So, you read Weight Loss Basics – Part 1, and you’ve checked with your Doctor to make sure s/he says it’s safe for you to try to lose weight and/or gave you some guidelines to follow in order to be safe. Good!
Now, let’s talk a bit about what you eat. What you eat is your diet.
Unfortunately, so many people hear “diet” and think: “what I can’t eat” or “how I’m going to starve myself.” But when you think about your diet your thoughts should be of neither of those. You should be thinking: “OK, we’re now going to talk about what I will eat.” Shift your thinking from lack, to abundance, from “glass-half-empty” to “glass-half-full”, from restriction to freedom. You will be free to eat whatever fits into the healthy guidelines – both in terms of what you are free to eat as well as how much you are free to eat.
First, lets talk about the three general sources of calories: Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates. Most natural foods contain a combination of those sources of calories. However some foods are higher (or lower) than others in certain caloric content.
For example: most vegetables and fruits are almost exclusively made up of Carbohydrates. Some include Fats, others (particularly in combination) provide your body with needed Protein.
The program I highly recommend starts your weight loss off with 4 weeks of a diet that includes foods that are low in Fat, Low in Carbohydrates, and have moderate/normal amounts of Protein.
You will eat three good-for-you and tasty meals a day that fit that description. In between meals, you will have snacks. At least 3 snacks each day, and possibly as many as 6. They key is to make sure that these snacks are primarily Protein snacks.
If you choose to snack on Carbohydrates, especially Simple Carbohydrates, you will get a quick burst of energy. But then just as quickly your body will crash – having burned up the sugar like some highly-flamable gun powder thrown into a BBQ fire. It’s an amazing BANG, but it doesn’t really help with cooking the stuff on the fire. Protein-based snacks will provide slow-burning fuel for your body, giving you long-term energy – much like throwing another log on a fire. It takes a bit longer to start to burn, but the heat lasts significantly longer than the quick-burning alternatives. And it really cooks the stuff you’re trying to cook.
After 4 weeks of the weight-loss diet, it’s very important to change to the metabolic adjustment diet. The change is really quite simple. All you’ll do is slowly add a few Carbohydrates – preferably Complex Carbohydrates – to your diet. You’ll want to add enough that you stop losing weight, but not so much that you gain more than 2 pounds over the course of the 2 weeks of metabolic adjustment.
By going through a couple of weeks of metabolic adjustment, you’re sending your body a signal that lets it “know” you’re not trying to starve to death, and it’s OK to keep the metabolism up.
Without this period of adjustment, your body will slow down its metabolism until you bump up your Carbs and/or calories. And if you fail to do this, when you get off the weight loss diet, you will pack all that fat (and then some) back on… perpetuating the yo-yo or roller-coaster effect you’ve probably heard other’s complain about (if not experienced yourself) many times before.
Once you’ve completed 2 weeks of metabolic adjustment, if you need to lose more weight, simply shift back into the weight-loss diet. And repeat this cycle until you’ve lost all the weight you need to lose, and have completed the final metabolic adjustment period.
Lost all the weight you needed to lose, and finished the final metabolic adjustment? Congratulations! Now it’s time to shift to the final phase: Lifelong health maintenance. You will continue to eat a moderate-protein, moderate-carbohydrate, and low-fat diet, keeping an eye on your weight to make sure you don’t overdo it and go back to your old weight.
Throughout this freedom-to-eat program, be sure to get enough water (1oz for every 2 pounds you weight is a good rough estimate for what’s healthy), enough exercise (at least 8,000-10,000 steps each day), and daily certified-organic vitamin supplements to assure your body gets the required nutrients.
Some time later I’ll talk about the difference between types of Fat, types of Carbohydrates, and other details. But this should be enough to get started losing some weight in a healthy manner.
If you’re interested in getting more details on the program I’ve just described, contact Julie H who helped me work through it. Give her your contact information and ask her about the HealthPointe program.
