It is a common belief that a person cannot drop pounds unless they go on a diet that requires them to sacrifice all the foods they love. It is difficult to stay on a plan that involves such sacrifice, so people look for a plan that promises the biggest loss in the shortest amount of time. When the plan does not work, or works only for awhile, people will typically try the next new diet fad diet or pill in a never ending search for how to lose weight.
It is tragic, but thousands and perhaps millions of people ride this weight loss roller coaster throughout their adult life. Unfortunately, it usually never occurs to them that losing weight and keeping it off requires smaller but permanent changes in eating habits and increases in physical activity.
A very good example of one of these small changes would be to increase the number of fresh fruits and vegetables eaten each day. The more these healthy foods are consumed, the less room there is for counter productive foods like sugary snacks. In addition, significant amounts of water are contained in these foods and that helps you feel full even while they are providing you with great nutrition. A lot of these foods also contain large amounts of the vitamins and minerals that are necessary for maintaining a healthy body. By replacing sometimes sugary snacks with these foods you can break free of the addiction to overly sweet foods and you will find that soon you will prefer natural flavors.
Lookout for processed fruits and vegetables as these will usually contain some amounts of sugar, fructose or corn syrup sweeteners. Consuming these foods will not be as healthy, but will also make it much more difficult to give up sugary snacks. You should view sugar as an addictive substance that can create hunger pangs while it keeps you from appreciating naturally sweet foods. Once you start checking foods before you buy them, you will be shocked at how many processed foods contain sugars and realize that the more natural the food, the better.
An example of an excellent source of nutrients is a salad. Making salads with green leaf vegetables actually provides you with lots of water and helps give you the feeling of being full. Very tasty salads can easily be made with some of the unique lettuces available, topped off with cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach and many other fruits and vegetables. Using these as toppings helps avoid oily dressings that contain large amounts of fat that can keep you from losing weight.
One of the best things you can do is to eat more and smaller meals. Humans are naturally built to get hungry about every three hours. The problem is that our society has forced a three meal a day regimen on us so that we don’t stop working to eat several times a day. In addition to promoting the three meal schedule, our culture works to convince us that we should eat way more than we should. Not only that, but we are encouraged to eat large amounts of fat. This fat is necessary to keep us from getting hungry, since it will be a long time to the next meal.
Eating five or six meals each day that, added together, are much smaller an amount than we are eating in three meals now, is the best way to naturally lose weight without dieting. By eating only when we get hungry and then eating only what we need, we end up eating far less than we are now. Anyone trying this plan will be amazed at how they do not often feel hungry like they thought they would. Because there is another small meal in just three hours, the body just does not get hungry that often. You will end up eating far less and should have no problem avoiding sugary between meal snacks.
Drinking much more water and also drinking a glass about a half hour before each meal will also help you be successful. On those occasions where you do feel hungry between meals, drink some water and wait and see if that makes you feel full. If it does not then go ahead and have the next small meal. Since metabolism and activity levels vary from day to day you should not expect every day to be the same. Some days will require you to eat more. After getting in the habit of listening to your body and only eating what you need, you will find that your weight is going down even though you are not on a diet!
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