Diets Don't Work

If one of your goals is just to live a healthier lifestyle, chances are, part of that is a desire to lose some weight. In fact, one of the most common New Year's resolutions every year is to lose weight.

Years ago, most diets made the focus calorie intake. While monitoring the number of calories you ingest is important, it is by no means the main factor in any diet.

In fact, I don't even like using the term "diet." The reason is that people associate a "diet" with a temporary change in the eating habits to reach a specific goal. To be blunt, diets don't work, lifestyle change does.

If you really want to invest your time and energy into a lifestyle change that will work, there are four main areas you have to focus on to be successful. These areas are carbohydrates, proteins, fats and calories.

Before doing anything else the first thing you should do is take one week to eat as you normally would. But during that one week, record and take an inventory of each of those for areas mentioned above. You can collect the data from the nutrition labels on food products or using a resource like Self that can come in handy for prepared meals too. Once you collected the data, we have a starting point from which to aim to either lower or increase intake. As a general guideline, you are probably going to want to decrease your intake of carbohydrates, fats and possibly calories while attempting to increase your intake of proteins. Let me be clear that there is no magic number to achieve, just the effort to adjust your intake.

The best approach to eating while not feeling like you're starving yourself is to spread out the time periods at which you eat. For example, most people would probably say that they eat three full meals a day and potentially some sort of dessert in the evening. This does not include random snacking throughout the day. A much more effective method is to essentially eat three reasonably-sized meals per day with two small protein based snacks between and either skip dessert or make it another small protein-based snack no later than 8:30 PM. Basically, you should be ingesting something every few hours or so. A sample timeline would be eating breakfast at 6:45 AM, snack number one at around 9:15 AM, lunch at around 12:30 PM, snack number two at around 3:15 PM, and dinner at around 6:30 PM.

Right now, you're probably asking why it is important to follow the sort of routine. The reason is that proteins are known to help boost metabolism and when you have a more steady intake out the day you keep your metabolism going more effectively. As far as the new eating after 8:30 PM part goes, it's because in the body decreases its metabolism as the day goes on making it much less effective during the evenings and night.

As for selecting proteins goes, the general rule here is that the lighter they are the better in terms of color. For example, a piece of salmon will always be more beneficial than a juicy steak and a turkey sandwich will always workout more beneficial than any burger.

When it comes to carbohydrates the color rule switches as that you're better off going with darker items than lighter ones. Instead of breads like sourdough, French baguette or Italian, you're better off going with something like whole wheat multi-grain or rye.

The overall goal is to get the most proteins containing and items that contain carbs that will break down into sugars a slower pace.

When it comes to beverages, lots of water and non-sugary drinks can have a major benefit.

Following this shot of approach along with even music exercise is essentially a given that you will reduce your weight.