Healthy eating habits help you lose weight safely

If you want to lose weight and the fat from your body you need to earn it. There is no medication that can melt the fat from your body. You just have to work towards it. Get into the habit of eating five or six times a day, small but frequent. This could make your body lean and well sculpted. This habit is so basic and easy. Your metabolism gets boosted and also your body’s ability to burn calories.

Divide your waking exercise into 6 parts of 2 ½ to 3 hours each day. Have a meal in each of these parts, so that you are not too full. If after three hours you do not feel hungry enough, it means that your last meal was more than you needed. Adjust the intake. The total number of calories that you consume during all these 6 meals should be the same as what you would normally consume during a day when you were eating three meals.

For each meal see that you eat a carbohydrate that is complex, a lean protein, some vegetables or salads and whatever fats that are necessary for a meal.

Adding protein with your carbohydrates ensures that the digestion takes a little longer and could help you to spread out your meals properly as you would not feel hungry in a short time. If you only eat carbohydrates, they get digested quickly and cause the level of insulin to shoot up. The thermic effect of food is caused by the body requiring more calories to digest protein. That is why a protein has to be part of every meal.

If you follow a low caloric diet, it is likely in the initial stage that you would lose a lot of weight, but these results stop showing after a time even though you continue with your diet. This is because the body is now used to fewer calories and has already adjusted to the low calorie diet regime.

When you reach this stage where you stop losing weight, it is actually only your body protesting the starvation that it is being subjected to. So do not make the big mistake of reducing your diet calories in order to lose further weight.

How does your body react under these circumstances? Your glands increase production of hormones and enzymes that stores fat, and reduce those hormones and enzymes that decrease the burning of fat. It is simple to understand that the present store of fat in the body is adequate for whatever calories that it is receiving in your low calorie diet regime. So what’s actually happening is that, your metabolism slows down and thus burns fewer calories. It would be better for you if you can stop this from happening.

Calorie cycling is the strategy that you should first adapt. The fundamental way to lose weight is by reducing your calories, while you continue your normal life and burn the same amount of it. This would burn more calories than you are consuming, thus causing you to lose weight. Never reduce your calorie intake drastically if you want to avoid health problems. A reduction of 15 to 20 percent is highly recommended.

In calorie cycling, you should have a less calorie diet for the first three days and on the fourth day you can go back to a calorie intake that is necessary for your activities, and you would just about to maintain your weight. This cycle has then to be repeated.

This allows the body to think that you are not starving it, and it does not need to adjust the hormonal balance to cater to any starvation diet. By increasing your calorie intake every fourth day you would also increase your energy level and have the mental satisfaction that you are not depriving yourself.

Carbohydrate cycling is the next step that follows calorie cycling. When you reduce your calories, reduce it entirely from the carbohydrate part of your diet. Try and limit this to 15 percent, so that it is not too drastic.

We would not term this as a low carb diet because the nominal reduction of 15 percent is very small and would anyway get back to a normal level on the fourth day of the cycle. This replenishes the glycogen in your muscles and gives you enough strength and energy for you to work out as usual.

You now need to get your body used to reduce your calorie intake that you used to have in your meals in the later part of the day. This is called calorie tapering. For this, you need to ensure that as you have each of the 6 meals that your body is now used to, you reduce the calorie intake in each subsequent meal. Maintain a calorie intake of 400 calories for the first two meals; reduce it to 300 for the next two and 200 for the last two.

A very good way of calorie tapering is to eat starchy carbohydrates in you first few meals, (oatmeal, brown rice, sweet potatoes) and for the other meals, have your carbohydrates in the form of more fibrous vegetables. As starchy carbohydrates contain more calories, you would have enough energy to get through the day, and in the later part of the day when you require less energy, the vegetables should give you sufficient calories.

All these strategies suggested would not allow you to lose weight very quickly. By planning your meals in advance and using nutritious and natural foods in a number of small portions throughout the day, your well planned meals will give you results that you were hoping for. Change your lifestyle that will able you to eat small meals throughout the day as a part of your normal routine. Your health will improve and you will find that you can easily resist any desire to go on a spree of indulging yourself.

Correct nutrition has to be a part of your battle against weight. You also need to include in your life a regular regime of weight training, cardio and need to make all this as a part of your life that your mind will always crave for it.

After all your body can only go as far as the mind decides how far it should go. So change your way of thinking before you change your way of eating.