If you want a diet that fits your personal needs and varies from person to person, instead of following common diets that don't give great results long-term, here’s how to make a diet plan that helps you lose weight for good.
Usually, the right diet for you is the one that gets the results you want. If you’re tired of arguments over the perfect diet, here’s the good news: you don’t need to eat frozen pre-made meals all week that cost a lot, or do tons of exercise to lose weight. All it takes is cutting calories a bit each day, whether your diet is low-carb, high-protein, or low-fat, and you’ll see clear results.
But one problem is you won’t keep losing fat long-term unless you change your eating habits and work out regularly in a way that fits your body and daily schedule.
Before starting your diet, knowing what you really need is key info that can help you lose weight and change your lifestyle. Your personality also plays a big role in making the diet work or fail. Dieting needs more than willpower. People who lost weight and kept it off found a plan that matched their unique personalities.
To set up your diet, it’s recommended to use these six points:
1- How many meals do you like to eat each day? Is it three, five, or more? Once you decide, split your calories between meals however you want.
2- How much time will you spend cooking? If you don’t like cooking or don’t have much time, you’ll need to prepare simple, fresh healthy meals with little processed food.
3- Some people might need some support and encouragement to succeed, especially when your motivation to change bad habits starts fading after a while. Family, friends, and diet buddies can help and encourage you when you feel like quitting the diet.
4- If you like eating out, you'll need to know how many calories are in the restaurant food by checking the calories in the foods you usually eat.
5- If you can’t live without eating a certain unhealthy food daily, like potato chips or cake, eat 100 calories of it per day.
6- You should do at least 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise like daily walking, but you might need to increase the intensity depending on your needs.
How to use calorie counting to lose weight:
- Your body won’t lose weight unless you have a calorie deficit by eating less energy than you burn daily. Most healthy people without chronic issues can lose over a kilogram a week with a balanced diet. The calories you need daily depend on age, gender, activity level, and the weight you want to lose each week.
- Once you calculate your calories, the next step is knowing what you eat each day so you can lose weight. The best diet plans rely on whole foods like veggies, fruits, whole grains, lean protein, and low-fat dairy because they lay the foundation for healthy eating for life.
- The website MyPyramid.gov from the US Dept of Agriculture offers a chart to help you decide how many servings to eat daily from each food group (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean protein, low-fat dairy) and oils based on your calorie needs for weight loss. You can also use any similar site.
How to design your daily meals and snacks:
Now that you know how many servings you need from each food daily, you need to know how to combine them to make healthy meals and snacks. Here are some basic rules.
1- Eat at least three meals a day because regular eating stops extreme hunger that can mess up your plan for better eating and exercise.
2- Keep your body full for longer by combining protein (found a lot in foods like milk, meat, and beans) and fiber (found in whole grains, veggies, fruits, and legumes) in each meal. For example, fat-free yogurt with apples or a boiled egg with some whole grains is more helpful than getting the same calories from soda which has very low fiber and no protein.
3- Choose foods that have fewer calories than their alternatives. For example, pick low-fat or skim milk instead of whole milk, and choose lean ground meat with as low fat as possible.
4- If you're not sure about the serving size of a certain food, and let's face it, most of us struggle with this, use common kitchen measures like cups and spoons to figure out servings at home.
Many studies show that restaurant food has way more fat and sugar than fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products made at home.
But that doesn’t mean your diet will fail because you eat out sometimes. Cutting back on eating out will definitely help you lose weight. You can eat less out by bringing food to work and cutting extra calories through physical activity.
Important tips:
1- Use books and websites to calculate the calories in the foods you eat.
2- When eating out, choose options that limit calorie intake like low-fat salad dressings on the side, grilled meats, fish cooked without added fats, and vegetables.
