Eat Smart to Lose Weight

Did you know that you can eat a lot and still lose weight? It sounds too good to be true, right? Here are some ways to make it happen.

Steps

1. Eat more! Don't be fooled because the article is referring to more of healthy, low-fat foods rather than junk food. Junk food can range from burgers to those cookies that you always bought! Adding a lot of vegetables and fruits to your diet will help you. Also, drinking bouillon, a Haitian soup, made with filtered water will help you feel full.
   
2. Exercise every day! This could be the most difficult step to follow. But what you can do is actually start slowly then steady increase the amount of exercise. For example, today you will walk for 10 minutes, repeat this for the whole week. For the next week, double your workload. You may get leaner that way! The important thing is to get your heart rate up and start, now!
   
3. Feed your temptations once in a while. Go ahead and have that donut or slice of pizza, but before you do, drink a few glasses of water and eat a bowl of raw veggies such as cucumbers, celery, carrots, and tomatoes. They will fill you up and you will have very little room to eat the "junk" food.
   
4. Consume things that have no calories. There are two things you eat and drink that contain no calories: water and fiber. The more of these you get into your diet, the better off you will be. For example, you can eat a pound of mixed salad greens with assorted raw vegetables (carrots, red cabbage, celery, broccoli, onion, etc.) with a low or no-calorie salad dressing and only have eaten 100-150 calories. This is because of the high water and fiber content of the salad and low calorie dressing. Also, eat lots of celery. It has only 8 calories, but amazingly, it takes more than 8 calories to digest it. So, you actually BURN calories by eating celery! It's not much, about 2 calories per 8 inch stalk, but it sure doesn't hurt.
   
   • Avoid sodas as much as possible. Instead, drink flavored water or unsweetened iced tea. Caffeine, when placed in a low-calorie beverage like black coffee or unsweetened tea, raises your metabolism and causes you to burn more calories. Too much caffeine has harmful health effects, though, so be reasonable in your consumption if you choose to have caffeine.
     
5. Have broth-based soups. They are relatively low in calories. A commercially-available ready to eat "chicken and stars" soup may only have 80 calories for 1 serving, much less than diet "meal shakes" or nutrition bars.
   
6. Practice good eating habits. Always use utensils and sit at the table. This stops you from eating precariously. Eating with your hands will mean that you take in more food in one scoop. Don't forget to eat slowly and stop when you're full. Similar to the above step, if you can't stop, drink up! Maybe your body is thirsty and hungry no more! Also, you can do any other chores (other than eating). For instance, go shopping, or play badminton with your friend, or play games on the computer!
   
7. Spread out your diet! Eat more small chunks of meals, rather than 3 big meals. If you eat 100-150 calories or so every two hours, your body stays in a higher-metabolism digesting mode. This allows you to burn more calories than eating just 3 meals a day.
   
8. Record What You Eat! This is a simple yet very powerful exercise to open your eyes to see whether you are keeping up with the dieting plan. Often, we tend to overlook those snacking we do between meals and really think that our diet is failing us. But the truth is there can be many petty things that we do that really affect our dieting plan. For example, one might skip breakfast 3 times a week without being conscious about it. Studies have shown that if you eat breakfast, you tend to eat proportionally fewer calories the rest of the day. Without a record, it might seem like you are doing all the right thing, yet fail miserably in your dieting plan.
   
9. Make Vegetables a Major Part of Your Diet Plan! If vegetables are not a major part of your diet, it is time to reconsider. Studies have shown that vegetables can play an important loss in losing weight. This is because vegetables are high in water and fiber and low in energy density.
   

Now that you have some good guidelines on how to eat right, start applying these tips more and more every passing day. Before you know it, you'll be losing pounds without even trying. :) If you have any questions or suggestions, leave a comment!