Report- Building A Weight Loss Framework
Building a Framework: A simple guide to using structured diets to build a solid weight loss plan.
Trying to lose weight is tough, but it’s even tougher when you’re just taking your first steps towards becoming healthier and losing that weight.
Deciding to lose weight can be as simple as one day waking up and realizing you want to do better for yourself, not everyone starts out by doing a ton of research on how to develop the best personal weight loss plan for themselves right out of the gate.
In fact a lot of developing a weight loss plan comes from trial and error to find out what works best, which is why a structured diet can go such a long way in helping you start to make the changes you want to see in your diet.
What is a Structured Diet?
A “Structured Diet” is a sort of catch‐all phrase for any kind of diet that someone else has already put together that outlines nutrition, meals, and occasionally fitness and exercise as well. It’s usually in a weekly or monthly format and is either subscription based, costs a flat fee, or in some cases is distributed freely.
In short, it’s a diet that someone already found works and is sharing with other people. You can find a lot of structured diets online or on TV, popular structured diets include South Beach, Atkins, and even “monthly services” like Jenny Craig.
Many diets are also easy to find online and can be found on forums or personal blogs, you can find plenty of information with just a simple search.
How does a Structured Diet help me start a personal weight loss plan?
When we talk about using a structured diet to build up your own personal weight loss plan we’re generally talking about building up a solid framework for you to branch off from. Like any house needs a frame to build walls, doors, windows, and a roof your personal weight loss plan will need a strong foundation of information to build up from.
Structured diets, depending on which you look at, will give you all kinds of information about why certain aspects of nutrition are “good” or “bad” and how eating a certain way can help your body and help you to lose weight.
Day one dieters usually don’t have that strong foundation of nutritional and fitness info to build from and can make mistakes that at best aren’t helping them lose weight and, at worst, can even hinder or set back progress they may be making or have already made!
How do I choose a Structured Diet that’s right for me?
Well, just like any other dietary decision you will need to do some research before you get started. First of all, you should work to identify exactly what your weight loss goals are as well as the kind of nutrition and eating habits you’re comfortable with. From there the choice is as simple as picking a structured diet that aligns with those values and that you’re interested in starting.
A good rule of thumb is to start with a diet that’s willing to go the extra mile to help you prepare and understand the nutrition that’s going to be affecting your weight and your life. Any diet that’s unwilling or unable to do that generally isn’t going to be worth the time you spend on it, so try to stay away from diets that are simply meal plans.
Another thing to watch out for is dangerous and unhealthy fad diets that promise results without much explanation of why or how it works. This usually comes in the form of a “miracle pill” or one size fits all kind of tool that guarantees unrealistic results. Diets like these try to disguise themselves as legitimate, but are usually just scams. If a diet can’t answer your questions about how it works or why you’re doing what you’re doing, then simply move along until you can find something that will.
Here are some examples of “name brand” diets and their basic ideals:
Atkins – The Atkins diet is a high protein, low carb diet that focuses on quick weight loss. The low carb aspect works well with an already diabetic diet, making it popular with people that have diabetes.
Weight Watchers – The Weight Watchers diet is a simple diet that works on a sort of point system that assigns values to foods and meals based on their nutritional value, encouraging users to eat within a certain value daily so long as their foods add up.
South Beach – South Beach is another low carb high protein diet that also emphasizes high fiber foods and helps by classifying “good” and “bad” carbs and fats.
What kinds of things should my Structured Diet be teaching me?
Since the big reason you’re going with a structured diet instead of just going in feet first is developing the base of information and understanding you need to make healthy decisions, it’s important to get some basics down right away.
Here’s an idea of the kinds of things that you should be learning from your structured diet:
1. Nutrition info. This is probably one of the most important parts of learning how to lose weight.
A proper diet teaches and helps you to understand the reasoning behind why some foods are good and others are bad for your health and for weight loss in general. I’m sure you’ve heard things like “a glass of wine with dinner can improve your health!” but it’s understanding this nutritional info that will tell you why. One of the single most important things a structured diet can teach you is how to understand the nutrition of foods and ingredients.
2. Nutritional balance. It’s not important to understand how foods affect your body and your health, it’s important to understand how to balance those aspects against each other. You should be trying to learn how to balance a meal with its carbs, calories, fats, and other nutrition “stats” so you can work on your own meal plan instead of relying on one that has been put together for you.
