Imagine that you have a magic vessel on which a lot in your life depends. If the vessel has clean walls, everything in your life is good. As soon as garbage gets into the vessel, it loses its power. Would you throw leftovers and other garbage into the vessel? I don’t think so. But why do we quietly do that to our bodies?
We fill it with greasy and fried foods, we feed it fast food, we stuff our stomachs at night. Our body is a magical vessel through which we breathe, move, enjoy and live. But junk food clogs our vessel walls with cholesterol and our liver with toxins. Unattractive folds of fat and shortness of breath appear, and the pace and standard of living rapidly decreases. And only then do we begin to ask ourselves the question – how can we lose weight?
Simply put, the more you eat it, the more you want it.
Change your eating habits
This happens primarily because of poor eating habits. Martin Ingvar and Gunilla Eld, authors of Brain Weight Control, write, “You planned to buy something light for dinner <… > but instead you bring home grilled chicken, potato salad with mayonnaise, ice cream with caramel and chocolate…” It’s all in our heads,” the authors reasoned. If you have an experience of bad eating, in your brain there is a constant dialogue between the capricious child, who demands sugar, and a reasonable adult who understands the futility of this endeavor.
Take a critical look at your diet. Don’t be lazy to study food labels. Perhaps your dietary system consists only of simple carbohydrates. These include bread, pasta, white rice, and potatoes. If you like sausage or ham, it means you consume extra sugar and a lot of salt. Coffee shakes are another enemy of your waistline. After all, one cup of cappuccino can have as much fat as a good piece of pork.
Look for hidden calories
Hidden calories are everywhere. And if you’re on a diet, struggling to lose weight but failing, pay close attention to the foods you choose. For example, for lunch you eat chicken and salad. This is a good option, but only if you eat steamed chicken breast, cooked without salt and fat, and dress the salad with just a teaspoon of oil. If your “chicken meat” is a boiled or fried ham with skin, and you are used to dressing your vegetable salad with mayonnaise, then it is a very calorie-dense meal.
Sometimes hidden calories show up in that same green salad. You eat it with healthy sesame oil and don’t even realize that because there is too much oil on your plate, the calories in the salad are comparable to a small hamburger. Always add butter or sour cream, not by eye, but by measuring these products with a spoon.
Another good habit is to weigh your food on a kitchen scale. Do this until you know by eye how much a piece of cheese and butter on your sandwich weighs.
Many people who lose weight decide to replace sweets with fruit and dried fruit. They are better than candy. But you have to know which fruits are worth eating. For example, grapes contain a lot of glucose, and if you are just weaning off sugar, then after a few grapes you will definitely want something chocolate or flour.
Any dried fruit is very caloric. You should eat them as candy – no more than 3-4 pieces. Otherwise, the diet is over.
What to do, or how to lose weight correctly
If you are overweight, if you are a lot of overweight, if you lost weight once, but gained weight again, in all these cases it is important to understand: a diet is not hunger and suffering, “it’s only worth a little patience, and then you can eat like before”. A diet is a system of eating that suits you, in which you feel good and your weight does not increase. You may have different daily caloric intake at different stages of weight loss.
Learn the truth about sugar
Sugar and all foods containing it, as well as those with a high glycemic index, have an invisible power over us. Our brain needs glucose to work, and the easiest way to get it is from sugar. Our body wants to get the necessary substances in the easiest and shortest way possible. That’s why it demands and demands sugar. This is one of the most common reasons for being overweight or losing pounds.
In order to keep our brain from needing sugar, we need to keep our blood sugar levels optimal. But sweets only cause blood glucose spikes. Long carbohydrates, on the other hand, can help with this task.
The hormone insulin is also involved in sugar absorption. It is produced in the pancreas and is responsible for the flow of sugar into fat and muscle tissue. Insulin also allows sugar to be stored in our muscles and liver.
When we eat, sugar enters the bloodstream, then it reaches the pancreas and then insulin is released. But if your blood sugar level is normal, insulin will not be released. The body has a defense mechanism against rising blood sugar levels: increased insulin production. In this case, the pancreas produces 5-6 times more hormone than normal. And if the energy obtained from sugar is not immediately spent, it will turn into fat on your body. The increased production of insulin has another disadvantage. When insulin is released, blood sugar levels drop dramatically, which means you feel hungry and tired again. At this point, there is no point in convincing yourself that you will endure this hunger, your body is sure that disaster is about to happen and you need to eat something, preferably more calories, and right now.
If you don’t consider how sugar affects us, your diet can go on for a very long time. And each time it will end in breakdowns, gaining new weight, disappointment. To break this chain of failures, make a decision not to eat sweets. It may seem to you now that you are forever depriving yourself of a great pleasure. But spend just 3-4 days without sugar, sweets, or chocolate – you won’t want them as much as you did before.
Look for healthy desserts. This can be honey, fruit puddings, banana ice cream, cottage cheese with berries. After such a meal, there will be no spikes in blood sugar and excessive insulin production, which means you will not feel a sharp hunger. But such a diet should become not something temporary, but a permanent and conscious choice.
Do not consume fast carbohydrates. They also cause blood sugar spikes, hunger, and loss of energy. Choose analogues: instead of white rice – brown rice, instead of spaghetti – funchose, instead of usual bread – whole wheat flourless.
With such a diet, even a rare piece of cake at your favorite grandfather’s anniversary party will not be terrible. First, your sugar levels will be stable and low. Secondly, eating right for a long time, you will not want to pounce on the cake and eat it whole. Yes, and achieved results will be a pity.
The right regimen
It sounds easy, but it is. You need healthy sleep and exercise to keep you looking your best. Both the former and the latter also stabilize your blood sugar levels. And this is especially important in the first stages of weight loss.
