Most of us have wanted to lose weight at one time or another. The problem is, with most diets, they are unrealistic. Yes, you may drop weight, sometimes quickly, but you will always gain it back with most of these so-called "fad" diets. This is because fad diets do not work for any length of time. If they deprive you of a food group or tell you that you can never eat something again, of course you are going to cheat and go off your diet; you might even throw in the towel completely and say, "There goes my diet; I might as well quit altogether." Better is a diet that is not really a diet at all, but a lifestyle change. If you need to lose weight, even a lot of it, you can do so by losing just one to two pounds a week. Now, think about that for a minute. Even if you just lose one pound a week on average, that is 52 pounds a year.
What do you have to do to that? Basically, you are going to have to either cut out and/or burn off 3500 more calories per week than you take in. Now, here is the caveat about dieting. If you diet by going into starvation mode, you are actually CAUSING weight gain. This is because your body thinks, "Oh my gosh, you are starving. I have to begin to slow down so as to conserve calories and therefore save your life." So, what happens? When you starve, you slow your metabolism down. Because starving is not a natural way of being and of course you have to eat again at some point, you eat. And when you eat, because your metabolism is now slower than it was before, you gain weight.
There are plenty of ways to develop a diet plan for yourself that contains everything you need for healthy sustenance. What you want to do, though, is to get approximately one third of your calories from fat, one third of your calories from protein, and one third of your calories from complex carbohydrates. The fats you use should be mostly monounsaturated (the only absolute "no-no" fats are transfats, though, and a little saturated fat such as that from meat is fine). Get your proteins from a mix of lean meats, legumes, beans, fish, peanuts and nut butters, etc,. Get your carbohydrates from complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat and whole grains, and keep simple carbohydrates like sugars, white flour, white pasta, and so on to a minimum. These foods make a pledge to resume up and down, which leaves you hungry or. By contrast, complex carbohydrates help even out blood sugar levels so that you stay full longer and do not get ravenously hungry. Again, keep your focus on foods you like and that are healthy for you. Women should opt for a food plan that contains roughly 1500 calories a day, and men should opt for a diet that contains roughly 2000 calories a day. Your diet should also contain about 25 gms of fiber a day, and about 64 ounces of water. Some people find that eating very small meals (300 to 400 calories each) every few hours works better for them than eating the proverbial "three squares a day" does to help stave off hunger and keep up energy.
Finally, a note about refined carbohydrates and junk foods: DO NOT completely cut these things out of your diet at least right away. Allow yourself an occasional treat that you have planned with these foods, but keep it small. If you completely cut yourself off and say you can "never" have these things again, guess what? You are likely to binge on them. As you begin to work your way into your healthy eating plan, though, it is likely that you are going to begin to notice you would not want these foods as much anymore. Your body will get used to good healthy food and will realize that it does not feel well on junk food.
And that is it. A good healthy weight loss and exercise plan is not hard to come up with. Simply include your favorite, healthy foods in moderate amounts as described above, drink enough water, and get some exercise every day.
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