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What is effective weight loss? Effective weight loss means losing weight and keeping it off. It doesn’t mean fad diets or crash diets that drop 5-10 pounds in an unhealthy manner in a short period of time. Examples would include any exclusive food diet (only eat melons for example) or any liquid diet or any diet that makes you starve yourself (less than 1500 calories per day). A low calorie diet program is fine if the change you are making in your eating habits is to permanently eat smaller portions that contain fewer calories.
Effective weight loss in a low calorie diet program means eating a good balance of foods from the basic food groups so that your nutritional requirements are being met by the foods you are eating. If you feel you are missing any of your nutritional requirements, look into vitamin supplements. Just be careful here that you don’t get lulled into taking anything more than just a general multivitamin.
Effective weight loss in a low calorie diet program means eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Try to minimize the amount of cooking you do to your fresh foods, every method (even steaming) extracts vital nutrients from the food and decreases it’s value to you. Avoid canned foods if you can, besides the BPA issues currently in the news, canned foods are processed and subjected to extremely high temperatures, instantly decreasing their nutritional value.
Effective weight loss in a low calorie diet program means planning out your meals several days before shopping for the items and preparing them. This serves two purposes. The first purpose is to make you think through what you are going to eat so you can be sure to include plenty of good food and food that you will have to prepare (if needed) based on your schedule for the days ahead. The second purpose is to allow you to have a list of items so that when you go to the grocery store, you stick to that list of items and don’t buy impulse items.
Effective weight loss is about moderation and self control. To have good self control you need to be in touch with yourself and truly know what makes you tick. Have a candid conversation with yourself and decide if there are contributing factors to your current health condition. Are you stressed about losing a job? Are you just coming off a bad breakup? Have you recently lost a loved one? You need to accept these things and put these things in the past. Part of the human condition is unfortunate or sad events, surviving requires moving on. Moderation means only having one slice of pizza instead of three or four. It also means sometimes leaving food on your plate (naturally you want to avoid this if possible by ordering or serving smaller portions to begin with). Self control comes in not joining in the rest of the group when they have a piece of cake in the middle of the afternoon. It also means being able to go out for a few drinks and only having one drink and not helping yourself to any appetizers that might be brought to your table.
Effective weight loss in a low calorie diet program is all about being able and willing to commit to permanently changing your eating habits. This includes eating a good balance from all of the foods groups with emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables. Staying away from as much processed foods as you can (anything from a can or box – and you would be surprise how much restaurant food starts from a can). Effective weight loss in a low calorie diet program is about planning your meals out ahead of time and having good self control when deciding on what to eat and what size a portion you have to eat. Healthy eating!
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