Establish A Long Term Weight Loss By Following Healthy Eating Guidelines

It is important to understand that before you start counting calories because of not being successful of accomplishing your objective of losing body fat and getting leaner, you must follow good diet habits.

Otherwise, counting your food calories without implementing healthy eating guidelines is like taking one step forward then two steps backwards! You won’t go too far if any.

Many people think that as long as counting calories to lose body weight they can basically eat any thing and still lose weight.

Uhh…I don’t think so. I have been there and done that; experimenting with me and my clients and it never worked effectively and definitely not for a long time without healthy eating guidelines.

So take my word for it and let me save you time, effort, and frustration.

Below, are some basic, yet effective healthy eating guidelines or practices to set yourself closer to reaching your goal for

- Better health

- Better body weight management and

- Better performance

I’ll refer to the healthy eating guidelines as the “steps of success” to reach the above objectives and before starting counting your foods calories.

These practices have been tried before, again and again with success, and it depends on how much you want to accomplish your objectives and to what degree of control you are to follow these basic yet critical healthy eating guidelines.

These are not in any specific order of importance…they’re all important, so make sure you read every point.

The Mental Control

• Stimulus! An important mental factor to start with, and without it your mission probably won’t go too far! Always remember the reason why you’re doing this; to improve your health, body composition (losing fat or gaining muscle), and performance.

And all of these aspects boil down to one thing and that is… to enjoying living to the fullest extent possible.

• Discipline! Yes, discipline must be mastered or you won’t climb the first steps of success. And no, you won’t be deprived of tasty enjoyable healthy foods as part of being disciplined.

However, being disciplined means that you need to be conscious of what you eat and make wise decisions by following these basic yet effective rules CONSISTENTLY.

Depending on your goal, for example, if your goal is to lose weight (body fat) or to gain weight (muscle mass), or to become leaner than you are right now, they all require a certain degree of disciplined behavior. Otherwise you’ll most likely not achieve your goal.

Make foods your friend – not your enemy because you’ll lose

Here’s how to make your life easier, healthier, and definitely more enjoyable. Oh…Not to mention reaching your goal.

• Whole, natural foods must make up the bulk of your diet, as much as possible, if not all of your diet. (That means no processed foods that contain additives, etc.)

• Plan and prepare your meals ahead of time or you’re going to set yourself up for failure. Make a list of whole foods and then go grocery shopping, period. Don’t deviate.

• Each meal should consist of three macro-nutrients;

Protein,

Fat, and

Carbohydrates.

But as the day progresses have more protein and fat than carbohydrates. And early in the morning have more protein and carbohydrates (don’t over do it with the carbs though) than fat.

Healthy Eating Guidelines has also to do with meal frequency

• Divide your daily meals between four to six meals. They can be 3 meals and 3 snacks or 4 meals and 2 snacks. A few words about snacks: they should consist of whole foods, not junk or ‘no-nutrient’ foods.

Examples are like,

- Mixed raw nuts

- Whole milk cheese w/ whole wheat high fiber crackers

- An apple with real peanut butter

- Cottage cheese mixed with fresh pineapples

Just make sure you have protein, fat, and fibrous carbohydrates in each meal you consume.

• Be realistic of your expectations when you’re setting a goal to reach. Losing 10 pounds or gaining muscle mass in two weeks is not a realistic goal to reach.

• Moderate to low intake of high fiber oatmeal, whole bread, beans and legumes and high protein/flax seed pasta.

• From my own experience over the years, I observed that more often, people are not good carbohydrate tolerant. (Good carbohydrate tolerance means you can eat a larger carbohydrate portion of each meal and not gain noticeable body fat.)

• So for people who have poor carbohydrate tolerance, they should divide their macro-nutrients to something similar to this food intake percentage breakdown:

-Protein between 25 to 35 %

- Fat 30 to 40%

- And carbohydrates between 15 to 30 %.

Yes, the carbohydrate intake can be that low if you don’t tolerate carbohydrates well. Start with high end (30%) and observe your weight loss (mostly fat tissue) progress.