10 Real Life Diet Tips
Are you fed up of diet tips given out from someone with obviously infinite money and time? For a few of us, it might not be possible to spend half of our weekend creating carefully portioned meals for the rest of the workweek, or financially feasible to buy all our meals prepackaged in just the right portions. And there are those of us who cringe at the thought of weighing food to achieve ‘optimal portion sizes’. Here are ten real life diet tips for the rest of us.
1. Planning to eat out? Restaurant portions tend to be big, and if it is in front of us, we tend to eat it. If it’s possible, order from the kid’s menu, where portions are more reasonably sized.
2. Keep healthy snacks around and easily accessible. A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, a container of celery or carrot sticks in the refrigerator, or a couple of pop-open cans of fruit salad in your desk at work will help you grab for something healthy when those first hunger pains begin. In other words, you’ll be more likely to grab something low-calorie and good for you if it’s easy to eat.
3. Substitute canned vegetables for frozen. Canned veggies tend to be high in sodium, which you don’t need, and low in real nutrition, which you do. Frozen vegetables are much better for you. If buy economy size resalable bags it will make it much easy to pour and get the correct size for each serving.
4. Buy a vegetable steamer. Steaming is one of the healthiest ways to cook vegetables. The food retains nearly all of its natural nutrients instead of leaching it out into the cooking water. Better yet, it makes them taste great - which means there is a better chance you’ll eat them instead of filling up on fatty foods.
5. Never eat standing up. One of the easiest ways to sabotage your diet is to ‘eat without thinking’. Treat eating with the respect that it deserves. Fix yourself a plate. Sit down and eat properly. You’ll be less likely to just pop food into your mouth without paying attention.
6. Spread your meals out. If you eat three meals a day, your body will store what it does not need at that moment. By adopting a ‘grazing’ habit, you will be able to keep your metabolism going throughout the day. Try eating a small breakfast, then one piece of fruit with toast or crackers at mid-morning, a light lunch and an ‘after school snack’ mid-afternoon. All you are doing is breaking up your larger meals into smaller ones, and not ADDING any more food into your diet.
7. Instead of soda why not have fruit juice or flavored water. Soda is nothing but empty calories, lots of sugar and no nutrients what so ever. Instead, grab some water flavored with fruit or a bottle of 100% fruit juice.
8. Drink water. Even the FDA recommends at least 8 full 8 ounce glasses of water a day to keep your body working right. When you’re dieting, you should drink even more. It’s not just that full feeling - water helps your body digest foods properly and cleans out your system.
9. Exercise, join you local gym or train with friends. Try playing volleyball, taking a walk or spend half an hour doing something active at very least three times a week.
10. Cut out potato chips. All they do is contribute fat and calories and not much else. Instead why not grab a cup of yogurt or a handful of dried fruit they have the same amount of calories but are much more nutritious.