Do not overeat: You should not eat after you are full. Eating extra food adds additional calories to your body. For example, if one dessert serving of 75 calories daily after meals for 10 years will give you extra 270000 calories, which will add about 20 kg to your weight!
Eating a salad with low fat salad dressing is a very healthy option.
Eat slowly: You eat more if you eat fast, as it takes about 15 minutes for our brain to get the message from our stomach that we have eaten enough. If we eat too fast, we will eat too much before we even realize we're full!
Include a low fat protein rich food like tofu, beans, eggs, and low fat milk, yogurt or cottage cheese with every meal. These foods give feeling of fullness for longer time.
Reduce fat: Fats have more than twice the calories than protein or carbohydrate! Our body converts excess dietary fat to body fat. Therefore you should restrict intake of high fat foods. Learn to avoid fat in healthy diet.
Keep total fat intake between 20 to 35 percent of calories, with less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids and rest from sources of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Keep trans fatty acid consumption as low as possible
Limit sugar & alcohol: Foods with a lot of added sugar and alcoholic drinks are just empty calories. They provide little nutrients to our body. Alcohol slows down the body’s use of fat for fuel and the fat is likely to be stored in the body (Notice the fatty drinkers).
Avoid colas and coke drinks, they are full of sugar. Note that a can of cola contains nine teaspoons of sugar.
Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day. Water is without any calorie, fat and cholesterol; and filling and refreshing. It is a natural appetite suppressant and also helps the body to metabolize fat. Drinking lots of water decreases the amount fat deposits.
If you drink less water, then body starts to store it thinking that there is less supply of water. If you drink water at regular intervals, then body starts to reject it, thinking that there is an oversupply of it. The body starts flushing water it was holding in your body.
Another consequence of drinking not enouigh water is that you are taxing your liver. The liver then can not metabolize fat efficiently because it has to do kidney's work as well which need lots of water to work properly.
Eat fresh plenty of natural foods such as vegetables, fruits, & whole grains. These foods are packed with vitamins, minerals and fiber and are low in calories.
Eat a low glycaemic index, low fat diet. Avoid white foods such as sugar, refined flour, white bread and white potatoes, and animal products from your diet. These are high glycaemic index foods causing dramatic fluctuations in blood sugar level.
- Try to Increase metabolism: Getting enough sleep can help to keep the hormones leptin and grehlin in balance which regulates your metabolism and appetite.
A study in 2008 by Francesco Cappuccio of Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom revealed that if you don't get enough of sleep, there is a fair chance you are going to put on weight, no matter which part of the world you live in.
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