I Need to Lose Weight and Fast: What Kinds of Foods Should I Eat?

by isabel

I spent a lot of my life overweight. One day I finally looked at myself and said, “I need to lose weight and fast.” To help me achieve this goal, I learned everything I could about nutrition. While I didn’t drop the pounds overnight (no quick fixes, remember), the excess flab did come off, and I haven’t had any trouble maintaining the results since then.

If your weight loss journey isn’t working out like you’d hoped, you may be eating too much of the wrong stuff or avoiding too many of the right kinds of foods. Here are some nutrition tips to help you lose that stubborn flab once and for all.

Replace Processed Food with Real Food

If your definition of real food is frozen fish sticks, pasta and canned green beans, we have some work to do. These foods are a small sampling of the processed junk that harms our bodies and causes us pack on the pounds.
When foods are processed, most of the nutrients are zapped right out. So when you eat them, you take in a bunch of empty calories that get stored in your body as fat. Definitely not something you want to happen when you’re on a mission to lose weight.

Real food comes from farms; it is not processed or created in factories. The bulk of your diet should include real foods like fresh vegetables and fruits, grass fed beef, free range poultry, organic eggs, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds and fresh fish.

When you replace the processed junk in your diet with real food, you eliminate unnecessary calories, and you have an easier time losing weight.

Embrace Fat in Your Diet

Wait! Before you bash me over the head, hear me out. Fat gets a bad rap because it is believed to be the culprit of obesity and heart disease. This is absolutely not the case. Eating fat is not going to make your heart explode or turn your bum into blubber—unless of course, the bulk of your fat comes from unhealthy processed food and trans fat.

Fats that are derived from nutritious foods like olive oil, nuts, fatty fish, avocados, coconut oil, organic eggs and naturally raised meats make meals more satiating and keeps hunger at bay.

Get Enough Protein in Your Diet

When you are trying to lose weight, protein is a must. When you eat protein, your body releases a hormone that helps you burn stubborn fat. Protein also helps you stay full longer so you eat less during the day.
There’s no need to go overboard with the protein. Adding a sensible serving of this nutrient to each meal will do the trick. Some healthy protein choices include beans, fresh fish, naturally raised meats, legumes, free range poultry and organic eggs.

Eliminating processed foods, and adding healthy sources of fat and protein to your diet can help you lose weight faster. Of course, if you really want to see consistent fat burning results, combine your nutrition plan with plenty of exercise.

Healthy nutrition is the key to losing weight and keeping it off. Watch this video to see what I do when I need to lose weight and fast so you can achieve your dreams of permanent weight loss.

11 habits that send diet plans awry

Seoul (The Korea Herald/ANN) - With unusually hot weather signaling an early end to spring, many women are taking up weight loss regimes, getting ready to show off slender figures in summer.

According to business group CJ, the women's weight-loss market is worth around 200 billion won (US$175 million) a year.
However, many fail in their attempts to shed a few kilograms.
Here are 11 reasons suggested by Fox News and other news outlets as to why people stumble on their way to a slimmer figure.

1. You eat the wrong food: Many people rely on cereal bars or protein shakes and fasting. In the long run, this rarely works because the foods don't satisfy your stomach. Cheese sticks or non-fat yoghurt with strawberries could be good alternatives.
2. You are working out too late: Yes, you need exercise but getting a good amount of sleep is just as important. Five to six hours of sleep a day slows the metabolism and causes hormonal changes. Also, fatigue could induce you to indulge in foods. Recent research suggests that those lacking sleep tend to eat 500 calories more than those who have abundant sleep.
3. You are working out too much: Exercise is the staple way to take away your weight but it does not work magic. Diet is the most important factor. Instead of working out six days a week, halving the exercise time and using the extra hours to fill up with fresh vegetables and plan your meals could be more productive.
4. You are too obsessed with salad: Eating abundant vegetables is crucial to losing weight. However, salad often lacks carbohydrates, which could make you feel even more hungrier. Adding brown rice or beans in the salad bowl or eating a soup or sandwich is a better option.
5. You are eating high-calorie foods: By all means switch your white bread with rye, ditch your potato chips for nuts and use olive oil instead of butter. But beware: they are not low-calorie alternatives. Don't eat too much of them.
6. You are eating too early: Many dieticians advise people to refrain from eating late. But in fact, having 70 per cent of daily recommended calories before dinner and 30 per cent at dinner is fine. Just don't search for ice cream or biscuits at night.
7. You are eating alone: Having company at meal tables definitely helps one moderate the amount of food. There is evidence that this is the case for women.
8. You never eat between meals: It may be better to reduce the amount of breakfast, lunch and dinner you are having and squeeze small foods in between. Your metabolism works better when you eat every 3-4 hours.
9. You don't keep a food journal: Researchers suggests that those who keep diet journals tend to lose weight twice as effectively as those who don't keep one. Simply writing down what you have eaten can alert you to how much you are eating.
10. You don't like drinking water: Replacing sodas and juice with water could dramatically reduce your calorie intake. Those who drink two cups of water eat an average of 90 calories less than others.
11. You are skipping breakfast: Those who eat breakfast tend to maintain healthy weight. If you don't feel like cooking early in the morning, just eating a whole-food cereal could help you start your day fresh and keep healthy as well as lose weight.

