You get back from your body what you put into it. This is why you must eat a healthy diet. While it’s okay to cheat a bit every so often, your day-to-day eating should consist of good food choices.
Waiting until you need to lose weight for a vacation or a photoshoot will necessitate a structured diet plan. So, will shedding excess pounds if you’re overweight. A lot of these diets can be quite complicated, making them difficult to follow.
However, there are ways to simplify your diet, lose weight, and remain healthy:
1. Raw and whole
The simplest foods are raw and whole fruits and vegetables. Without having been cooked, processed, or packaged, these foods retain the maximum nutritional value. Eating these foods also simplifies your diet. There are no lists of ingredients to scrutinize and calorie intakes to calculate.
How to do it:
- Cut up vegetables like carrots to eat with meals.
- Use fresh fruit and vegetables to make nutritious smoothies.
- Keep a supply of unsalted, unprocessed nuts with you to use as snacks.
2. Kickstart the process
If you want to start losing weight, the best way to start is with a brief diet. Staying on a diet indefinitely gets quite depressing and is likely to result in cheating. Check out different options that will kickstart your weight loss program. These programs get you on the right track in terms of cutting down on unhealthy foods and replacing them with better food choices.
Since these diets are of short duration, remembering the meal plans is easy. There’s no need to consult the diet guidelines all the time.
How to do it:
- Familiarize yourself with the diet and follow it for its duration.
- Don’t try to continue with this diet permanently. It is a short-term diet for a reason. Your body might not be able to cope if you choose to stay on the diet long-term.
- Afterward, you’ll have to introduce some more calories to your diet. Most plans offer suggestions for long-term eating while maintaining your weight loss. Don’t be tempted to binge as you’ll regain all the weight you’ve just lost.
3. Shorten the ingredients list
One of the biggest problems during dieting is keeping track of all the ingredients in the foods you buy. Some might be allowable for your diet, while others might not. This is often the case when it comes to processed foods. It can make shopping a frustrating process of reading long ingredients lists and eliminating certain choices.
How to do it:
- Buy products with shorter ingredients lists where the ingredients comply with the requirements of your diet.
- Make most of your food from scratch without processed products so that you know exactly what is in them.
- Fresh produce has no list of ingredients to worry about, so include lots of it in your diet.
4. Incorporate exercise
Too often, people become so obsessed with what they’re eating, that they forget the most important component of dieting, which is exercising. No amount of healthy eating is going to be fully effective as part of a weight loss program in isolation. The same can be said for exercise. It is most effective when combined with a healthy diet.
How to do it:
- Set up an exercise plan that suits your needs.
- Bear in mind that your exercise program needs to fit into your life, so be realistic about times and what you plan to do.
- Don’t compare your exercise program to that of others. Exercise within the limits of what your body can do but challenge yourself to do more where possible.