During a full night’s sleep, your body recovers and you are protected from stress. Many modern studies prove that stress also affects the appearance of excess weight and high blood sugar levels.
Exercise can help you do more than just consume excess. The authors of “Brain Weight Control” write, “Movement promotes the fact that you feel less need for sugar.” Exercise will help lower your blood sugar levels, so you won’t have sugar spikes in the morning, and you won’t feel a strong need to binge eat during lunch and dinner.
At least at first, be sure to keep a food diary. This will help you analyze what and when you eat. In addition, with a food diary you will quickly learn to understand what foods are the most harmful and why.
Five unhealthy foods that make you overweight
Cakes
Pastries are cakes, pastries, buns, cookies, and other sweets that consist of flour, sugar, and fat. Dough and biscuits usually use extra flour, lots of sugar, eggs, butter, and cream. The cream is made of syrup, chocolate, cream cheese and butter, and heavy sour cream. Each of these products (except eggs) is high in calories.
One cake or slice of cake can contain up to 700 calories – one-third of the daily ration. And those calories are completely useless to your body. They do not contain vitamins or saturated fats, and they do not contain much energy, which would help you not to feel hungry for a few. On the contrary, desserts cause a release of sugar into your bloodstream, and then there is a sudden drop in energy and a feeling of hunger. This is how sugar is addictive. Every bite we eat makes us want to eat more and more. This is why we never stop at one candy bar or one chocolate square.
If you cannot lose weight exactly because of cravings for sweets, then you need to completely eliminate sugar from your diet for a while. For the first three or four days it will be really difficult. But after that you have a chance to finally lose weight. Bypass the candy stores and departments with sweets in supermarkets, but be sure to include sweets in your diet. Bananas and grapes, apples, a handful of raisins or apricots, cottage cheese with a teaspoon of honey, natural granola without additives with dried fruit should definitely be in your diet. Unnoticeably, the craving for sweets will cease to torment you.
Fast Food
No matter how many advertising campaigns fast food restaurants did not tell us about the fresh meat and vegetables, fast food is still harmful food, from which in the first place is blurred the waist, and still there are cellulite and wrinkles in different places.
Pay attention to the line at the cashier in any such institution: there you will not find a single slim, fit girl or man. The habit of snacking in cafes and fast food restaurants very quickly affects our figure. It is unlikely that you go to eat fast food because of the low price, the benefits or because you feel good, eating a hamburger and drink Coke. It’s just a bad habit that you need to get rid of.
Mayonnaises and sauces
Ketchup is not mayonnaise, it’s not as greasy and consists of just tomatoes. Cheese or soy sauce is also a safe substitute for mayonnaise. This is the way many people reason. But most ready-made ketchups and soy sauces contain sugar. Cheese sauce contains sugars, flavor enhancers and other harmful additives. Each such sauce only increases the caloric value of what you eat. For example, the caloric value of Heinz cheese sauce is 356 calories. That means that a 20 gram serving contains 70 calories. For comparison, that bowl of vegetable salad (without dressing) has fewer calories, and satiates for a long time.
In addition to unnoticed calories eaten, sauces are another trap. The sugar in many causes glucose to be released into the bloodstream. This means that sauces cause a false sense of hunger.
Buy ketchups and soy sauce only after carefully studying the composition of the product. Choose one that has no sugar or flavor enhancers.
Coffee and Coffee-Based Drinks
Coffee shops are opening on every corner these days. In advertisements and movies we see examples of beautiful and successful people going to work, going for walks, meeting with friends, and relaxing, all in the company of a cup of coffee to go.
A glass of espresso or an Americano has zero calories; if you add sugar to it, the calories are definitely not zero. Cappuccino, frappuccino, ice coffee, and other coffee-based drinks contain fatty milk, sugar, syrups, cream, chocolate, and other additives. Different coffee chains have different calories for the same cappuccino, but it will not be less than 45 calories. And that’s assuming nonfat milk is added to the coffee and no sugar. On average, coffee cocktails have 150-400 calories. And those calories can’t be called healthy. So many calories make coffee fat and sugar, which means that they should not be included in the system of correct nutrition in any way.
If you have a hard time going a day without coffee, drink only Americano and espresso without sugar or other additives. You may be fooling yourself by buying another cup of coffee to go when you actually want something sweet. After all, coffee can’t be considered a dessert. But drinks with cream and sugar, caramel and chocolate are the most real desserts in terms of calories and composition. We suggest a healthier snack option: a glass of unsweetened Americano and a banana. This way you will quench your craving for sweets and cheer up with coffee.
Sodas and juices
Often we do not think twice about putting clean water, freshly squeezed juice, packaged juice, milk, tea, coffee and other drinks on the same level. Since childhood, many are accustomed to quench their thirst with tea or compote. But no drink other than water is able to quench thirst. Water has 0 calories, while juice has 30-50. In addition, juice contains sugar. Coffee and tea dehydrate the body, milk needs time to be digested in our stomach.
If the compote of dried fruits or freshly squeezed juice energize you, help to cope with the craving for sweets, saturate, then the soda acts quite differently. One glass of lemonade may contain up to 12 spoonfuls of sugar. This means that after drinking soda you will be hungry and thirsty, and will quietly consume 200-300 calories.
Juices with added sugar have a similar effect. By no means make a habit of drinking them with food and do not drink them to quench your thirst.
If you are used to drink something other than water, make herbal teas with berries and lemon, make freshly squeezed juices, make compotes from dried fruits or morses without added sugar. The caloric content of such drinks will be minimal and definitely not dangerous for your waistline.
