Tips on How to Get Your Diet off to a Good Start
- Written by News Company
Excess weight can adversely affect the emotional state, as well as human health. A person may lose self-confidence and motivation. It’s good for your health to adjust your diet by replacing harmful foods with healthy ones and reducing your serving size. For the diet to give the desired result, you need to get enough nutrients with food and not limit the diet too much. Any diet will be more effective if you also acquire good eating habits that will be beneficial to your diet.
Think about why you need a diet.
If you clearly understand what your goals are, it will be easier for you to choose a food system that you can adhere to and which will lead you to the result you need.
The fight against diabetes. If you have diabetes, you should do your diet. Reducing sugar or abandoning it is the key to a normal life with diabetes.
Reduce the risk of heart disease. Foods that normalize blood cholesterol and help reduce fat in the abdomen help prevent heart disease.
Getting rid of excess weight after pregnancy. During pregnancy, everyone gains weight; however, most likely, you will want to get rid of it and return to your previous state.
Preparing for the beach season. With the arrival of heat, many begin to lose weight to look better in beachwear. Sometimes it is enough to make a few small changes in your daily life to look stunning on your vacation. In general, you have to realize that while looks do play a role in the first impression that you make, your confidence is also very important. Here’s an article on how to avoid awkward first dates and positively present yourself.
Talk to your doctor.
Before making changes to the diet, discuss the diet with your doctor and ask if it will be harmful to your health. Tell your doctor what you plan to do. A diet with less than 1,200 calories per day can be dangerous. Nutritionist Michelle May explains it this way: "Rapid weight loss while limiting caloric intake is due to water, a small amount of fat and muscle fibers. This slows down the metabolism, and the body needs fewer calories for normal functioning." Because of this, the percentage of body fat increases, which increases the risk of developing insulin resistance syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
Some people build a diet on the desired number of calories per day, others on the amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in the diet, and others simply make lists of foods that they need to eat more, and foods that should be limited. Decide which approach you seem to enjoy more.
Talk to your doctor about the drugs you are taking. Your diet mustn't contradict the nutritional recommendations associated with taking medications.
For example, if you are taking angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors to lower your blood pressure, you will need to keep track of how many bananas, oranges, and green leafy vegetables you eat. If you are prescribed tetracycline, you may need to give up dairy products while you take the drug.
Analyze your eating habits.
Before you change your habits, you need to understand what they are. Track what, when and where you eat to better understand your diet.
Keep a food diary. Keep it in the kitchen or on the bedside table and write down everything you ate there (full meals, snacks and even those few spoons of the dish that you only wanted to get a taste of), the time and place where you ate (at the kitchen table, on the sofa, in the bed).
Keep a diary on the Internet. There are applications and sites with which you can track your nutrition. If the application is on the phone, it will be convenient for you to fill in all the data on time.
Find out what you have problems with.
We all have different eating habits and different overeating triggers. If you know what makes you eat more than you need, it will be easier to break the habit.
Stress. One of the main causes of overeating is stress. When a person is tense and anxious, they often try to battle stress by eating. If this problem is relevant to you, you should learn to cope with stress in other ways or buy more healthy food.
Fatigue. A tired person tends to choose junk food. If you know that you often eat in a tired state, try to devote more time to rest and go shopping, do so while you are relaxed and calm.
Boredom or loneliness. All friends left you alone? Can't find what to do? If you overeat when you are left to your own devices, try to find new activities and hobbies that will make you leave your home more often and that will distract you from eating.