Read 29 times since Monday, January 23, 2012
When someone decides to lose weight they think they should go on a "diet", but with hundreds to choose how do you decide? I would not bother trying because the only factor that all good diet plans share is the need for moderate energy deficit. This means to lose weight you have to eat fewer calories than you expend. Without energy deficit you will not lose weight so all your efforts should go to achieving moderate energy deficit. Working as a Glasgow personal trainer one of the biggest challenges I face is getting clients to improve their eating habits. Glasgow's poor health record is well earned through the habitual consumption of huge quantities of fast food, ready meals, sweets and alcohol.
The first thing you have to do to ensure a healthy diet is to prepare all your own food. Companies that sell you food don't care that you want to lose weight, they only care that you buy their food. They are also only really concerned with profitability so will use cheaper ingredients then add fat, salt and sugars to make the food taste good so you will buy it again. Preparing your own food means you can use good quality ingredients and avoid extra fat, salt and sugar to keep the meal much healthier than the ready made option.
The fastest way to eliminate excess calories is to only drink water. Most of the drinks you buy are pumped full of extra sugar to improve the taste which adds a lot of calories to your diet that can be easily avoided. The next thing you need to do is to keep your portion sizes under control and the easiest way to do this is to eat from smaller crockery. Simply put the smaller the plate you eat from the less food you can get on it, just don't go back for seconds! The last big change you should make is to ditch the starchy carbohydrates like potatoes, rice and pasta for fibrous carbohydrates like vegetables. These contain far fewer calories but much more vitamins, minerals and fibre. This keeps you healthy, fills you up and stops you feeling hungry.
So just eat home cooked meals with tons of vegetables eaten of smaller plates washed down with lots of water. These steps may seem too simple to be effective but that is part of the problem. People assume the changes you have to make are dramatic, sweeping, demanding and beyond them so they don't even try but nothing could be further from the truth. It's not complicated; you just have to do it all the time. Iain Smith (MPhil/CSCS) owns Standout Gym, an independent warehouse gym in Glasgow, focusing on weight loss. He offers small group training as an affordable alternative to Glasgow personal training. Iain is a former international decathlete with 17 years coaching experience. www.standoutgym.com.
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