One of the best ways to ensure healthy living and correct body weight is a balanced diet. While going on a diet, it is essential to have a balanced diet to attain weight loss. A simple splurge can set you off track towards unhealthy and rapid weight gain. While dieting, it is wise to choose foods that help you shape up and slim down, while not adversely affecting your health. The daily food consumption should be combined with physical exercise to achieve considerable weight loss. If you stop exercising, you are likely to gain more weight. Given here are some dos and don’ts of dieting providing you with the right information to help you in your weight loss treatment. Read on further to know more about them.
Dieting Dos And Don’ts
Dieting Dos
- Be sure to get at least 1400-1500 calories per day to get all the necessary nutrients.
- Listen to your body. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full.
- Include fiber in your diet to allow your body to get adjusted to the new level. Vegetables, fruits and beans are great sources of fiber.
- Lentils and starchy beans such as navy beans, kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans and garbanzo beans contain proteins and fiber in impressive amounts. Thus, include them in soups and salads or as a side dish instead of rice and pasta.
- Consume raw vegetables on a daily basis as they are good source of rich phyto-nutrients, vitamins and minerals. It is best to take raw, freshly made vegetable juice.
- Add a quarter-cup serving of nuts in your diet. They can be pistachios, almonds, cashews, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts or pecans. They are rich in fats and proteins. Take care not to overdo them. You can use them in salads too.
- Eat fish at least twice a week to get the maximum proteins. Avoid fried fish.
- Stock up your kitchen with foods like fat-free milk, cheese, yoghurt, white meat chicken, peas and dry beans.
- Include exercise in your diet routine with more steps each day. Strength training help increase lean muscle mass which further speeds up the metabolism.
- You can opt for enjoyable physical activities like dancing, skipping rope or rollerblades.
Dieting Don’ts
- Avoid all kinds of bread unless it is certified and authenticated whole-grain bread. If required, take only one or two slices per day.
- Avoid all sodas including diet sodas too.
- All commercial cereals that contain more than five grams of sugar should be put down.
- Cut down packaged cookies, cakes, pies, crackers and desserts in your diet to prevent yourself from harmless-sounding components like sugar and hydrogenated fat.
- Do not eat standing up or strolling down the street. When you take your meals while seated, your brain does not associate other places with food and the cascade of bodily signals that stimulate appetite is activated less frequently.
- Do not eat in a dimly lit room as this makes people consume more calories. Low light does not let you see your food well which in turn causes you to lose track of how much you are eating.
- Do not miss out sleep as sleep deprivation produces more ghrelin, a hormone that makes you hungry; and less leptin, a hormone that increases satiety.