If you’re counting calories to lose weight or just trying to eat healthy, stop the madness! Calorie counting is time consuming, depressing and completely unnecessary. Don’t get too excited though. Just because you don’t need to count calories doesn’t give you a free pass to pig out on pizza and French fries whenever you want. You still have to be mindful of what you eat.
Here’s the thing: when you eat a bunch of processed junk, not only are you loading up on toxins, you’re taking in way more calories than your body can use. What do you think happens to all of those extra calories? Bingo. They get stored in your body as fat.
Even if you exercise regularly, eating a bunch of nonsense foods will make it tough to create the kind of calorie deficit necessary to get rid of the blubber around your midsection. If you really want to burn enough calories to achieve a healthy weight (or get some super sexy abs), fill your diet with natural foods that contain protein, healthy fats and fiber.
When I say “natural foods,” I mean foods that have not been processed or filled with unhealthy additives. Natural foods are low in calories; if you stick to reasonable portion sizes during your meals and snacks, you won’t have to spend the rest of your existence keeping tabs on your caloric intake.
Healthy Sources of Dietary Fat
Dietary fat catches a lot of flack and is often accused of being the culprit of heart disease. This is absolutely not the case; fat is not the enemy. In fact, any good eating plan should include fat from quality sources like olive oil, fish oil, nuts, seeds, unrefined coconut oil, avocados and natural grass-fed beef.
Healthy fats help with nutrient absorption and can improve the health of your heart. Also, fat helps you feel satiated. When you add it to your meals, you are less likely to overindulge.
Healthy Carbohydrate Sources
If most of the carbohydrates in your diet come from refined sources like white bread, pasta, baked goods, processed snacks and sugar, you can forget about losing stomach flab. These types of foods absorb quickly in the body and trigger the rapid release of insulin. When insulin is released too fast, it can give you the munchies shortly after you’ve already eaten.
The bulk of your carbohydrates should come from complex sources like vegetables, beans, legumes and fruits. These foods are rich in fiber so they digest slowly and keep you full much longer than refined carbs.
Healthy Sources of Protein
Protein triggers the release of a hormone called glucagon, which acts as an appetite suppressant. In fact, studies suggest that diets rich in protein can enhance fat loss when it is combined with the proper amounts of exercise. Eat nuts, legumes, grass-fed beef, free range poultry and organic eggs to get enough protein in your diet.
You don’t have to count calories! Simply dump the processed foods and replace them with natural foods that are rich in protein, healthy fat and complex carbohydrates. Of course, if you want consistent weight loss results, you have to exercise regularly.
Five Big Difference Between Dieting and a Healthy Eating Plan
The repetitive unscucess of restrictive diets is what lead to the term “yo-yo dieting.” Calorie counting diets don’t work, but, fitting the definition of insanity, people keep trying the same thing over and over, always getting the same result. But did you know that you can eliminate the need for crash dieting by simply sticking to a healthy eating plan? It’s true. Once you start on the road to eating wisely, eating becomes fun and freeing.
Let’s talk about the difference between diets and healthy eating plans. Then we’ll talk further about how you can spot a fad diet at twenty paces. By learning about the crucial difference between the two, you can start a healthy eating program that eliminates the need for restrictive programs.
What’s a Diet?
OK, so let’s define the term “diet.” This simple word is used to encompass everything you eat and drink. However, over time, the term diet has come to symbolize a multi-million dollar industry aimed at a quick fix for our deepest insecurities.
Diets are aimed at restricting our food and beverage intake so that you can lose weight. Some diets restrict carbohydrate intake. Others restrict caloric intake. Diets usually fixate on what we put in our mouths, rather than what we do with our bodies.
By focusing on restriction, the plan is that you will lose weight by eliminating something from your eating routine, or by cutting back on the amount of food you eat.
What’s a Healthy Eating Plan?
A healthy eating plan is a comprehensive program for improving your health by improving the quality of the foods you eat. Rather than focusing on the restriction or elimination of foods from your life, an eating program educates you about how foods impact your body so that you can make an educated choice when it comes to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Foods may be restricted or eliminated from your routine with an eating plan, but if so, it’s because they are of inferior nutritional value. The focus is always on eating well so that you can be well.
Spotting the Difference between Fad Diets and Healthy Meal Plans
There are five key ways you can distinguish a healthy eating plan from a fad diet. Before you embark on any eating program, you might want to do a little research to see how your plan stacks up against these criteria:
1. Long term results
An eating program is focused on losing weight slowly over a period of time, so that you keep the weight off for good. Fad diets focus on shedding pounds quickly for fast, but often temporary, results.
2. Holistic approach to weight loss
An eating program utilizes a holistic approach to weight loss—meaning you have to implement healthy lifestyle changes to guarantee success. This means your eating program can embrace anything from exercise to meditation to help you lose weight. A fad diet usually focuses solely on what you eat and drink.
3. Focused on the means rather than the end
A healthy eating plan will focus on the means to get to your goal weight, not just on the end result. In other words, you are encouraged to educate yourself about food so that you can make healthy eating choices. Diets are usually highly regimented and tell you exactly what to eat and drink, rather than allowing you to make your own choices.
4. Balanced nutrition
A healthy eating program will allow you to eat fruits and vegetables and will encourage you to eat a balanced diet. You can usually spot a fad diet because it will focus on eating one type of food (such as the Cabbage Soup diet, or the Grapefruit Diet), or will eliminate one or more types of food from your life.
5. No gimmicks
A healthy eating program recognizes that, unfortunately, there are no quick fixes for obesity and obesity-related illnesses. And so, with that in mind, there are no gimmicks to these plans. You have to do the work for the long-term. A fad diet usually relies heavily on gimmicks to convince you that you can shed all the pounds you want just by following one simple rule.
Weight loss doesn’t have to be a lifelong struggle. The Diet Solution Program will get you on the right track and keep you there. Watch my video for a quick overview of how we can help you lose belly flab and stop counting calories.