3. Foods and fitness. Last but not least you should understand how diet and exercise go hand in hand with each other when it comes to weight loss. Understanding calories and fats is important, but knowing how to balance your food intake with exercise to burn off calories and pounds is just as important, too.
What do I do with all of this information?
This is where you get to start branching out from your structured diet and into something that fits your personal needs better. Trying out structured diets is kind of like trying on clothes at a store, you’ll be able to find a bunch of different sizes and styles but they won’t fit perfectly like a tailored piece would.
Start with the outline of your structured diet and use the things you’ve learned about nutrition and balancing your meals to work out a rough plan for what kinds of food meet your requirements and goals. It’s all about taking “baby steps” and making minor modifications until you have something that’s working for you. For some plans you might find that the majority of the structured diet is helping you to reach your goals and that’s fine, stay with it so long as it’s showing definite progress but make sure you’re prepared to make those changes as you reach plateaus that your structured diet just isn’t able to break through. You change as much or as little as you like about your structured diet to make it your own, just make sure that what you’re doing is keeping in mind the eventual goal of a permanent, healthy lifestyle change. As you make changes eventually you’ll look back at where you started and where you are now and see how far you’ve come and all the differences between then and now. The diet that you started with will likely be a far cry from your new healthy lifestyle, but it’s the things you learned from it that will have shaped your ability to lose and keep that weight off to reach your healthy goals.
Let your Structured Diet become your successful personal weight loss plan! Nobody ever said it was going to be easy or that you would see quick results right away, in fact just about anyone will tell that it will be a long and difficult road. However, instead of letting that dissuade you from making the right choices and taking the tough first steps, let that be all the more reason for you to go out there and lose that weight. Using a structured diet could be just what you need to build up a strong foundation and a sturdy framework that will eventually become the personal weight loss plan that will help you to reach the weight loss goals that you’ve been dreaming about.
Choose the Ketogenic Diet to Burn Stored Fat
Choose the Ketogenic Diet to Burn Stored Fat
When you follow a ketogenic diet, you end up using fat as your fuel.
This not only lets you get rid of stored fat, but it causes you to lose weight as well.
You’ll feel better physically and mentally when you follow a ketogenic eating plan.
You’ll notice that you have plenty of energy to exercise and you’ll notice that you don’t feel the hunger to eat a lot like you may have before you started the diet.
You’ll also have sharper mental abilities as well as notice that your skin looks better.
You will need to make sure that you’re paying attention to the precise food that you eat so that you enter into ketosis, which is what happens when your body is using fat for energy rather than getting it from the foods that you eat.
In order to reach ketosis, you have to cut out all the carb load you may have been eating.
You’ll also need to stop consuming sugar.
When you follow the diet, you’ll notice that it helps to bring glucose numbers down as well as lowers your cholesterol and blood pressure, both of which are factors that contribute to heart disease.
You’ll be able to choose which ketogenic diet that you follow from among four choices:
The High-Protein Ketogenic diet is as simple as it sounds which means that you are going to have more protein in your diet than in other versions of the eating plan.
The Standard or Regular one is the diet that is most often followed and offers a choice between a low or higher range of carbs. In this one, you will also have some protein.
The Cyclical Ketogenic is for a mixture of low carb with high carb and you simply cycle on and off days.
If you choose the Targeted diet that is built around ketogenic eating, then you will eat according to the time that you have your workouts.
Foods on any of the ketogenic eating plans should be unprocessed.
You will be eating primarily all natural foods that contain little protein and carbs but plenty of fats. You will still need to watch your carb intake.
That includes keeping an eye on the amount of fruit that you eat. Though most fruit is low in calories, most of it is high in natural sugar. In order to stay in fat burning mode, you have to keep your carbs limited to within a certain range.
If you go out of that range, then you can leave the fat burning mode. You will have to be sure that you get your liquids in and that includes consuming water.
A ketogenic diet can make you more susceptible to not drinking adequate water.
Not All Carbs Are Bad! Learn the Difference Between Good and Bad Carbs
What is the Difference Between Good and Bad Carbs
No carbohydrates are good or bad. No food is truly bad or good.
Carbohydrates and food items simply cause different things to happen in your body when you eat them.
It is better to think of carbohydrates as whether you should eat them or avoid them, as opposed to them being bad or good. Carbohydrates could get their feelings hurt if they heard you referring to them as bad, or evil.
That having been said, there are distinct differences between certain types of carbohydrates.
