From the category archives:

Diets

Weight Loss tips – Are You Eating Enough Lean Protein

by Lorna

One of the easiest ways to help control your appetite when trying to lose weight is to make sure you’re eating enough lean protein. Your body takes more time to digest protein than carbs, which means you feel fuller for longer and hence don’t get the cravings or hunger pangs. Protein can also help to boost your metabolism, which means you’ll burn more calories.

Here’s some weight loss tips on how to choose lean protein for your diet:

Fish - this is one of the leanest and healthiest sources of protein we can get. It is low in bad fats (like saturated fat) but good sources of essential omega fats. Salmon in particular is very high in omega 3 fatty acids.

Chicken and Turkey – these are both quality lean protein sources but try to choose the white parts of the meat instead of the darker sections. You do need to make sure you remove any skin before eating it though as that’s where the saturated fats lie.

Beef - you can still eat beef when trying to lose weight, just restrict your beef based meals to once a week. Always cut off any visible fat from the meat or choose lean or extra lean cuts.

Eggs – there has been a lot of bad press about eggs and their relation to cholesterol, but eggs should definitely be part of your healthy diet. Egg whites are very high in good quality protein, and the yokes are a good source of omega fatty acids. I love an omelette for breakfast with loads of mushrooms, peppers and tomatoes fried up in a little olive oil.

Dairy products – I know milk based products are a good source of protein but personally I prefer to keep diary out of my diet completely. It’s not natural for cows to be producing milk day in day out, and the way the farmers manage to achieve this is by adding hormones to their food. These hormones remain in the milk and have a negative effect on our health and encourage our bodies to gain weight. Have a look at notmilk.com for the full story.

Lentils, Peas and Beans – these are just for vegetarians you know! There are very good source of high quality protein and have the added benefit of providing plenty of fiber for your diet. Protein and fiber together will really help you feel full between meals and therefore help prevent overeating.

{ 0 comments }

The Best Way To Lose Weight – Don’t Starve Yourself

by Lorna

I’m pretty sure that I’ve said this several times already, but it’s so important that it’s worth re-emphasizing several times over – the best way to lose weight is to eat regular healthy meals and to not starve yourself.

When you restrict your food intake, or effectively start to starve your body, your metabolism slows right down and your body will soon go in to “starvation mode”. Once your metabolism slows down, your body is unable to burn calories as effectively as it should be able to, which ultimately means your weight loss slows right down or may even grind to a halt.

What happens then is that your body begins to feed off itself for the nutrition it needs, which means it starts digesting your muscles more than your fat reserves (muscles hold more nutrients than fat, which is why these get “eaten” as well as your stored fat).

Any weight that you do lose while you’re starving your body will sure enough come right back once you start eating properly again. The main reason for this is that your body will still be in starvation mode, so will just store everything that you eat as fat simply because it thinks this may be the last nutrition it gets for a while.

If you continue to eat a normal diet with regular meals only then will your body come out of starvation mode and start to properly digest the food you eat.

So the best way to lose weight is not to starve yourself, but to eat regular meals – the best option is to eat 4 or 5 smaller meals throughout the day so that you keep your metabolism high. Your body gets used to regular and frequent meals so actually switches into overdrive, burning off more calories because it knows it doesn’t need to store any.

{ 2 comments }

Protein Diet Tips – Are You Eating Healthy Protein

January 25, 2010

If you’ve read any amount of weight loss tips in the past, you already know that making sure you eat enough quality protein is critical to maintaining long term weight loss. The reason being good quality high protein foods help keep you feeling fuller for longer and therefore less likely to reach for junk and [...]

Read the full article →

Weight Loss Diets For New Year

January 5, 2010

New year is a popular time for starting a weight loss diet as losing weight is usually new the top of people’s new years resolutions. The problem is knowing who to listen to when it comes to deciding on which weight loss diet you’re going to follow – if any. A couple of ads I’ve [...]

Read the full article →

Why Crash Weight Loss Diets Don’t Work

December 23, 2009

When you start any kind of restrictive or crash weight loss diet, you are restricting the calories you eat and consequently eating less food than your body needs. Your body’s natural reaction is to reduce or slow down your metabolic rate. This then means that any weight that you do lose is largely made up [...]

Read the full article →

Why I Like The Raw Food Diet

December 22, 2009

Like a lot of us, George was eating too much of the wrong food and not enough healthy food. He liked a drink and didn’t really get as much exercise as he should either. (Sounds a bit like the old me of a few years back!) He was a bartender, which didn’t really help with [...]

Read the full article →