Friday, July 31, 2009

3 Tips For Faster Weight Loss and a Healthy Diet

By Thomas Frank

If you are planning on losing weight, a healthy diet is the most important thing to consider. Exercise is important too, without a doubt, but diet is the main thing in weight loss. I hope this article will give you some useful guidelines towards making healthy choices in your day-to-day eating habits.

1. Be sure to include healthy fats in your meals whenever possible. This is an important factor in maintaining your bodys required hormone levels both for fat burning and also for muscle building. Having adequate healthy fats in your diet also ensures that your appetite is kept under control.

Where to get these healthy fats? Seeds, avocados, raw nuts, yolks of organic eggs, extra virgin olive oil (which has the highest level of antioxidants), coconut oil (this contains medium chain triglycerides, a great source of healthy saturated fats), and grass-fed meat (this has conjugated linoleic acid, which helps in muscle building and fat burning).

This is a good tip you could try - eat a handful of nuts , like pecans or almonds, around half an hour before meals, 3 times a day. This will keep down your appetite and it's a good way of getting your daily supply of protein and fiber. And they are an excellent source of healthy fat.

2. Try to include at least one high-protein item with each of your meals. I prefer a grass-fed dairy product, a grass-fed meat product or something high-protein like beans or nuts. It helps to keep the appetite under control, and reduces the calorie intake.

Getting proteins like these means that, if you are working out regularly, the body puts on more lean muscle rather than fat. And your metabolism will be able to run faster, thus better able to burn off fat.

3. When you eat a lot of protein with your meals, you also help your body to control both insulin and blood sugar levels. This is because the protein helps to slow down the breakdown of carbohydrates which are ingested. And although I am not in favour of those "low-carb" diets, I feel that the reason so many people find it such a struggle to lose weight, is that their intake of processed carbohydrates, and refined sugar, is so high.

Fruits contain sugars also, but they are OK because the fiber contained within the fruit helps to slow down the response of the blood sugar. But watch out for fruit juice - avoid it because the fiber has been stripped out by the processing of the juice.

After people start reducing their grain intake (by reducing their consumption of bread, pasta, cereals, bagels etc) it usually follows that they start losing fat. So if you want to see results, switch from grain to fruit and vegetables as much as possible. Losing weight could become a whole lot easier for you.

If you take action on these 3 steps towards a healthier diet, I am sure that you will soon see the evidence of a leaner body and increased energy levels.

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