who think just because they are eating healthy that they will lose weight. No this is not true. A healthy food or a unhealthy food, they all contain calories. A sweet potato could contain 300 calories while a bar of chocolate could contain 200. The sweet potato maybe more healthy, but it still contains more calories.

Eating more calories than your body needs will cause you to gain weight. It doesn't matter if those calories are from salmon and kale or chocolate and sweets, therefor make sure you are not eating more calories than your body needs otherwise you will end up gaining weight and not losing it.

4. Carbs are not evil

Every dieter seems to think carbs are bad. They are not. Carbs provide energy and each gram of a carbohydrate contains the same amount of calories as protein. I recommend eating carbohydrates such as oats, whole wheat pastas and sweet potatoes to keep you feeling fuller for longer.

5. High protein diets are the best

In my opinion high protein diets are the only way to diet if you're looking to lose weight. High protein diets allow you to make dieting easy. Eating a high protein diet will allow you to feel like your not dieting at all. Quite often I have found myself dieting but feeling too full to eat my next meal, yet I still lose weight this is because the protein takes longer to break down.

The most important reason to eat a high protein diet however is because it allows you to keep your muscle mass while losing fat. This is very important if you want to look good while losing weight. Too often I see people who lose both muscle and fat and are not happy with the way they look after dieting because they simply don't look right. The reason for this is that muscle gives you the fit athletic look, the more you have the better you will look.

Conclusion

Dieting can be hard if you don't know where to start, but it does not have to be.

By Michael Smalling

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Healthy Eating: An Easy Guide To Portion Control

Most of us don’t know what an appropriate portion should look like and, following today’s article in the BBC, we’re under-reporting the amount of calories we eat by almost one-third. Apart from the 80g portion of fruit and vegetables we should eat a day, there are no official UK guidelines on portion sizes. With this in mind, here is my easy guide for understanding portion sizes and it’s based on a simple tool - your hand!

1) Carbohydrates

When it comes to starchy carbohydrate foods including potatoes, uncooked rice or pasta, a healthy serving should be equal to the size of your fist. A chapatti, pitta, naan or large slice of bread should equate to your outstretched hand and cereal should be the serving of a cupped hand.

2) Vegetables

For a serving of vegetables, you should aim for a minimum of two cupped hands, although more is even better. If you’re feeling hungry at meal times, eating a large portion of vegetables is an excellent choice as, not only are they packed full of vitamins and minerals, they’re also full of fibre which will help to keep you feeling fuller for longer.

3) Meat

Use the palm of your hand as a measure for eating meat. Remember lean meats such as chicken and turkey are lower in saturated fat and calories and are good options if you’re trying to lose weight. For red meat, trim off any access fat you can see and limit your intake to once a week. Processed meats such as bacon, sausages or burgers should only be eaten as a treat, as they’re high in saturated fat.

4) Fish

Sustainably sourced white and oily fish should be the size of your whole hand and you should aim to eat oily fish once a week. Rich in omega - 3, oily fish is great for heart health and supports healthy development of your baby during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Examples of oily fish include mackerel, trout, herring and sardines.

5) Fruit and Nuts

Healthy snacks between meals such as fruit should equate to the size of your fist. If you’re eating dried fruit, it’s important to remember the portion is a small handful. Nuts are packed with healthy oils, protein and fibre and are an excellent choice as a snack. As they are high in calories, be mindful of portion size. You should aim for a small handful.

6) Dips, Spreads & Oils

Use the tip of your thumb (from knuckle to nail) for high calorie fat foods such as butter, oil or mayonnaise. The length and depth of two thumbs should be the guide for high protein option such as cheese.

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