Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tips

If you are like me, you want a piece of bread now and then. I used to eat white bread until I started reading up on what types of foods are healthier, and guess what; white bread wasn’t one of them.

Make sure it is 100% whole wheat bread. When you read the ingredients, it should say whole wheat and not processed whole wheat. If it is processed, then it is no longer 100% whole wheat.

Wheat in its natural, unrefined state has many nutrients including dietary fiber and is a great addition for your diet plan.

Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #2

Keep it Natural

Similar to making sure you are getting whole foods, all your foods should be in it's natural state or as close to natural as possible.  Foods that have been processed lose some of the nutritional value and often times increase the calories or fat content during the process.

Take a look at your recipes and see how you can alter them to make it healthier. For instance, do you fry your chicken? Try baking instead sprinkled with some of your favorite spices or try to find a healthy alternative to cooking in oils.

Same goes for baked goods. Replace the oil with apple sauce. This will keep that cake moist but without all the fat. Try using sugar substitutes as well.

Switch from whole milk to 1% or fat free skim milk. When I first switched to skim milk I wasn’t thrilled about the taste. But now, I can hardly tell that its fat free.

Be sure to search this site for recipes using this custom search tool.

Less sugar

Switch from regular sweetened drinks to diet drinks. Also, be careful of the amount of fruit juices you drink. A glass of juice has as many calories ounce for ounce as a soda. So limit your juice to just one 8oz glass a day or dilute it with water.

Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #5

Don't Drink and Diet

Dieting and drinking are not a great combination for losing weight. But, there will be occasions where you want to celebrate and have a drink.

Just remember, the best way to lose weight is to keep everything in moderation. This includes your alcohol intake.

Some alcoholic drinks rate better than others as far as calorie content is concerned. Always read the labels to know how many calories you are consuming, even in your drinks.

Another reason drinking and dieting don’t mix is due to how your body processes alcohol. The alcohol introduced into your body will be what your body processes first. This leaves the carbs to be stored as fat, instead of being burned as fuel.

So what are the best alcoholic drinks while dieting when that special occasion arrives? Wine is your best bet with fewer calories per ounce and beer is not too bad either. 

Check out this article Diet friendly alcohol choices on sparkpeople.com

Eating Healthy Weight Loss Tip #6

Add Fruits and Veggies

Are you getting enough of your fruits and vegetables?  Recommendation from the experts is to get 5 – 9 vegetable and fruit servings a day, so eat up.

Fruits and vegetables are a great addition to your healthy weight loss plan for a few reasons. One, they tend to make you feel more satisfied as you can eat a larger volume of these foods (especially the veggies), secondly they give you fiber and thirdly, there are many medical benefits.  

Make your fruits and vegetables colorful and varied. This way you get lots of vitamins and other valuable nutrients.  For instance, try pumpkin for a great change of pace.  There are many health benefits of pumpkin and pumpkin seeds.  If you want to try some pumpkin in your next meal, check out these yummy healthy pumpkin recipes.

When eating fruits and vegetables each day, along with reduced fat and high whole-grain diets, research states this may decrease the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

Remember, vegetable soup can count as a veggie serving so you can make your weight loss meal plan flexible and varied. Your fruit serving can be a favorite fruit juice, but you will want to limit juice to just once a day.