You understand that not all fruits look and taste the same. The same is true with vegetables. There are any number of variations of pizzas. So there are definitely different types of carbs.
Let’s take a look at the construction of carbohydrates, because that really is what makes carbs either healthy or unhealthy for your body.
The Difference Between Simple and Complex Carbohydrates
When a food has a very simple molecular construction, it is broken down very quickly. In the case of simple carbohydrates, they enter your bloodstream almost instantly. This is not a good thing. When the carbohydrates you eat are complex, they are hard for your body to break down. Imagine a simple puzzle or brainteaser as opposed to the New York Times crossword puzzle.
Solving a simple puzzle doesn’t do much, if anything, for your brainpower. Solving the New York Times crossword puzzle gives you an incredibly healthy brain boost.
The same difference applies to simple and complex carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are sugars.
They come in a couple of forms, simple and complex. You may hear simple carbohydrates referred to as simple sugars or simple starches as well. Simple carbohydrates, as mentioned above, enter your bloodstream rapidly. They raise your blood glucose levels quickly. Unfortunately, the sugar in these “bad” carbs is rapidly converted and stored as fat, to be used as an energy source later.
Complex carbohydrates are very difficult to break down. Their construction is intricate, so they are hard to take apart. They are usually much higher in dietary fiber than simple carbs, and any glucose in these carbohydrates is efficiently processed before it goes straight into your bloodstream.
Simple carbohydrates include soft drinks, candy, artificial syrups, table sugar, pastries and desserts, white rice, white pasta and white bread.
Complex carbs, “good” carbs, are found in beans, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
If you just do what mama told you when you were a kid (Eat your fruits and vegetables!), you will avoid most simple carbohydrates, enjoy lots of complex carbohydrates, and treat your brain and body to better health and wellness.
The ABC’s Of A Balanced Diet
The ABCs Of A Balanced Diet
You’ve probably heard that one of the best ways to maintain good health is to follow a balanced diet.
But what does a balanced diet actually refer to?
A balanced diet basically requires that you consume foods from all of the main food groups in just the right proportions, while also avoiding foods that contain undesirable nutrients like sugar, saturated fats, and sodium.
However, know that everyone’s bodies are very different, so we can’t all follow the same diet.
Depending on gender, age, or illness, you may require a different amounts and types of certain nutrients.
You will need to adopt new eating habits if you want to achieve optimal health.
Basic Rules For A Balanced Diet:
• Reduce your salt intake, so that it doesn’t exceed 6 grams a day. If you’ve never paid attention to how much salt you ate, then you might get shocked when you find out how little 6 grams is compared to how much people are used to consuming on a daily basis.
• Cut down on saturated fat and sugar, as they are both very dangerous to your health.
• Drink six to eight glasses of water every day. If you’re used to drinking more soft drinks than water throughout the day, try squeezing a few drops of lemon in your glass in order to add a bit of flavor.
• Try to eat two portions (or more) of fish every week. Most fish are incredibly nutritious.
• Never skip meals, especially breakfast! Although you’ve probably heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day about a million times, you should really listen to that piece of advice. Eating a nutritious breakfast will provide you with the energy you need to make it through the rest of the day.
• Eat five or more portions of vegetables and fruits every day. Not a lot of people actually manage to do this on a daily basis. However, if you want to live healthier, you will need to start including more fruits and vegetables into your diet.
• Starchy foods need to represent the base of your meals, as they should ideally serve as your fuel for the rest of the day.
The Importance Of A Balanced Diet:
In order for your tissues and organs to work properly, they need proper nutrition, and a balanced diet is the best way for them to get it.
When you don’t eat healthy, you’re more likely to get infections, suffer from diseases, and experience fatigue. If you’re a parent, make sure that your kids maintain a balanced diet, as insufficient nutrients may lead to developmental and growth problems in children.
Not to mention that bad eating habits you develop during childhood can be incredibly hard to change later on.
The constant rise of diabetes and obesity around the world, and especially in America, should serve as a wake-up call to all of the people who don’t really pay attention to their eating habits. Know that some of the deadliest diseases, such as stroke, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are all linked to poor nutrition.
If you’re tired of getting sick every couple of months or simply don’t know what to do to start feeling more energized throughout the day, then chances are that you simply need to start eating healthier.
Consulting A Professional About A Balanced Diet:
If you’re really serious about following a balanced diet, then making an appointment with a nutrititionist is a great next step. A nutritionist will help you develop your very own personalized diet plan.
