Adopting a Healthy Diet For Healthy Weight Loss

Healthy weight loss means taking care of the needs of one's body, while losing excess weight. Most popular diets that advise cutting out essential food groups from one's diet actually end up causing more harm than good. All food groups, be it fats or carbohydrates, are equally important for the body. Deficiency of even one can have serious consequences. In fact, any kind of restrictive calorie diet for weight loss and fitness can end up making the person sick in the long run.

A person's diet and exercise play an equally important role in ensuring healthy weight loss. One without the other will not give the desired results. In terms of damage, though, a wrong diet can do more harm than a sedentary life would. For example, if you don't exercise for weight loss, you bring down your calorific requirement by 200-300 calories per day, but by eating wrong you can add up to 1,000 calories in a single meal. It is, therefore, important to focus on your diet first when you begin a healthy weight loss program. The right food also gives you the energy to exercise, and, therefore, is the cornerstone of any fitness program.

It is important to remember that no food group is good or bad. The much maligned fats and carbohydrates are essential to our existence and cannot be shunned from our lives. What needs to be shunned is the wrong kind of carbohydrates or fats. How then does one know what is the right or wrong kinds of carbohydrates or fats? Simple. For every food that you consume, do a quick calculation of the nutrients to calories ratio. A banana or baked potato may be high in calories, but also have enough nutrients to fill you up; hence, are good foods. On the other hand, slices of white bread or other processed items, like ready made noodles, have very little nutrients per calorie consumed and are, hence, best avoided. All prepackaged foods come with a mandatory listing of ingredients and calorie listing; so check before buying. The Internet is also a good source for calorie listings of almost all foods.

Other good foods to include in your diet include fresh fruits and vegetables, cereals like oats and bran, whole wheat bread, and/or pasta and rice. These foods have lots of fiber that fill you up without adding too many calories. Foods to avoid include almost anything that comes ready made out of a package. This is because packaged foods have a high proportion of transfats, salt, preservatives, and ingredients that add calories but score very low on the nutrient value. Even desserts, like a chocolate cake or cookies are calorie dense and can seriously affect your calorie count. So, if it is not possible to avoid them, try and cut down on serving size as much as possible.

Apart from eating the above for healthy weight loss, it is important to stay hydrated, since thirst is often mistaken for hunger. Timing your meals correctly ensures that you are never too hungry to goof up on food choices. How and when to eat are as important as what to eat for a healthy weight loss program.