Eat a healthy, balanced diet, that contains a mixture of carbohydrates, protein, fiber and fat. Make sure you consume less calories that your body needs and you will lose weight. It really is that SIMPLE. You don't need to exclude food groups, there are no bad foods, just too much food.
You could lose weight if you ate nothing but chocolate, but at 540 calories per 100g, you wouldn't be able to eat much. Ok so the chocolate example wasn't brilliant as you wouldn't end up feeling great due to the lack of macro-nutrients, but it is possible. Your body sees food as fuel; carbs, protein and fat all get broken down into glucose. If you consume too much food, your body stores it as fat. When you don't eat enough food, your body metabolises the stored fat to produce glucose. The reason I said at the start about a balanced diet is that the different food types are broken down at different rates. Fruit and carbs are broken down easily, proteins and fats take longer. If your whole meal is turned to glucose quickly, your blood sugar increases and your pancreas pumps out insulin to tell your body to store the glucose as fat, to bring your blood sugar down. Eating a balanced diet makes sure your body has a constant source of fuel over a longer period of time, no sugar spike, no fat stored.
The reason the fad diets work is that behind all their rules, you are reducing the amount of calories you eat. The eating plan rules or strange eating habits have a placebo effect, tricking you into thinking that, because you are eating differently, you are being good and losing weight. In reality you are just setting yourself up to fail. There are two reasons why fad diets don't work in the long run, firstly they are either difficult to maintain or the food is just unpalatable. Secondly you don't learn to eat healthy food, so when you reach your desired weight or lose the will to continue, you go back to your old unhealthy ways. Start eating a healthy and balanced diet to lose weight, you will find that there is so much choice in what you can eat, how good it tastes and there are no bad foods.
Science is great, and every day scientists are discovering more about how we digest food, but if we cherry pick parts of the research and invent diet plans based on the latest research, two things will happen. The author of the latest eating plan gets rich and you stay unhealthy. For thousands of years humans have eaten the food that was available and survived. Today we have food available 24-7 and we are fatter than ever. Our bodies evolved to take advantage of times when food was plentiful and store excess calories as fat. So once the food became scarce during the winter months, we wouldn't die. In the developed countries we just don't encounter food scarcity any more. We keep stocking up our winter fuel stores for a winter that isn't coming.
Now if you have read my previous blog posts, you will know I'm following the slimming world plan. I know I'm paying a company to follow their diet system, but I found that I need the feeling of obligation to do well at the weigh in. It fires up my sense of competition and that helps motivate me. The plan is also based on the principal of eating a balanced diet and learning better eating habits.
So there you have it, the ultimate weight loss system. Proven by ten thousand generations of our ancestors. Eat too much and you will get fat.
No comments:
Post a Comment