Ref: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/11-habits-send-diet-plans-awry-053002797.html

3 tips for rapid weight loss

The most important thing for healthy weight loss is to be mindful of your eating habits and lifestyle. (Getty …

Most of us would like to have a better figure and look more attractive. Extra weight can hurt us in many ways beyond what it does to our health and appearance. It affects our lives and how people judge us. A study has shown that a large number of people think that overweight people lack self-control.

If you are on the road to shedding some pounds, you probably want to lose weight fast. Yet we know that losing weight does not happen magically overnight. Instead, it requires effort and determination.

Despite wanting to lose weight quickly, you should make sure that your method of losing weight is a healthy one. If not, you may be losing important muscle, rather than just fat. The most important thing for healthy weight loss is to be mindful of your eating habits and lifestyle.

Below are three tips that you can incorporate into your life to help you lose weight rapidly in a healthy way.

1. Eat breakfast

Breakfast is the most essential meal of the day. It fills your stomach after a long night of sleep. Eating breakfast will make you more alert and energetic at the start of the day.
Skipping breakfast will result in unexpected and, at times, uncontrollable hunger later in the day. This hunger may then lead you to unwanted snacking. Furthermore, skipping breakfast might make you eat more than usual during lunch to satisfy the hunger. This could increase your overall calorie intake.

Research has shown that if you eat breakfast every morning, you are more likely to maintain a normal weight. It is important to start off your day with a healthy breakfast to fill your stomach and prevent unexpected snacking later in the day.

A healthy breakfast should include all three main nutrients — carbohydrates, protein, and fat. The carbohydrates will give you instant energy and the fiber (which is a type of carbohydrate) will help keep you full longer. Protein and fat also prolong your satiety to minimize your hunger as the day goes on.

2. Exercise regularly

Research has shown that even 30 minutes of daily exercise can provide numerous health benefits in addition to aiding in weight loss and maintaining a healthy, desired weight.

Unfortunately, we often feel like we do not have the time for exercising. We are either too tired after work or cannot squeeze any free time from the endless piles of school assignments.

Even with a packed schedule, we can make little changes in our activities to incorporate a bit of exercise into our daily lives. For example, instead of taking the lift or the escalator, go for the stairs. If your office or your school is a stone's throw away from the MRT station or the bus stop, skip the public transport and walk to your destination.

At regular intervals, take a rest from your work. You can do some stretching exercises at your desk or take a walk outside your office or classroom. These little changes in your life will contribute significantly to your weight loss over time.

If you have a bit more time on your hands, you can sign up for an activity at the nearest community center, which have all kinds of classes available such as aerobics, swimming, and kickboxing. Having to pay for these classes will actually motivate you to attend them. This will then give you a good reason to allocate some time for regular exercise.

Of course, do keep in mind that regular exercise should be accompanied by a healthy diet.

3. Avoid deprivation diets

When we want to lose weight fast, we might think that not eating is the key. For example, a person who wants to lose five kilograms rapidly might eat as little as a carrot stick per day until the goal is achieved.

However, a deprivation diet only has a short term effect on weight loss. Your metabolism rate actually slows down when you consume so few calories per day. Additionally, losing weight so quickly and depriving yourself of a healthy diet can easily backfire, causing you to gain back the weight very quickly.

In addition to causing you to be hungry all day and night, deprivation diets usually do not provide the nutrients that the body needs to carry out its daily functions. Your body needs nutrients to keep up your metabolism, give you energy for physical activity, and to carry out general functions.

Without these essential nutrients, your body will start to shut down, and weight loss may become very difficult. Therefore, it is important for you to eat regular meals and keep to a balanced diet.
As you go forward with your weight loss, remember that it is crucial to choose a healthy weight loss method, which is more likely to ensure that pounds are lost not only rapidly, but also permanently.

Eating breakfast, exercising regularly and avoiding deprivation diets can all help you lose weight rapidly. With these tips in mind and an optimistic mindset, you are a step closer to achieving your goal.

What weight loss method would you recommend or not recommend to other people?

Edited by registered dietitian Arielle Kamps, M.S., R.D, L.D. Via HealthMatters.sg, a Singapore Health and Fitness blog that aims to help you lose weight, keep fit, and live healthy. Click here to get our free guide "Eat Your Way to Health — Secrets of a Healthy Diet".

Ref: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-health/3-tips-rapid-weight-loss-022739017.html