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Ladies, it’s time we uncovered the biggest weight loss secret of all: eating healthy does not mean you will be losing weight! Of course, eating nutritious foods is good for you and your health, but if you eat too many calories and not exercising you can still gain weight from them. Another thing, is eating healthy, but high calorie foods, like vegan pastries, organic dark chocolate and overindulging in honey, may not be that far from eating unhealthy food. We call it the healthy junk food. Some of the healthy and natural foods are packed with calories and what happens with the calories if we eat too many of them? They are be stored as fat!
Now, it’s true that natural food is more likely to be used for bodily functions than to be stored as fat, but if you eat 600 calories worth of gluten-free blueberry muffins, do you really think they won’t find their way onto your love handles?
To put an end to all this confusion, we decided to tell you about the 3 rules on how to make sure that you stay healthy AND lose weight at the same time:
1. Learn to Read Your Labels. Thanks for the marketing efforts of food producers, it has become a little more difficult to determine what food is good for you from just looking at its packaging. Today, you will have to dig a little bit deeper to identify whether the food has “hidden” ingredients and stuff that makes you gain weight.
- First thing’s first, read the ingredients that make up the foodin question. Are you familiar/can pronounce all of them? If yes, proceed by looking at which ingredients come first. The few main ingredients will always be first on the list. So, if you are buying granola bars (apparently healthy for you) and see that the first, second or third ingredient is sugar, then maybe they are not that healthy after all.
- There are only 4 macronutrients – carbohydrate, protein, fat and alcohol. But each macronutrient has many different versions of itself. For example, carbs can come in the shape of starch, sugar and fiber. These macronutrients will be listed on the label as well, so you will know exactly which ones you are consuming.
- By the way, if certain food doesn’t have a label, you can always find its nutritional value online or using certain apps.
2. Portion Control. Not only it is important to monitor the portions you eat, it is just as important to make sure to control the portions you cook. Let’s admit it, with all of our hectic schedules, there is no chance in the world that we would have the time to eat healthy if we cooked every single meal. But if you cook in big portions, all of a sudden you will notice that you actually spend much less time at the kitchen.
- Staying organized does take effort, but if you think about it also saves you tons of time. Yes, steaming 2 pounds of green veggies, baking 4 pounds of chicken breast and making a large tub of mashed sweet potatoes may take you an hour and a half, but then you are set for the next 4-5 days!
- You need tools. Tupperware will come in handy in packaging all of your delicious meals into containers, so that you can conveniently pull them out of the fridge and bring with you to work. You also want to have some food scales, so you can measure your portions. The scales are very important in calculating how many calories you are eating by weighing your portions.
3. Know exactly what are you going to be eating. Our Nutritional Plans have all the portions already calculated for you, but here are just a few guidelines to help you with your meal prep;
- Eat 5-6 meals a day.
- Each meal should contain about 25-30 grams of protein (P).
- Don’t eat carbs with fats. Eat meals consisting carbs in the first half of the day.
- Each carb meal should have 30-50 grams of Starchy Carbs (SC) and each meal with fat should have about 15-20 grams of fat (F).
- Avoid eating any kind of sugars and trans fats.
- Fiber is indigestible and should not be counted towards your carbohydrates intake.
About the Author: Ana Plenter
Ana Plenter is a an Award Winning Personal Trainer, Fitness Competitor & Competition Coach and the Founder of Build My Body Beautiful & Body Beautiful Fitness
