There are so many schools of thought on how we should eat our foods for weight loss and health benefits and some seem better, and even 'less crazy' than others. In the past 15 years, I have researched and explored many different ways of eating and, if followed correctly, you WILL lose weight on pretty much any 'diet' that you try (so long as it is not a programme for weight GAIN of course!) because they do actually work. The trouble is, most of us don't want to spend our whole lives following strict and often confusing guidelines just so that we can stay trim. So what happens? We lose a bit of weight, then, after a short while, we first start 'bending the rules' a bit, and we probably get away with it too. So then we start bending them a bit more... and suddenly BAM! We're not getting away with it anymore! We've BLOWN IT! Right here is where most people throw in the towel, they've blown it, the diet doesn't work (or worse still they think they don't work) but you and I both know this is not the case at all.
The diet DOES work and you are not a failure. The diet was restricting you too much and you could not sustain it and you are in the MAJORITY on this. So what can you do instead.
Well, the first thing you need to be doing is changing your attitude to weight loss and healthy living. Okay, so when you have an event or vacation coming up and you want to shed a few pounds, maybe a strict diet is perfect for you, you can lose the weight, look good on the day, and then go back to eating how you did before. This can work because you have a definate deadline and an end to the restriction is in sight. If however, your goal is to lose weight in the long term then a different approach is required.
Everybody wants to lose the weight overnight, but I'll bet you didn't gain that 20lbs in a day so how can you expect to lose it so quickly? Unless you're having some kind of fat removing surgery it just isn't going to happen. Instead you need to make changes to your daily habits. Changes that will move you day by day towards the body you really want to be living in. Simple acts like moving a little more than you did yesterday, getting out for a walk, getting a glass of water instead of a sugary drink or snack etc. Just these simple changes will make a difference to your health and body weight. And what about your eating...
So, you don't want a diet that is going to restrict you dramatically for your whole life but you do want to lose weight and have a healthy body long term. Okay then, so here's what you need to do.
Think about all the traffic on the roads. Some of it is large and slow, some of it is small and fast and some of it is somewhere in between. If there was a tunnel in the road and someone decided to let all the large slow traffic through in front of the small fast traffic, the small traffic which could have moved through easily is now being held up. They have to now crawl along behind the large vehicles and the result is not good. They have almost run out of fuel because they use it up more quickly, so the tunnel is now filled with extra pollution and, when the small traffic finally gets out of the tunnel, it has little left to give! Stay with me here...
The food you put in your body is the traffic. Some of it moves through your system very quickly and some takes a very long time. If you eat a chicken dinner and follow it up with a fruit salad, you have just created the same traffic jam as described above. The fruit digests in 30-60 minutes whereas the chicken will take several hours. Unfortunately, there is no 'overtaking lane' in your digestive system so, after the fruit has been through the first part of the digestion process in the stomach, it has to stay there along with the chicken for another 3 HOURS waiting to move on through. Eeeuuww! I'll bet that's not pretty and it's certainly not good for your digestion. If you had eaten the fruit 30 minutes before your chicken, it would have been digested and moved along, so your digestive system is not put under strain and your body gets the maximum nutritional benefits too.
We hear all about diets that focus primarily on eating certain food groups and avoiding others, such as High Protein diets but it's not the lack of carbohydrates that brings about the weight loss entirely, it's that the proteins do keep you feeling fuller for longer AND that you are not combining food groups at the same sitting, thus allowing the foods to be digested correctly. So on a high protein diet, you are apparently not hindering your digestive processes (although I must question why 'laxatives' are so often required on this type of diet? Surely the blockages that occur are not natural and demonstrate quite clearly that we must consume a diet that is balanced, even if not all at the same sitting!) but you are also likely to consume quite a low number of calories due to the length of time it takes for the food to move along so that you feel ready to eat once again.
So, the simple rules to follow are:
DO NOT consume meat, fats or other animal products along with high carbohydrate foods such as rice, potatoes etc. As a basic rule of thumb, if it comes from an animal, don't eat it with something starchy that comes from a plant. Regular vegetables such as greens, carrots etc are fine to consume with either food group.
ONLY consume fruit BEFORE meals or at least 4 hours AFTER or you will clog up the system.
Drink plenty of water, but preferably away from meal times or you will be diluting the enzymes needed for proper digestion.
By eating in this way, you will find that your digestion starts to improve, you feel less sluggish after meals and that, as long as you exercise sensible portion control too, you will lose weight. I dare say that you could eat quite a bit of food and still lose weight so long as you keep the food groups separate but you will see much better results if you manage portion control too.
A sample day could look like this:
7am: Starchy cereal for breakfast, such as porridge, museli, low sugar granola bar etc.
11am: Fruit
1pm: Lunch of Meat or Fish with salad or veg but no starchy carbohydrates (potato, rice etc)
5pm: Dinner of Vegetable stir fry with rice or noodles
9pm: Hot Milky drink.
Use your imagination, these are just your guidelines.
Good luck to you! You can do it!
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