Keep The Foods You Love

During the 2017-2018 period, the CDC found that 42% of Americans were obese compared to 34% a decade earlier. They also found that as obesity levels rise, the number of Americans on diets does too.

Most diets consist of cutting out your favorite foods to lose weight. However, there are ways to lose weight without cutting the foods you eat. Not cutting out your favorite foods makes any diet far more sustainable, and doesn’t seem like a punishment!

Read on to learn five tips on eating better that you’ll want to try.

1. Burning Enough Calories

You can create a daily meal plan to keep track of your calorie intake. By counting the calories in what you eat (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats), you’ll know how many calories to burn off.

Likewise, you can add your activity levels to your Basal Metabolic Rate (energy needed to simply exist) to know how much you can eat during the day.

Scientifically speaking, you should be burning as many calories as you take in to stay at a consistent weight. It is known as your maintenance intake or your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

If you want to lose some weight, you’ll have to burn more calories than you take in. You can still eat the calorie-filled foods you love, but you may have to work out a little harder.

To gain some weight, eat a little bit more than you burn off.

Weight is nothing more than a simple (estimated) math equation, after all, and increasing activity is always easier than eating less!

2. Eating More Protein

Instead of cutting out foods, try to incorporate more protein into your meals. There are many reasons backed by science on why people should eat more protein.

The main reason being that protein reduces appetite and hunger levels by making you feel more full. Even with less food on your plate, you’ll feel like you’ve had enough to eat. Best of all, protein takes longer to digest so you will feel fuller longer. No hunger = eating less filler food like potato chips and candy bars.

A good rule of thumb is to eat a palm sized serving of protein at each and every meal. Do not cut out carbs and fats completely, you also need them to live a healthy lifestyle. You just need to eat less of those types of foods.

3. Using Smaller Plates

When you are first starting out on a diet, the way your brain thinks has a lot to do with your success rate. It may sound silly, but using smaller plates can trick your brain into thinking that you are eating more because the plate looks fuller. In reality, you are eating less.

The brain is responsible for deciding whether or not you should eat, so making it believe you are eating more can be helpful in reducing your over all intake of food.

Side note: You can portion out your meals to avoid overeating and spread your daily calories out over more sittings if that works better for you.

This ‘trick’ can also be used for chips, candy, and other junk. Portion it out and place it into smaller containers instead of eating directly from the bag. That way you avoid ‘accidentally’ eating the entire bag of chips in one sitting.

4. Macro Tracking

This step goes hand in hand with number tip #2. Macro tracking refers to logging the foods you eat with a journal or app. Buying a digital food scale is not necessary, but it could help you track the weight of your food better.

When you ratio out your daily intake of calories based on protein, carbohydrates, and fats, you help your body consume a well rounded diet full of all the nutrients it needs.

Each macronutrient plays a role in bodily function, and ignoring any of the three can lead to various issues. A lot of fad diets heavily restrict one of the three, and are generally unsustainable in the long run. Who really wants to spend years on a low-fat diet when it isn’t medically necessary? Fat is flavor, after all, and plays an enormous role in hormonal balances (among other functions) within the human body.

You’ll need to learn how to count macronutrients and figure out the perfect breakdown for your body. After, you can eat the foods you want as long as it fits within your specific dietary breakdown. (We can help you with this)

5. Not Skipping Out on Desert

Yes, you read that right! You don’t have to skip out on your favorite dessert to lose weight.

If you have the right servings for dessert, you can enjoy it after dinner. Typically, one serving of dessert is plenty.

Bonus Tip: Don’t Drink All Your Calories

Most people do not realize just how many calories they drink each day. Soda, juice, coffee, tea. They all (generally) have a ton of calories. Seriously. Track your beverage calorie intake for a week. You’d be shocked if you have never done it before.

Increase your water intake, reduce your juice/soda/sugary tea or coffee intake, and you can watch pounds melt off of you without much else changing.

Tips on Eating Healthy You Can Try Right Now!

There are just some of the simple adjustments you can make to your diet and lifestyle to help you lose weight. Forget the crazy diets that tell you to cut out your favorite foods, that won’t always be necessary.

In fact, unless a doctor or licensed dietician/nutritionist tell you that you need to, don’t. That is, unless you really just want to quite cookies.

Chances are that you’ll be miserable, your diet probably won’t be sustainable, and

Let us help you out

If you need some help kickstarting a lifestyle change, whether it is diet or just being more active, throw us a message.

We’re here to help, offering a variety of customized workout plans to suit your goals and can get you going on your way to better health..

Personal trainers, like those found here, can help guide you on your pathway towards reaching your fitness goals, whether that is getting bigger, stronger, faster, more lean, or just generally feeling better.

We can get you setup with a periodized workout plan, supplement information, and advice on nutrition to help you reach your goals.

The only thing you need is some motivation and a willingness to change some old habits.

Get into contact with us to find out what membership is right for you. In a CONDITIONerd program, you’ll be surrounded by others who can help you to get where you want to be.

Generally, our clients start to see some pretty awesome changes in 2-3 months time, some sooner.

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