Diet Without the Myth of Fat Burning Foods
Sadly enough, fat burning foods are a fad. Yes, some foods have been shown to help people lose fat, but it is typically because the food is either low in calories or satisfies their appetite.
If you want to lose weight, here are some helpful instructions.
Steps
- Find your basal metabolic rate, which will tell you how many calories you need to consume per day. This will take about a week. You can find your basal metabolic rate online ( http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ ). Take 15-20% off that number and eat that number of calories instead.
- Choose the proper foods. Dieting has a tendency to cause you to lose as much muscle as fat. Consuming more protein and dieting at a steady speed (as shown in step 2) will minimize this. A woman might not care much about muscle tissue, but losing it will mean that you have to reach a lower body fat percentage to appear just as skinny as someone who kept their muscle. It also sabotages your diet because it makes your metabolism fall off. Consume 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. This is higher than the recommended daily value, but it is far from dangerous. It will help you hang onto your muscle.
- Balance your nutrients. The rest of your diet should be evenly balanced between fat and carbohydrates. Fat is not the enemy, and neither are carbohydrates. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats. Avoid refined and glycemic index carbohydrates. In general, avoid processed foods altogether. Don't eat fast food or food from restaurants. Don't eat anything with high fructose corn syrup or bleached wheat flour in it. Avoid "fake" sugars as well. Some claim they might affect insulin levels or affect the body in other ways.
- Supplement your diet to some degree to meet the demands of a healthy diet. Take a multivitamin and get lots of water. You need healthy fats. There are certain essential fatty acids that your body cannot produce; they must be consumed. The best sources of these are salmon, walnuts, flax seeds (oil or ground, as whole won't digest),avocados and fish oil caplets. Oils go rancid quickly, so be sure to refrigerate the oil and freeze any flax seeds. The best low-fat protein sources are skim milk, egg whites, and poultry. Some cuts of red meat are also very low in fat and high in protein. However, they are typically more expensive than their white counterparts. Tuna is also very good. As for carbohydrates, you can consume any low glycemic index carbohydrates you want (and some moderately high ones, too).
- Divide up your meals so that you eat 5-6 small meals a day. Eating small meals gives your body time to digest and burn up your food or "fuel" at a steady rate.
- Live an active lifestyle. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. The type of exercise you need will vary, depending on your body weight and physical health and well-being. Regardless, you should be doing a mix of both aerobic (fat-burning) exercises like jogging or interval training, and anaerobic(muscle-building) exercises like resistance or weight training. Anaerobic ensures your metabolism doesn't drop due to dieting while aerobic is best for targeting fat calories.
Tips
- Stick with it - there are no tricks to it. Remember how you learned to ride a bike? It took a lot of practice and willpower. First, you had to have training wheels, and then you had them removed and it was scary, but the whole time, you had a vision in your head of yourself riding a two-wheel bike. You looked around the neighborhood and saw other kids and adults riding bikes, and you thought "I can do that too." And you can. With a strong will to do something, anything is possible!
- keep an eye on your weight. Once a week step on the scales. This is hard evidence and will help you keep motivated. But take it easy and don't lose too much too quickly.
- Make sure you're getting enough fiber in your diet. Studies have shown that if you're not getting enough fiber and you increase it to about 25 - 30 grams per day, that this may help you to lose weight.
- When you do reach what you think it is good in this diet, stick to eating the amount of calories you can burn, so you will stay at the size you want.
- This is all to make you feel better. Remember that.
- Stick with the exercise, this guide just covers the harder part that many get wrong.
- By the way, so called "fat burning foods" are typically all dairy products and vegetables. Vegetables don't give you many calories and contain lots of water. Celery does contain more calories than it costs you, which is a common misconception. Dairy products contain lots of water, and they have fat in them. The fat is not a good fat, but it tends to calm appetites. This is why Atkins has so much success - you actually end up eating less calories. Also, the insulin response caused by carbohydrates means that without them, your body has a hard time storing fat. For the most part, your diet will go just as fast with the same number of calories, but it will go a little faster if you don't eat carbohydrates and fats at the same time. This way, you don't have a tendency to store fat and then burn it later. You just burn it in the first place, which is more comfortable for weight loss and less tiring to most people.
- Take one day each week to eat whatever you want.
Warnings
- Remember that if dieting is making you totally miserable, stick with the diet, don't get lax, but just don't be too extreme. You know it's working when you feel better.
- When you do have your day to eat whatever you like, don't go overboard. Some people obsessed with calorie counting tend to go overboard during any stop in the diet, and this period is meant to prevent you from going overboard when you lost the weight you needed to lose.
- Don't reduce your calorie intake too much. Do not cut your calorie intake below 80% of your metabolic rate, because it can cause metabolism loss due to muscle loss, and trying too hard to conquer your instincts to eat can make it hard for you to stop eating.
- Don't fall for any diet drugs. They're drugs, and so is heroin. Though not as addicting, they can be extremely dangerous.
- Remember that carbohydrates are the substances that are foremost turned into bodily storage-fats versus essential fatty acids and proteins. There is no harm in reducing your carbohydrate consumption, though feeling sluggish can indicate that you are not eating enough carbohydrates.
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Sources and Citations
- [1] Dietary fiber and weight regulation
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11396693&dopt=Citation
- Dr. Atkinson, M, (2007), "The Mind-Body Bible", ISBN 978-0749927684