Most Effective Diet

How Did I Get Here? Do you simply need help learning how to eat better? Probably. But if you eat poorly as a result of emotional, mental, or spiritual problems, they may have to be addressed before you can make any real progress with weight loss. Even people who don't feel they have an eating disorder often turn to food for comfort. To learn to eat well and exercise regularly, you may also have to learn to handle the problems life throws at you without turning away from healthy eating and exercise. Be particularly careful about all-or-nothing thinking. A common tendency when failing to stay on a diet is to abandon it altogether. Instead, try to learn from your mistakes and do better in the future. Are You Ready to Diet? Again? Diets entice us with promises of burn stomach fat. But focusing on quick weight loss can lead to unhealthy eating and only short term success. While most diets produce quick weight loss at the outset, they often cause your metabolism to slow. The result is that you have to eat less and less to keep losing weight. You quickly become discouraged, give up, and start eating like you used to. But now, with a slower metabolism, you regain all the weight you lost, and more. Focus instead on improving your health, and you will become slim and healthy. Take Control of What You Eat There are few things that we have complete control over, but what we put in our mouths is one of them. We don't have to lose control in a restaurant or a friend's home, and we don't have to eat everything that's put in front of us. Consider this: We love fat because it carries flavor, and restaurants aren't as interested in whether we'll be around in 30 years as whether we'll be back next week. And what about our friends? Eat Frequently, and Eat Slowly It is important to understand what happens when you skip a meal or go on a crash diet. When you skip a meal your metabolism slows to conserve your energy. And when you lose weight too quickly for a few days, your body thinks it is threatened with starvation and goes into survival mode. It fights to conserve your fat stores, and any weight loss comes mostly from water and muscle. Never skip a meal, especially breakfast, and eat healthy snacks between meals. Eating frequently prevents hunger pangs and the binges that follow, provides consistent energy, and may be the single most effective way to maintain metabolism efficiency. Eating slowly gives our bodies time to tell us they are full before we've eaten more than we need. Eat More Fruits, Vegetables and Whole Grains People who eat healthy, mostly unprocessed foods, including fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and limited amounts of lean animal protein, often find that they can eat as much as they want without gaining weight. If they are switching from a diet containing lots of processed foods, they find that they can eat more yet consume fewer calories -- and they lose weight. Historically, the Chinese ate mostly rice and vegetables with a little lean meat for protein and flavor, nothing like the American Chinese restaurant dishes of deep fried sweet and sour pork. A step back to more natural foods would improve our health and waistlines. Eat More Fiber Fiber makes us feel full sooner and stays in our stomach longer than other substances we eat, slowing down our rate of digestion and keeping us feeling full longer. Due to its greater fiber content, a single serving of whole grain bread can be more filling than two servings of white bread. Fiber also moves fat through our digestive system faster so that less of it is absorbed. Refined grains like white rice and those used to make white bread and sugary breakfast cereals have had most of their fiber and nutrients stripped away. They turn into blood sugar (glucose) so fast that, like sugar itself, they can cause a spike in our insulin level. This tells our body that plenty of energy is readily available and that it should stop burning fat and start storing it. Eating foods with plenty of fiber will help keep our blood sugar at a more consistent level. Cut Down on Sugar Be careful about sugar in coffee and soda pop. It can add up quickly, and these drinks aren't filling. Watch for "hidden" sugar in processed foods like bread, ketchup, salad dressing, canned fruit, applesauce, peanut butter, and soups. And be careful with "fat-free" products. Sugar is often used to replace the flavor that is lost when the fat is removed. Fat-free does not mean calorie-free. The greater concern with the insulin spike (above) is not that it tells our body to start storing fat. Whatever we eat and don't burn up eventually gets turned into fat anyway. The greater concern is that the insulin spike is followed by a drop in insulin level that leaves us feeling tired and hungry and wanting to eat more. The unfortunate result of this scenario is that it makes us want to eat something else with a high sugar content. When we do, we start the cycle all over again. Regulating your blood sugar level is the most effective way to maintain your fat-burning capacity.