When making a change to a healthier lifestyle it is important to look at the food you are eating. The first step to decreasing those calories is to set yourself up with the proper foods. The less junk food you have in your refrigerator, the less likely you are to cheat.
A well stocked fridge has a variety of fresh foods such as fruits, vegetables, and lean dairy and meats, as well as wholesome grains. Don’t avoid the carbohydrates – those are important too, and we’ll discuss them in more detail later in this chapter. It isn’t difficult to figure out what foods are lower in fats – you can find information about them everywhere online, in magazine articles, and even at your local grocer. Take time to read nutrition labels – they’ll give you a good idea of how many calories are in a specific food.
Healthy eating doesn’t just stop at what you eat and how much of those foods you consume – there is even a best time to eat certain foods. Think about your body like a rechargeable battery. In order to have peak performance, you need to begin with a full charge. As the battery’s energy is used up, its performance dwindles. The body is very similar, but the difference is that we can choose our charge, or rather – our foods.
Keep your meals small, and rather than having three large meals a day, strive for six or seven small meals. That way, your body has a constant supply of energy and you don’t feel hungry at any point during the day, which can lead to binge eating and snacking on junk foods.
When you wake up in the morning, you have an entire day of activity to get through, so it’s important to super-charge yourself with foods that are full of carbohydrates. This is also the best time to enjoy your fruits (as they are high in natural sugars and you’ll have time to use up the energy produced by them before the end of the day) and the majority of your dairy. Proteins play an important role in keeping a person energetic, alert and strong, so throughout the mid-morning to mid-afternoon, you’ll want to focus on foods that are high in protein – lean meats, eggs, fish, and cheeses are all excellent sources of protein.
Make sure you are balancing those proteins with fiber that can be found in whole grain breads, oats and bran. As evening rolls around, you want to continue filling your body with antioxidants, but you want to avoid the sugars and fats that are found naturally in many foods. You may want to opt for a vegetarian dinner or evening snack. Vegetables are best eaten later in the day, because there are no ingredients that require burning off (such as the sugars in fruit). If you find that vegetables aren’t enough to prevent waking up in the night searching for a midnight snack, a hearty bowl of oatmeal before bedtime can carry you throughout the night.
If you find it difficult to stick to your food routine, you may want to set up a bin system in your refrigerator. Mark the bins “AM”,”Mid-AM”, “Noon”, “Mid-PM”, and “PM” (or whichever labels suit you best). In each bin, have a variety of foods that are allowed for each time of the day. By having several choices in each bin, you can curb the desire to steal food from another bin. Just make sure you log what you eat – in the end, it’s the calories that are going to make the biggest difference.
By the way – I like how Mike Geary explains different foods. In this article he talks about specific vegetables that literally burn stomach fat away.
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