Stay Healthy and Get Nutrition While Losing Weight

by AlexandriaIngham

Would you like to lose weight? How about remaining healthy at the same time? Here are some tips to get nutrition and remain healthy during your weight loss.

To successfully lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than your body burns. You can increase the amount your body burns by doing exercise. The problem with losing weight is that you run the risk of not getting enough nutrients. This is why a healthy weight loss plan is so important, along with a focus on getting all the nutrition that your body needs. Here are some tips to still lose weight but with your health in mind.

Focus on Healthy Weight Loss
Focus on Healthy Weight Loss
Focus on Healthy Eating for Your Weight Loss
Focus on Healthy Eating for Your Weig...

Lose Weight Slowly and Carefully

Slowly but Surely Wins the Race

Avoid focusing on a quick weight loss. At the moment you may want to see the pounds drop quickly but this does nothing for you in the future. You didn’t gain the weight within a few months so it will take longer than that to lose it. The first couple of weeks you will likely see large amounts of weight loss due to water retention but after this you should average between one and two pounds per week.

There is nothing wrong with losing half a pound each week. While it will take a long time to lose all the weight that you want, it is still coming off. It is better than nothing at all.

There is another benefit to losing weight slowly. It will be much easier to keep off in the long run. The benefit is that you change your eating habits, while focusing on losing weight healthily. The main reason many people gain weight is because they get into bad habits with their food choices and you may have done the same. You may have started eating the wrong things. You may snack at the wrong time of day. By changing your habits over time, it makes it easier to stick to them in the future so you will find it much easier to keep the weight off afterwards.

Focus on Eating the Right Foods

Good Nutrition Comes from Good Choices

A balanced diet is the most important thing to get, even when trying to lose weight. There are so many diets that cut out certain types of foods, whether that is meat, carbohydrates or fats. The truth is that your body needs all the different types of foods, including fat! The trick is to focus on the right types of foods to get everything that you need.

This will help you get the right nutrients on a daily basis. For example, white bread may give you the carbohydrates that you need but brown bread is healthier. Brown bread also includes fibre, which is perfect for the digestive system. You will feel fuller for longer, while getting the right nutrients, so you eat less during the day.

Meat is good for the diet due to the amount of protein but that doesn’t mean you just have to eat that. In fact, too much is bad for you! To get protein you can opt for lentils, beans and eggs and you should concentrate on some of the vegetarian options to keep your cholesterol levels down. When you do choose to eat meat, look out for lean cuts so you get all the nutrients with minimal fats.

Eat Your Fruit and Vegetables

Juicy, Sweet and Delicious

You don’t have to eat the ones that you don’t like but definitely make sure you have fruit and vegetable in your diet while losing weight. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that you get a lot of nutrients from them.

First of all, they are mainly made up of water and have very few calories. Cucumbers and tomatoes are great with salads; carrot and celery sticks make great snacks; a fruit salad is a delicious and low-fat dessert. You’ll be surprised by how much better you feel after eating more fruit and vegetables with your meals or as snacks throughout the day, not just for the nutrients but because your body gets more water.

They are also full of vitamins and minerals that your body needs, including iron and calcium! Kale, spinach and other dark leafy greens are excellent options for all the nutrients that your body often misses out on (whether you are losing weight or not!). Fruits are also full of good carbohydrates that break down slowly to make sure your body remains fuelled; not to mention the fibre in them to keep your digestive system happy!

Think About the Way You Cook Your Food

Bake, Grill or Fry?

The way you cook your food not only affects your weight loss but your nutrition. There are certain types of food that lose their nutrients after being cooked and this is extremely common with vegetables and fruit. The best way to eat them is raw, which is great since they make such good snacks when raw.

However, when you do want to cook your food, avoid using polyunsaturated oils. Some oils are good for you, such as olive oil, almond oil and other monounsaturated fats. Of course, the best way of cooking is to grill or bake. Frying and deep frying collects the oil that you cook in and makes them worse for your weight loss.

When it comes to potatoes, consider boiling them or making mash—without the butter! While bake potatoes are better than chips, they remove all the water and most of the nutrients. Boiling or turning them into mash helps to preserve some of the delicious and nutritious goodness.

Encourage Your Children to Eat Nutritiously

Let It Become Second Natures
Encourage Children to Eat Nutritiously
Encourage Children to Eat Nutritiously

Avoid Crash and Yo-Yo Dieting

Don't Damage Your Healthy with Yo-Yo Dieting

Crashing diets are all around. You may follow the cabbage soup diet, the baby food diet or even the 5/2 diet. These all have one thing in common—they stop you getting all the nutrients you need. They are also extremely restrictive and make it harder to stick to them and lose weight over the long term.

But they help you to lose a lot of weight quickly, right? Well, they do but remember that that isn’t necessarily a good thing. These types of diets teach you nothing about healthy eating and can have adverse effects on your health. You should only do them if you are under strict medical supervision.

Crash dieting also leads to yo-yo dieting. This is the process of losing a lot of weight, gaining the weight back and then losing the weight again. This slows down your metabolic rate and makes it harder to lose weight and keep it off in the future. You don’t learn the good habits and you don’t get the nutrients that you need.

Whenever you consider a diet plan, look into the details. Does it support healthy eating and a long term solution? Has it been recommended by medical professionals? If the answers to those questions are no then it is not the right one for you!

It is possible to lose weight and remain healthy. The trick is to finding healthy eating plans. Most of these are not traditionally diets. They don’t cut out any foods and you can make your own decisions to develop healthy eating. You will get all the nutrients that your body needs as long as you make the right choices in the way that you cook your food, pick the type of food you eat and the snacks that you have.

Updated: 08/28/2013, AlexandriaIngham
 
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AlexandriaIngham on 08/30/2013

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of avocado, no matter how it's cooked or added into things. It offers so many health benefits but I can't bring myself to force it down. I don't find I need to add anything sweet when I have fruit, especially berries and citrus fruits.

Mira on 08/30/2013

Right. Well, I now make my smoothies differently because of that. And I make more orange and grapefruit juice, the way I used to. This one doesn't even need something sweet in it. I also add pineapple, which is great. So yes, we have to be careful with smoothies :). But they're a great way to add avocado to your diet, so it pays to experiment.

AlexandriaIngham on 08/30/2013

It is so important to have a healthy and balanced diet, Mira. There is such a thing of eating too much fruit. It's full of natural sugars and will lead to weight gain. Also, smoothies aren't always the best way of getting the fruit since other ingredients are included, like milk/yogurt to help thicken and blend the mixture. I rarely have smoothies because of that.

Mira on 08/30/2013

I agree with what you say. It's so much better to lose weight and/or stay slim by learning to eat healthier. Still, I have to say I had more fruit than usual this August (in smoothies, so I was getting larger amounts) and was actually about to gain weight. So fruit is an issue. I knew that, but still I had to experience it myself to believe it.

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